Abstract
There is currently a growing interest in the philosophy and political thought of Baruch de Spinoza (1632–1677) following many years of comparative neglect, particularly within political philosophy. The focus of this paper is Spinoza's major work, the Ethics, and its relation to his political writings. It explores Spinoza's distinctive formulations of imagination and affect and considers some of the ways in which these impact upon his political thought, specifically via his reflections upon democracy and knowledge. The discussion draws particular attention to the aporetic status of imagination and its tendency towards ambivalence. It argues that this dynamic account of imagination introduces provisionality and contingency into Spinoza's reflections upon politics that may, in turn, enrich discussions seeking to introduce an awareness of the affective resonances of communication and identification to democratic theory.
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Notes
All references to the Ethics in the text are taken from Curley's translation (Spinoza, 1985) and use the following abbreviations: EII (Part II of the Ethics); Def (definition); P (proposition); Dem (demonstration) Schol (scholium) and Cor (corollary). All references to Spinoza's political works are taken from Elwes's translation (Spinoza, 1951).
See, in particular, the studies by Balibar (1994, 1997, 1998), Negri (1991) and Lloyd and Gatens (1999).
Some writers, notably Curley (1990), have suggested that is was precisely in the TTP that Spinoza sought to present, in more popular and accessible form, the geometric arguments of the Ethics. It is crucial, therefore, to take note of the trails leading to and from the political works of his lifetime. Others, for example, Rosen (1963), McShea (1968) and Vaughan (1925) tend to view the works as more self-contained.
Spinoza's English translator, Samuel Shirley, has noted that the use of the Latin term sive for or usually indicates an equivalence rather than an alternative (for which the terms vel and aut are often used. This has not prevented Spinoza's conception of substance being viewed as a form of pantheism, a deification of the world, where, most famously in Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy, this static ontological system negates all particularity and denies subjectivity historical becoming and agency.
In contrast to earlier thinkers who had viewed Spinoza's concept of substance somewhat statically, German Romantic philosophers understood this active, corporeal quality of imagination as giving Spinoza's system a dynamic meaning (see Engell, 1981, 117).
On the relation between Nietzsche and Spinoza, see Schacht, (1999). For discussions of Spinoza's reading of Hobbes, see Sacksteder (1980) and Frost (2005).
Camille Dumoulie ‘Spinoza, or the Power of Desire’ Pli Vol, 14, 2003, p. 46.
See Y. Yovel (1999, 2004). For Yovel, the conatus brings about the enhancement or empowerment of being which always unfolds in time and thus remains forever oriented toward the future. See Smith (2003) for a discussion of the conatus as empowerment.
As Balibar (1997) notes, this formulation of transindividualism has important theoretical echoes in Gilbert Simondon's formulations of the process of individuation in L'individuation Psychique et Collective(Paris, Editions Aubier 1989).
Spinoza distinguishes between a passion and an action. While the former are swayed by the influences of external and internal reaction, and hence increase or decrease man's affective power, an action requires that one understands the cause of any of the former passions. Thus, ‘By affect I understand affections of the Body by which the Body's power of acting is increased or diminished, aided or restrained, and at the same time, the idea of these affections. Therefore, if we can be the adequate cause of any of these affections, I understand by the Affect an action, otherwise a passion’ (EIII, Def 3).
Negri's study makes a very important contribution to a materialist reading of Spinoza's philosophy and political theory. It is also informed by certain Marxist premises that seem, at times, to lead to essentialist and totalizing arguments. In his later reading of Spinoza (Negri, 1998), the argument is modified somewhat and the emphasis placed upon the precarious and fluid form of the multitude; indeed, he even notes its ‘aporetic nature’ (p. 236).
Spinoza's experience of the collapse of the Republican regime of the United Provinces and the brutal murder in 1672 of the de Witt brothers contributed to this analysis. See Feuer (1963, p. 138).
For further discussion, see Virno (2004, 21–26) and Montag (1999, Chapter 3).
Negri (1998, p. 230, 232).
Comparing himself to Hobbes, Spinoza writes ‘With regard to political theory, the difference between Hobbes and myself, which is the subject of your inquiry, consists in this, that I always preserve the natural right in its entirety, and I hold that the sovereign power in a state has right over a subject only in proportion to the excess of its power over that of a subject’ (Letter 50; Wolf, 1927).
TP (IV, 2 and III,8) and Balibar (1994, 15).
There is an interesting line of thought to be developed here concerning the influence of Spinoza upon Adam Smith's, as well as Hume's account of countervailing passions. This has already been initiated in Hirschman's study of the ways in which the passions were used to describe forms of commercial activity as themselves virtuous activity, thus connecting the economic concerns of C17th with the virtues of man. See The Passions and the Interests, Princeton University Press, 1977.
I take this expression from Ravven (2002).
See also TP (III, 2).
For a commentary that emphasizes the inherent individualism of Spinoza's formulation in EIV P18 and the dangers of a collectivist reading, see Lee C Rice (1990). For an opposing position, see Matheron (1969). For a recent exploration of the theoretical difficulties generated by Spinoza's own formulation of una veluti mente, by different translations of it, and by those of commentators see Balibar (2004).
Spinoza's earlier formulations in EII, Dem 7 also supports this view: ‘…if a number of Individuals so concur in one action that together they are the cause of one effect, I consider them all, to that extent, as one singular thing’. An interesting parallel with Jean Luc Nancy's idea of community as being-in-common may be noted here (Nancy, 1991). Unfortunately, its development remains outside the scope of the present discussion.
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Williams, C. Thinking the Political in the Wake of Spinoza: Power, Affect and Imagination in the Ethics. Contemp Polit Theory 6, 349–369 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.cpt.9300298
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.cpt.9300298