Spinoza's Critique Research Articles

Spinoza's Political Psychology: The Taming of Fortune and Fear by Justin Steinberg

Reviewed by: Spinoza's Political Psychology: The Taming of Fortune and Fear by Justin Steinberg Michael A. Rosenthal Justin Steinberg. Spinoza's Political Psychology: The Taming of Fortune and Fear. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Pp. xv + 235. Cloth, $105.00. In this ambitious and important book, Justin Steinberg attempts to explain the significance of the project for both contemporary political philosophy and the history of political thought. He argues that Spinoza offers a much-needed antidote against "ideal theory" in political philosophy. He also wants to expand our horizons concerning the context of Spinoza's political thought, primarily by noting the influence of Renaissance Civic Humanism. He argues for two main theses: the political works are continuous with the Ethics; and the role of the state is to help perfect the individual. The first chapter, "Metaphysical Psychology and Ingenia Formation," argues that (i) there is a human essence, which is nonetheless plastic, that is, can be formed within a range of possibilities depending on the circumstances in which this essence is instantiated; (ii) that this plastic essence constitutes the unique ingenium or genius of an individual or people; and (iii) that the state has a duty and interest to form this ingenium. In the second chapter, "Eliminating Juridical Constraints and Naturalizing Rights," Steinberg builds on earlier interpretations of Spinoza's political theory as republican and argues against John G. A. Pocock's view that Spinoza is essentially a natural law theorist. Steinberg's central claim in this chapter is that Spinoza adopts natural law only to undermine it. The main claim of the third chapter, "The Continuity Thesis and the Aim of Government," is that the aim of the state is to liberate or empower its citizens, not only physically but also intellectually and emotionally. In chapter four, "The Politics of Hope and Fear," the author convincingly shows how fear can be overcome through hope in Spinoza's politics. Steinberg raises several difficulties for his reading: the "inseparable counterparts challenge," the "equal constraints challenge," and the "equal willingness challenge." After discussing the nature of fear and hope, he shows how it is possible to respond to each of these challenges. The main point emphasized in conclusion is that "affective welfare is a very important dimension along which to measure civic success" (98). [End Page 614] In chapter five, "Statecraft and Taming Fortuna," the author emphasizes the importance of fortune in Spinoza's political philosophy. I found his distinction between two models of responding to fortune—the Stoic model of inner control and the Civic Humanist model of active engagement—very helpful. The second model is crucial to the broader claim that the state has an interest in and can actively shape the nature of individuals in the state, in its project of trying to master the vicissitudes of the external world. In chapter six, "From Superstition and Persecution to True Religion and Toleration," Steinberg draws from the now substantial literature on the political context of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (TTP) to show that Spinoza's critique of Scripture aimed to undermine the authority of the clergy to bolster the more tolerant secular regime. In this way, a certain degree of religious freedom can be justified on prudential grounds, depending on the contingent nature (the ingenium) of the people governed. The most original and stimulating chapter, in my view, is chapter seven, "The Affective and Epistemic Case for Democracy." Some of Steinberg's best work has been on the "epistemic" case for democracy, and he does a nice job expanding it and then situating it in his broader argument. It supports some of his broader claims, like the continuity thesis and the case for perfectionism. He recognizes that some of his claims border on an idealization (section 7.3), though he is right to qualify that in light of his commitment to realism (see 177). One criticism is that it is not obvious that Spinoza's commitment to democracy in the TTP is "beyond dispute" (158). It certainly plays a role in his political theory, but he seems to discard it as an idealization. Steinberg argues for an interesting and controversial view in chapter eight, "Salvation, Eternity, and the State...

Spinoza's Critique of Maimonides in the Context of Dutch Hebraism

Spinoza's Critique of Maimonides in the Context of Dutch Hebraism

Spinoza's Critique of Religion and Its Heirs: Marx, Benjamin, Adorno by Idit Dobbs-Weinstein

Spinoza's Critique of Religion and Its Heirs: Marx, Benjamin, Adorno by Idit Dobbs-Weinstein

The Order and Connection of Ideology Is the Same as the Order and Connection of Exploitation

Of all of the various attempts to define and clarify the recent turn to Spinoza, perhaps the most provocative is offered by Antonio Negri: the postindustrial age the Spinozian critique of representation of capitalist power corresponds more to the truth than does the analysis of political (1997, 246). Negri's formulation is provocative not just in that it suggests a critique of capitalist power which is not grounded by the (Marxist) critique of political economy, but in that it suggests a need to counter capital not just at the level of the economy, but at the level of its representation of power. Capital needs to be countered at the level of ideas as much as social relations. Negri's provocation has perhaps been answered by two contemporary neo-Spinozist writers, Frederic Lordon and Yves Citton, the former of which has developed a Spinozist critique of political economy while the latter has pioneered an analysis of the representations of power.Read together, Lordon and Citton's work can be understood as a response to two fundamentally different questions. The first is a question integral to both Marx and Spinoza: how to understand the relation between order and connection of things and ideas, base and superstructure, in terms of their identity, causal relations, and difference? Spinoza and Marx offer two very different formulations and answers to this question. It is precisely their difference that brings them together. Spinoza offers a non-reductive immanence to Marx's hierarchy, while Marx's thought offers to historically situate and place the eternal order of being and thinking. Thus if the first question is ontological, encompassing different perspectives throughout time, a fundamental and unchanging question about the relation of minds and bodies, things and ideas, the second question is more contemporary, more conjunctural, brought about by changes in economic and political structure. How can the current economic and political transformations, neoliberalism, the crisis, austerity, be understood and transformed by looking at the intersections of material conditions, ideas, and imagination? Several writers have underscored the manner in which neoliberalism is perhaps best understood as a change of political imagination as much as social relations, a question that has become all the more pressing after the current crash, as the neoliberal imagination continues to structure responses and policy (Mirowski 2013, 1). Answering these two questions together, or examining the ontological by means of the conjunctural and vice versa, in turn answers a third question, why turn to Spinoza today as a way of understanding social and political life.Lordon and Citton's projects intersect in the most recent wave of neo-Spinozist scholarship. Their project is unified in the sense that it is turned specifically to considering the question of the relationship of Spinoza's thought to a theory of social relations, or even the social sciences, as can be seen in their jointly edited Spinoza et science sociales. At the core of this project is the turn not so much to Spinoza's critique of the imaginary, as it was with Louis Althusser's account of ideology, or to his ontology, as in Antonio Negri's account of constituent power, but to Spinoza's anthropology (if it can be called that) as it encompasses desire, affects, and the imagination. For both Lordon and Citton it is the conatus, the striving underlying every existence that makes possible a new thought of social relations (Citton and Lordon 2008, 27). This striving, the desire, as much as it defines man's very essence, is irreducibly singular, we each strive in different ways, but the direction and orientation of this striving is shaped by affects and the history of encounters. Spinoza's conatus overcomes the dualism between holistic and individualistic accounts of social relations, starting with neither the society nor the individual but the relations that are their mutual constitution. …

Just before the “Straussians”: The Development of Leo Strauss's Political Thought from the Weimar Republic to America

During the Weimar years Leo Strauss was intellectually and spiritually close to streams of thought that were averse to liberalism, enlightenment, and democracy. Specifically, he was mostly influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, and Carl Schmitt. The political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes and Baruch Spinoza's critique of religion were two modern targets of Strauss's criticism. Hobbes was identified as the father of modern civilization who broke violently with the tradition of philosophy and established the foundations of liberalism. As Nazism took hold and Germany faded from his mind, however, Strauss, a refugee in England and then in America, began to retreat from the ideas that had influenced him during the 1920s and from his own previous attitude toward certain elements of modern civilization. This retreat was not clear, absolute, or complete but complicated, vague, tortuous, and, most important, partial. The incompleteness of this retreat was a consequence of an ambivalence in his thought during the 1930s and 1940s. In the tumult of the 1930s, his critique of liberalism changed shape; Strauss continued to regard modern civilization as unwelcome and inferior but also conceived of it as protecting life and bestowing security.

The Power of an Idea: Spinoza's Critique of Pure Will

One of the most important claims in the Ethics is Proposition 49 of Part 2: In the Mind, there is no volition, or affirmation and negation, except that which the idea involves insofar as it is an idea.' With Spinoza's characteristic economy of expression, this proposition simultaneously embodies commitments to a representational account of mental states and to an understanding of belief solely in terms of the causal role of mental states. These dual commitments-so widespread in contemporary philosophyare in 2p49 tightly linked with Spinoza's views on mental actions and passions, the efficacy of representational content, the self-contained nature of the realms of thought and of extension, and the universal striving for selfpreservation. 2p49 thus represents, as I will show, a crystallization of much of Spinoza's metaphysics and philosophy of mind. Further, a particular theme of this paper is the way in which this proposition manifests various anti-Cartesian strands in Spinoza. Of course, as has been widely recognized, 2p49 is directed against Descartes' view that judgment or affirmation consists in part of an act of will separate from the idea affirmed, an act, one might say, of pure will. However, one aspect of the lack of full appreciation of the significance of 2p49 has been a failure to grasp how this criticism of Descartes is deeply connected with Spinoza's criticisms of Descartes on some of the other topics in metaphysics and philosophy of mind that I just mentioned, and even, as I will argue briefly at the end, with Spinoza's criticism of Descartes' account of the causation of motion. 2p49 is thus not only a crystallization of Spinoza's philosophy of

Dreaming with Open Eyes

Dreaming with open is a tagline for Spinoza's critique of Descartes; the dreams in question are principally those of volition and the active imagination. In this article, I compare the Cartesian theory of imagination as an active, but not fully rational, power of the mind and the Cartesian account of the volitional self to Spinoza's views. Descartes's own dreams and theories of dreaming are the focus of the first part of the article. Thereafter I examine Spinoza's critique of Descartes and his alternative account of imagination. Finally, I argue that there is a positive sense of dreaming with open eyes to be recuperated in Spinoza's thought. Construed positively, to dream with open eyes is to understand dreams and imagination as natural phenomena and so to be able to respond constructively to them in ethical and political, as well as epistemological, life.

Whose History? Spinoza’s Critique of Religion As an Other Modernity

This paper discusses Spinoza's critique of religion as a visible moment of a radically occluded materialist Judeo-Arabic Aristotelian philosophical tradition. While the prevailing (Christo-Platonic) tradition begins with the familiar gesture to metaphysics as first philosophy, Spinoza's thought (and thus, this Other Tradition) takes politics as its point of departure with its concrete emphasis on a critique of dogma. This paper will show-by way of differing readings of Spinoza-how this materialist tradition becomes occluded by the prevailing tradition, even in the work of such careful materialist Spinoza commentators as Etienne Balibar.

Spinoza, the First Anti-Cartesian

Despite their apparent proximity, Spinoza and Descartes are crucially separated on the most important issues. This paper analyzes Spinoza's major anti-Cartesian positions under four headings : the nature of being; the universe and its laws; the human being; and the method and tasks of philosophy. Issues in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, the philosophical endeavor etc. are analyzed both in themselves and in their implications for the wider culture and the individual's sense of life. The analysis also brings out (as a target of Spinoza's critique) some of the theology implicit in Descartes' doctrines of substance, the will, the mind, the natural light, and the ethical way.

The Rhetoric of the Geometrical Method: Spinoza's Double Strategy

A double strategy may be apprehended in the first definitions, axioms and propositions of Spinoza's Ethics: the one is rhetorical, the other, system- atic. Insofar as these opening passages constitute a geometrical argument that leads ultimately to the strict monism that lies at the heart of Spinoza's philosophy, they function systematically as grounding principles. However, insofar as they are designed to uncover errors at the heart of the Cartesian system, they function rhetorically as a critique of Descartes's equivocal theory of substance. The geometrical mode of presentation lends an aura of necessity to the systematic strategy and tends to eclipse the rhetorical strategy that functions as a critique of Cartesian dualism. 1 To this extent, the systematic strategy itself functions rhetorically. On the other hand, to the extent that any seventeenth-century attempt to establish a monistic sys- tem would inevitably have had to involve a critique of Cartesian dualism, the rhetorical strategy itself functions systematically. Thus, although two distinct strategies are simultaneously discernible in the opening passages of the Ethics, the two work together, each arguing on a different front, to establish Spinoza's monism. By focusing on the rhetorical side of this double strategy, the underlying nature of Spinoza's critique of Descartes can be clarified and certain gaps in the systematic, geometrical argument for mo- nism can be explained.

The Intellect, the Will, and the Passions: Spinoza's Critique of Descartes

The Intellect, the Will, and the Passions: Spinoza's Critique of Descartes JOHN G. COTTINGHAM THIS PAPERexamines (in Section 1) Descartes' theory of judgment and (in Section 9) Spinoza's well-known criticisms of it. I argue (in section 3) that despite some important differences, there are many ways in which Spinoza's views, so far from being anti-Cartesian, can be seen as a natural development of those of Descartes. I then go on to argue (in Section 4) that Spinoza's general critique of the Cartesian theory of the will does not take sufficient account of what Descartes actually claimed, and that if the Cartesian concept of freedom is properly understood, Spinoza is closer to it than he himself recognized. Finally (in Section 5) I say a brief word about the relation between the will and the passions, and suggest that here again Spinoza tended to misinterpret Descartes' true position, and as a result exaggerated the difference between his own views and those of Descartes. I hope that it will emerge by the end of the paper that for all Spinoza's anti-Cartesian flourishes, his views on the will are much closer to those of Descartes than is often supposed. 1. DESCARTES' THEORY OF JUDGMENT Within the general category of conscious thought (cogitatio), one may, according to Descartes, distinguish two principal modes of operation: perception, or the operation of the intellect (comprising sensing, imagining and pure intellection ), and volition, or the operation of the will (comprising desire, aversion, assertion, denial and doubt (Principles, 1:3~). This distinction is important for many reasons. In the Passions de l'ame, for example, it is suggested that perception is a passive faculty of the mind, while volition is active, and this notion [~39] 24~ JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY a6:a APRIL i988 seems to have influenced many later thinkers. 1 But in Descartes, the most important application of the distinction concerns the diagnosis of error in our judgments. Descartes sees the problem of error as a theological problem, rather like the traditional problem of evil. Instead of having to explain away moral or metaphysical evil, Descartes feels himself called upon to explain away intellectual error; but the reasons why an explanation seems called for are closely parallel. Just as, if God is good and the omnipotent creator of all, it seems odd that there should be evil in the world, similarly, if God is good and the source of all truth, it seems odd that there should be error. More specifically, if God created me and gave me a mind which is, in principle, a reliable instrument for the perception of truth,, how does it happen that I often go astray in my judgments? A standard theological move in coping with the problem of evil was to put the blame on man's exercise of his free will; and Descartes makes the selfsame move in explaining away error. His first premise is that judgment is an act which involves the will as well as the intellect: "In order to make a judgement, the intellect is of course required [since otherwise nothing would be perceived --there would be no content to the judgment] ... but the will is also required so that, when something is perceived, our assent may then be given" (Principles 1:34). Descartes' second premise is the celebrated Cartesian thesis that the will extends further than the intellect: latius patet voluntas quam intellectus. "The perception of the intellect extends only to the few objects presented to it and is always extremely limited. The will on the other hand can in a certain sense be called infinite, since we observe that its scope extends to anything" (Principles 1:35 ). Given these two premises, the explanation for error is quite straightforward: "It is easy for us to extend our will beyond what we clearly perceive; and when we do this it is no wonder that we may happen to go wrong" (Ibid). To complete the theodicy, Descartes adds some further considerations (the most detailed presentation is in the Fourth Meditation). God cannot be blamed for giving us an infinitely extended will; in this he has allowed men to share...