1

Politics and Ontology in Baruch Spinoza: Individuation, Affectivity and the Collective life of the

Multitude

Ljuba Castelli

Queen Mary, University of London

A thesis submitted for the degree of Phd

February 2010

2

Declaration

I, Ljuba Castelli, confirm that the work presented in the thesis is my own. Where

information has been derived from other resources, I confirm that this has been

indicated in this thesis.

Signature:

London,

3

For that bicycle

4

Abstract

The thesis examines the linkage between ontology and politics in Spinoza, and

considers the extent to which his philosophy discloses novel materialist conceptions

of nature, history and society. It explores the distinct paradigm of the individual

proposed by Spinoza emerging from his materialist ontology, and the ways in which

this impacts effectively upon the constitution of the multitude as a political category.

Arguing that Spinoza’s ontology unveils a more complex process of vital and

psychic individuation, I develop a contemporary interpretation of Spinoza’s writings

through Simondon’s notions of collective being, disparation, emotions and

transindividuality. The study of Spinoza’s ontology in the light of Simondon is

crucial for re-considering the central role of affectivity within the genesis and

development of human beings. This refers to the redefinition of affectivity as a

powerful source of psychic and political individuation, which is the cornerstone of

relation, power and transformations. The understanding of Spinoza’s process of

affective and collective individuation constitutes the basis for analysing his political

theory.

The inquiry focuses to the emergence of the political status of the multitude from this

complex process of collective and affective individuation, and considers the extent to

which the multitude impacts concretely upon the realm of the political. Specifically,

the discussion draws attention to the affective state of the multitude, and the ways in

which this produces fundamental relational events, meanings, power and problematic

political individuals. The argument then turns to examine the model of democracy

proposed by Spinoza and the role of the multitude within the constitution of the

democratic body. It sheds light on the pivotal part played by the multitude within the

production of democracy, and investigates the interface between affectivity and

democracy more broadly.

5

Acknowledgements

Writing this thesis has been a long and often tortuous path. A number of people have

accompanied me in this journey. I am immeasurably indebted to my supervisors Dr.

Caroline Williams and Prof. Jeremy Jennings, for their unrelenting commitment,

patient guidance, fundamental advice and endless enthusiasm. This project could not

have been completed without them.

I would like to express my gratitude to Dr. Lasse Thomassen, who has

supervised chapters I and II. His precious guidance has been crucial in the early

stages of this thesis.

The department of Politics at Queen Mary, University of London has

provided indispensable financial support, administrative assistance and intellectual

motivation. I especially beholden to Dr. Monica Nangia, administrative director,

Sanam Javed, postgraduate administrator and Jasmine Salucideen, undergraduate

administrator. They have been useful in assisting with the final stages of the

completion.

I also owe a special debt to Prof. Augusto Illuminati, who first taught me that

Spinoza was a philosopher ‘full of joy’. He has indicated me how to read the

labyrinth of the Ethics while I was a BA student in the department of Philosophy at

Universitità degli Studi of Urbino.

Sincere thanks go to my friends Victoria Briggs, Dr. Simon Choat and Dr.

Paul Rekret graduates of the Politics Department of Queen Mary University of

London for their fundamental insights.

I am particularly grateful to my dear friends Giulia Filippi, Noelia Diaz

Vicedo, Hari Marini, Laura Koponen, Enrico Chessa, Dimitrios Athanasakis, Ole

Madsen, Federico Perego and Laurent Nowak, for having populated with their joy,

laughs and severe admonitions the solitude of this project.

6

Last but not least, I would thank my family. A special thank to my mother

Maria Concetta Castelli for her sacrificial support; and to my father Ethel Castelli,

who first taught me that philosophy is love of knowledge, that is, life. This thesis

would be far inferior without their unlimited assistance and ‘obstinate’ love.

7

Abbreviations and Translations

References to Spinoza’s texts follow the abbreviations shown below:

E = Ethics

TTP = Theologicus Politicus Tractatus (Theological-Political Treatise)

TP = Politicus Tractatus (Political Treatise)

EP = Epistles

References to the Ethics follow the convections indicated below:

prop. = Proposition

dem. = Demonstration

schol. = Scholium

Def. = Definition

ax. =axiom

Roman numerals before these abbreviations describe the parts of the Ethics.

The translation adopted is Spinoza B, (2002), Complete Works,

(Idianapolis, Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company) [trans. S. Shirley].

8

Contents

Declaration 2

Abstract 4

Acknowledgements 5

Abbreviations and translations 7

Introduction 12

Understanding the social through Spinoza’s ontology of individuation:

New directions in contemporary political theory 12

A detour of politics via Ontology 13

The individual and the collective:

Simondon, Spinoza and the question of the affective and political process of

individuation 18

Chapter I: Spinoza and his readers: The problem of the absolute 28

Introduction 28

1. Spinoza in the Enlightenment tradition of thought 34

2. The Ethics in the circle of Romanticism:

A pantheist image of nature 44

2.1 The Ethics through Goethe’s eyes:

The divinisation of nature 48

2.2 Jacobi’s portrait of the Ethics:

The dilemma between rationalist and fatalist vision of the reality 55

3. German Idealism and the rejection of the Ethics 61

9

3.1 Schelling and the abyss of Spinoza’s ontology of the absolute 65

3.2 Schelling encounters Spinoza 67

4. Hegel and the ban of the Ethics:

The question of the absolute 80

4.1 Hegel contra Spinoza:

Philosophy of the ideal versus ontology of the actual 88

Chapter II: Spinoza’s ontology of the actual:

The power of nature 99

Introduction 99

1. Spinoza after Marx:

Towards a dynamics ontology 102

1.1 Deleuze encounters Spinoza:

The plane of immanence 107

2. The method of the Ethics:

Ontology and geometry 116

3. Process of production:

God, nature and power 123

Conclusions: Towards a philosophy of the individual 133

Chapter III: Spinoza’s philosophy of individuation:

The collective life of the individual 135

Introduction 135

1. Re-positioning the question of individuation in contemporary thought:

Simondon and the ontology of individuation 138

1.1 Simondon’s philosophy of individuation:

The discovery of the collective 143

1.2 Ontology and ontogenesis of relation:

Vital and psychic process of collective individuation 148

2. The Ethics: An ontology of individuation 160

10

2.1 A detour of Spinoza via Simondon 169

2.2 The autonomy of the affects:

From relationality towards transindividuality 181

Chapter IV: Tractatus Theologicus-Politicus:

The affective tones of the political 191

Introduction 191

1. The plan of the Theological Political Treatise:

Situating the question of affectivity in Spinoza’s political theory 196

2. The conceptual persona of the Theological Political Treatise:

The affective and collective production of the political 203

3. The Devotees of the prophet 206

4. The Subjects of Moses 218

4.1 Anguish and gift: Time and becoming of the Jewish people 220

5. The Apostles 238

5.1 “The Good News”: Life 242

Conclusions: Towards a life in common 255

Chapter V: Time for democracy:

Towards a life in common 256

Introduction 256

1. The political turn of the multitude:

Re-theorising the ‘common’ today 259

2. Spinoza’s political strategy:

Democracy, sovereignty and the power of the multitude 267

3. Citizens of democracy:

Sovereign life, common good, affective time 275

Conclusions:

Towards a new grammar of democracy 302

11

Conclusion:

The individual as a powerful problem 304

Bibliography 312

12

Understanding the anatomy of the social through Spinoza’s philosophy of

individuation: New directions in contemporary political theory

There is an unexplored and abundant political reality alongside the recognised body

politic, which articulates various commonalities, new gestures of insurgence and

cohesion. It is situated in the zones of intersection between authorised and non

authorised places for political praxis and thought such as the state, public and civil

spheres, the market and the body of law, and its political strategy is constructed

around an alternative paradigm of relation. This does not originate from the poverty

and rivalry between groups of society, whose action and thought exceed the fixity of

social, political and economic class. Although non identified within consolidated

models of society, emerging subjectivities are extremely productive of meaning,

identity, knowledge and power, and impact concretely upon the existing political

body. These have actualised a fracture between the political and politics, the

philosophy of praxis and real action, society and community, consuming gradually

our socio-political context. It is to the political cogency of this unrecognised reality

that this thesis draws particular attention. The focus is to re-construct a novel

materialist paradigm of the political field from the plenitude of actions, thoughts, and

relational forces embodied by this other political actuality.

In order to re-theorise the anatomy of the social, my aim is to re-locate the centrality

of a materialist ontology of individuation within contemporary political theory and

philosophy. A materialist thought of individuation, I argue, might provide our search

with crucial theoretical instruments for thinking the social as a complex and

heterogeneous body, stressing the zones of intersections of reality mentioned above.

The study of the theme of individuation is conducted by examining the ontology and

politics of seventeenth-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza, and determines through

his categories of thought the political stakes of contemporary forms of association.

Attention is given to Spinoza’s affective and political process of individuation, and

13

the extent to which his thesis might offer a more extensive account of the material

process that lies at the very basis of every community.

Concerning the increasing level of complexity of the social body and thereby the

inadequacy of our political tools, post-modern thought has raised fecund arguments,

from which the present study emerge. These refer to the re-foundation of the

paradigm of the political and its inclusion within the ontological field. In order to

better situate the fundamental claims of the thesis, I shall pass to discuss, first, the

main questions and solutions proposed by post-modern political thought.

A detour of politics via ontology

In order to conceptualise politically these zones of intersection between authorised

and non-authorised places and classes for politics, post-modern political thought,

variously named post-foundationalist and post structuralist, has claimed an alliance

between politics and ontology. Specifically, post-modern political philosophy has

sought the support of certain ontological categories of thought, firstly, for

understanding the meanings and potentialities introduced within the existing political

context by these heterogeneous subjectivities; and secondly, for determining the

extent to which these act and think politically. Ontology, as we will discuss below,

sheds light on the constitutive elements, tensions and forces, which permeate the

equilibrium of the political reality of the present regardless of whether this is

presumed as political or not.

The discovery of the importance of the linkage between ontology and politics within

post-modern political philosophy emerges from a more general debate within certain

currents of post-Marxist thought, which has denounced the crisis of the paradigm of

materialism and philosophy of praxis. This refers to a more extensive conception of

the structure of the material world, and the many ways in which this affects human

action and thought. More precisely, the question concerns the re-definition of the

14

materialist notion of production and the types of relation derived from this

production.

Concerning these themes, no one can deny that current debate is largely indebted to

the works of Althusser, who first poses the urgency of re-signifying the Marxist

paradigm of materialism corrupted by certain orthodox readings. The central

problems of these appropriations, Althusser observes, is the vision of the world as a

place of mechanical rules and opposing forces, within which social relations are

conditioned by the economic mechanism. This generates constantly dominant and

dominated individuals, ideas and behaviours, which are moulded by the dialectical

logic of conflict and lack. By contrast, Althusser recognises that phenomena of

struggle and solidarity proceed through a more complex interaction between the

structure and the superstructure, within which a variety of unsuspected and

unexpected events such as thought, imagination, desires play a role in the

construction of political identities (Althusser, 1976: 126-132; 2005: 89-128). In this

light, even ideology, which expresses the power of a social class under a specific

economic juncture, unveils, in Althusser’s re-interpretation, a more problematic

mechanism, which does not only produce alienation and exploitation of individuals’

need and the preservation of the ruling class. Ideology essentially controls

individuals through the reinforcement and encouragement of imaginary practises and

customs. In order to preserve and further develop the ideological apparatus of the

state, the dynamics of the imaginary structure of individuals acquire a strategic role.

This refers to the power of creating social relations, common beliefs and collective

desires, which indicate a different process of creating political meaning, identity and

cohesion (Althusser, 1971: 142-177). Our awareness of the political relevance of

these heterogeneous and contingent factors, through which the apparatus of the state

is defended, will certainly open new possibilities for a philosophy of praxis or, at the

very least, make the sovereign authority of the state less inescapable.

Following Althusser’s preoccupations, post-modern political thought has re-

constructed the anatomy of the material world, and considered the many ways in

which this transforms individuals. Strictly speaking, if the paradigm of materialism

15

has to be re-formulated, it is only through the re-shaping of our knowledge of the

material world itself that novel materialistic conceptions of history, society and

politics might be articulated. As the world is not a motionless system of physical

phenomena that affects human action and thought in multiple ways, its study requires

more complex categories of thought. These should determine the mode in which the

material forces of production generate political gestures and relations. This renewal

of interest in the structure of the sensible world has brought about, as mentioned

before, the discovery of ontology as powerful theoretical ground, through which a

more complex materialist conception of nature and its system of production might

come to light.

The post-modern political gesture of resituating politics within ontology for re-

framing the materialist field and philosophy of praxis has involved not only the re-

foundation of political discourse, it also has posed the problem of the re-

configuration of the domain of ontology itself. If politics alone can no longer offer

defensible materialist premises, because individuals have been split into political and

non political areas and opposing classes, ontology, as it has been traditionally

considered, is not directly related to materialism either. For the conspicuous part of

Western philosophy from Plato onwards, with minor exceptions, ontology has

generally been included within the domain of metaphysics.

In classical metaphysics, ontological arguments concerned the investigation of the

nature of God or Being. Ontology was treated as a subset of metaphysics concerned

with the proofs of the existence of God, Being and nature, which investigates the first

cause of universe, the generation of matter and the relation between human being,

nature and Being. Ontological analysis was mostly understood as a search for the

ultimate and impenetrable principles beyond (meta) the universe (physiká), which

attributes to the material world the status of the lower genera (particularly in neo-

Platonic and Scholastic traditions of thought). Given the abstract objects examined

by ontology, its categories such as substance, matter, thought, becoming,

individuation and essence came to connote mostly transcendent meaning and were

thereby adopted as theoretical tools by Idealistic philosophies, which postulate a

16

qualitative distinction between matter and thought, nature and Being. This led to the

discharge of ontology from any possible association with materialist theories,

philosophy of praxis, and, over all, politics. In this respect, the Marxist formulation

of historical materialism is exemplary.

By contrast, the novelty of the post-modern political move lies precisely in two

fundamental retreats, which inaugurate a different approach to political theory,

philosophy and society. These refer, firstly, to the retreat of the political from

politics, which I have indicated above and will discuss further; secondly, the

withdrawal of ontology from metaphysics and thus Idealist appropriations. The

recovery of ontology from metaphysical themes involves the affirmation of the

autonomy of ontology, and, importantly, its return to the original Ancient Greek

meaning rooted within pre-Socratic thought. For pre-Socratic philosophy in

particular, ontology is a search through and only within the order of nature, which

investigates the unseen potentialities and forces of matter. A ‘naturalistic’ approach

explores the relation and interaction between different forces and elements in nature,

through which complex and heterogeneous individuals are developed. This implies

the reinstatement of nature, thus matter, as a generative source of production, which

gives rise not solely to physical phenomena but also to individuals, changes and

potentialities.

The importance of this way of thinking ontology, for contemporary political

reflections, resides upon its treatment of nature-reality as a powerful organism,

which generates beings through relational movements and confluences and not

through a mechanism of opposing forces. Whilst for this conception of nature, the

prevailing factor rules the entire system conditioning ideas, human relations and

desires, the materialist ontology of the origins exemplified by the pre-Socratic form

of naturalism opens the way to thinking reality as an heterogeneous and productive

body characterised by exchanges of elements, becoming and contingency.

Taking into account these themes, the return to ontology within political

theory, better ‘a detour’ of politics via ontology, constructs a novel path toward the

17

reconfiguration of the political realm, and also a re-consideration of the many ways

in which heterogeneous parts of reality activate political relations, individuals and

actions in the absence of conflicts. It provides alternative categories of thought and

brings forth the possibility of understanding the political relevance of the

contemporary subjectivities lying between political and non political zones, ruling

and ruled classes, re-thinking politics beyond boundaries.

For post-modern political thought, the idea of society as a mere assemblage of parts

derived from the stipulation of contract between self-independent and rational

individuals is untenable. Beside the different theoretical positions taken and solutions

proposed, thinkers such as Balibar, Deleuze, Guattari, Foucault, Derrida, Nancy,

Badiou, Agamben, Negri and Hardt argue that society has to be thought as a complex

process, within which elements such as language, body, emotions and life itself

ground political relations, subjectivities and strategy and, at the same time, are

consistently affected by political institutions such as the state, laws and right. In

other words, relations once posited are already political and political bodies, once

affirmed, invade immediately the alleged private sphere. Therefore, the inquiry upon

the realm of the political cannot avoid the deep analysis of its ontological foundation,

which sheds light on the relational movements and forces involved within the

production of common meanings, collective desires and actions. More rigorously, the

investigation of the political cogency of the powerful subjectivities of the present has

to be conducted contemporaneously with the ontological quest, through which

alternative avenues for politics and society, in a materialist way, might be disclosed.

In order to re-formulate a grammar for the political relations of the present, many

important notions have been proposed, each of which insists further on the

inescapability of the ontological argument from the political analysis. In this light, a

variety of onto-political concepts and thoughtful hypotheses have been put forward

such as the multitude, social forms of nomadism, coming and inoperative

community, evental movements of fracture and re-composition, bio-power and bio-

politics, which have given rise to a constellation of further theoretical positions.

Additionally, the linkage between ontology and politics has brought about, on the

18

one side, the re-discovery of the political implications of certain ontological

categories as immanence, transcendence, multiplicity, actuality and potentiality, each

of which connotes a different political scenario. On the other, this detour of politics

via ontology has generated the ontologization of certain political notions such as the

state, sovereignty, freedom, right and community, giving rise to a more extensive

account of the mode through which politics forms and pervades every aspect of

human life.

It is within this multifaceted and somewhat labyrinthine debate nurtured by

post-modern political thought that this thesis takes place. It is precisely situated

within the common quest for a novel vocabulary for politics through recourse to a

materialist ontology, bringing into the present debate further and alternative issues.

The study focuses upon the relevance, political and ontological, of the notion of

individuation, and considers the extent to which its usage in political theory and

philosophy provides a multisided account of the material conditions, through which

biological, political and psychic individuals are generated.

The individual and the collective: Simondon, Spinoza and the question of the

affective and political process of individuation

This thesis is constructed around a fundamental problem and great concern, which

precisely arises from the post-modern political portrait of the material world as

abundant, productive and dynamic, within which both phases of conflict and

correspondence form important political behaviours. Given the multifaceted

description of reality, the central question that accompanies this project concerns

what paradigm of the individual emerges from this conception of the world? More

accurately, assuming the contemporary materialist way of thinking politics, nature,

history and society, the difficulty entails what is the political and ontological status

attributed to the individual within this model of production? Strictly speaking, how

do we think the realm of the individual in a materialist way, which might embrace

the instances of contingency, multiplicity and dynamism? Without addressing these

19

questions, I believe, political and ontological analysis cannot proceed any further. A

thought of and upon individuation engages these issues.

An inquiry upon the notion of individuation, I argue in the pages below, becomes

extremely crucial in this specific cultural and historical juncture, and not only in

theory. What is at stake here is literally the re-learning of the individual after the

collapse of the influential ethical and political paradigms of Liberalism and Marxism,

and thereby from and through these ruins re-building a fresh notion. In other words,

if the re-formulation of the realm of the political requires the support of ontological

categories, the re-definition of the individual requires more extensive and

problematic ontological argument. A theory of individuation aims at the discovery of

the fundamental conditions of possibility and uniqueness of an individual, and also

establishes the relation of an individual with its milieu, whether natural, political or

psychic. The importance of returning to a thought of individuation resides in its

political implications. More rigorously, the main objects of a philosophy of

individuation are situated in the middle of ontological and political domains.

However, thinking about individuation is a very controversial issue, which has

generated an intense debate within contemporary thought. Twentieth-century

continental philosophy from Merleau-Ponty, Lacan, to the Frankfurt school has been

concerned with undermining accepted definitions of individuality such as the ‘I’, the

self, will and egoism. Accordingly, these formulas have ignored the genesis of the

individual and more importantly its relation with the material world. The main limit

of the mentioned notions is that these leave constantly unanswered an essential

question, that is, what we know of the individual from such definitions? Put

differently, what we know of the individual, for example, from the formulas of the

‘I’ apart from the ‘I’ itself?

These formulas are expressions of a fundamental impasse in the knowledge of the

individual, which might generate the reliance of these theories on transcendent

principles, religious expedients or obscure forces. This unintelligibility of the

individual determines the vision of its political role as qualitative different and prior

20

to the social body, within which the meaning of the relation with others is narrowed

to ethical and psychological behaviours. As the genesis of the individual is

understood prior to its context, the relation with others is conceived not as a

constitutive moment of individuation itself but rather as a function which regulates

the common life of individuals already formed. This tendency towards a certain

obscurity of individualism that has characterised the majority of arguments on

individuation has caused the undervaluation of its cogency for the development of

new materialist notions of community, relation, and more generally, the philosophy

of praxis.

In contrast with this traditional account and developing further the twentieth-century

continental orientation, our hypotheses are based on the necessity of the conception

of individuation today, and the impossibility of its abandonment from contemporary

materialist analyses and theories of community. The argument I will develop through

this thesis is principally the priority of reinstating the autonomy of the notion of

individuation from philosophies of individuality, which implies the dismissal of any

a priori formula. This leads to view the theme of individuation as an investigation

upon one, and at the same time a multiple process, which generates not only specific

historical human beings and society but also more complex phenomena, such as

temporality, life, nature and contingency. The understanding of individuation as a

process means to recognise how apparent distinct events and individuals, such as

political community and psychic gestures, are instead expressions of a heterogeneous

confluence of forces, intensities and movements. In this way, the ontology of

individuation might contribute to a knowledge of the mechanisms through which

factors such as language, knowledge, body, emotions and imagination are equally

constitutive sources of individuation.

In order to recover the theme of individuation from the fixity of individuality and

thus look for alternative explanations, I have discovered powerful arguments in the

seventeenth-century philosophy of Baruch Spinoza, which might enrich post-modern

political inquiry with thoughtful insights. Spinoza proposes an innovative materialist

conception of the individual, which is developed through a quite intricate linkage

21

between ontological themes and political analysis. More accurately, in Spinoza’s

theory of the individual the ontological inquiry proceeds contemporaneously with the

political reflections. It means that ontological claims found political notions and

political theses are instrumental in thinking ontological categories of thought. The

understanding of how political conceptions are supported by ontological categories

and vice versa in Spinoza’s philosophy constitutes the basis for delineating his

paradigm of materialism and, above all, the meaning of the individual.

Taking into account these themes, the thesis explores the ontological and

political process of individuation offered by Spinoza, and considers the extent to

which his treatment of the theme of individuation introduces novel materialist

conceptions of history, politics, nature and society. It is articulated principally in the

Ethics and further developed in the political Treatises. In the Ethics, nature,

immanence, the absolute, conatus, the physics of the body and the theory of affects

ground Spinoza’s process of vital and psychic individuation; whereas in the political

writings the vision of society as the expression of a collective and natural act of

desire and not need, the definition of the body politic as a mens una, the equality

between natural and civil rights, the powerful category of the multitude and the

advocacy for democracy, actualise and further expand the process of individuation

commenced in the Ethics.

Spinoza’s inquiry upon the vital and psychic conditions of individuation begins with

two crucial denials. These are, firstly, the refusal of transcendence, which is

structured through the affirmation of an absolute plane of immanence nuanced by a

multiplicity of attributes and modes; and also the parallelism between matter and

thought, which introduce elements of contingency and heterogeneity within the plane

of immanence. These aspects bring about the discovery of nature as a powerful and

abundant order, through which a variety of mixtures of thought, body, movements of

speed and slowness and affects come to light. The second denial concerns Spinoza’s

dismissal of the qualitative difference between mind and body, and thereby the

rejection of the Cartesian model of the supremacy of the ‘cogito’. This leads to the

reinstatement of the body as a fundamental source of knowledge, actions, affectivity

22

and transformations, through which beings orient themselves within the world.

Spinoza’s vital and psychic process of individuation proceeds from these denials,

occupying a strategic position within his ontology and politics. This establishes the

convergence between political and ontological themes, through which the

problematic status of the individual comes to light. The understanding of Spinoza’s

ontology of individuation is the only condition, through which his political theory of

the multitude, the state and democracy might be thought.

In order to examine the richness of Spinoza’s theory of individuation and thus

analyse its relation with politics, in this thesis I have adopted an alternative strategy

of reading Spinoza’s philosophy from the Ethics to the political Treatises.

Developing further an idea of Balibar (2002: 103-147), I have decided to investigate

Spinoza’s thought through the ontology of individuation of Gilbert Simondon. Many

are the reasons that have motivated the recourse to Simondon’s ontology. These are,

partly, the numerous appropriations and critiques of Spinoza’s philosophy occurred

in the history of philosophy and political thought. Since its first appearance,

Spinoza’s ontology and politics have generated a variety of different reactions, each

of which has attempted to assimilate his writings to the cultural and political

demands of a specific historical period; and when this alliance was theoretically

impossible to be established, this has created vehement critique and in some cases

even the oblivion of his thought. From the Enlightenment, through Romanticism and

Idealism, to the current psychology of the embodiment of the mind, the post-Marxist

wave of thought and Liberal political theory, not to mention certain feminist

interpretations, Spinoza has played the role of an ideal interlocutor, in some case

sympathetic in others critical, with whom each tradition of thought has established a

dialogue. For example, Deleuze, as we will see, engages in a continuous

conversation with Spinoza, who is arguably the omnipresent personage of Deleuze’s

philosophical production. In Hegel, in contrast, Spinoza becomes a hostile

interlocutor, who delineates the possibility of thinking reality through affirmation

and abundance rather than negation; this causes an impasse in Hegel’s reading of the

Ethics, which brought about the condemnation of Spinozism as a form of acosmism.

These different encounters with Spinoza present in the history of thought tell us, over

23

all, the impossibility of restraining his philosophy within a specific cultural tendency,

and also how both his ontology and politics still nurture important theoretical

debates.

The presence of different portraits of Spinoza’s thought constitute in itself a

sufficient reason for attempting a novel approach, which in our case is represented by

the use of Simondon’s ontology of individuation. Yet, there are further important

elements, which make my intervention coherent. These refer to the extreme difficulty

of conceptualising definitely Spinoza’s theories of the body and affectivity, and also

the problematic role occupied by these in his politics, particularly in the constitution

of the multitude. More accurately, I have become concerned with the absence of a

precise definition of the individual within his philosophical writings, and instead its

replacement with a complex and endless production of affects, bodily movements

and a variety of exchanges of intensity and power. Even these affects, bodies and

potentialities are too impossible to be defined singularly, and, strikingly, to be

located within both an individual subject and object. Strictly speaking, these are not

in the ‘world’ or in the ‘individual’.

The complexity and indeterminacy of these themes have led my inquiry to seek the

support of Simondon’s ontology of individuation. The recourse to Simondon has

been crucial for determining how in Spinoza’s thought the absence of a specific

formula of the individual does not imply its effacement and thereby the supremacy of

an all inclusive Being, nature or higher subject; and most importantly in political

theory this does not bring Spinoza to the affirmation of an unknown agency and will

behind and beyond a human historical process. The importance of Simondon’s

philosophy of individuation for our investigation resides, first of all, on his central

preoccupation with understanding the process of individuation for thinking the

individual, which guides his entire quest. For Simondon, the conditions of

uniqueness and possibility of an individual are not to be found deductively from the

already individualised being to its constitutive process. Rather, the peculiarity of an

individual derives from a more general process of individuation, which inheres

24

within the vital and psychic process production of nature-Being. It is in this general

process that the distinctive features and relevance of an individual emerge.

Simondon’s focus upon the priority of determining the process before the individual

leads him to affirm the bond between the forming individual and its milieu, the

collective field. The collective field, which is shaped by emerging energies,

heterogeneity and information, is the only condition of individuation, without which

both individual and the process itself cannot take place. The centrality of the

collective being involves the re-focusing of attention to the significance of relation

for the development of the individual. Simondon re-defines of the notion of relation,

which becomes the source of the process of individuation. He recovers the meaning

of relation from psychological, ethical and political categories, which have narrowed

its role to the establishment of connection between already formed individualities, to

an ontological status. Simondon does not ask how beings relate each other, rather,

taken in itself, what is a relation, what new problem and changes are introduced by

this within the system? This brings about the discovery of relation as a fundamental

element of vital and psychic transformations, which pervades the entire system of

production and not only the human being. In other words, there is a process of

individuation insofar as there are relational events and movements. This suggests that

beings and the collective field are all relational by nature. As emotions are the most

powerful mediators of relations, Simondon attributes to these the role of

differentiating beings into more problematic psychic individuals. Emotions,

Simondon claims, do not pass from one individual to the other, rather these are

located precisely in the collective field. These give rise to exchange and subsequent

alteration of information, potentials and intensity. From this complex process of

collective and psychic individuation, the hecceity of the individual is its being always

in the middle between generality and singularity, potentiality and actuality. The

individual, Simondon tell us, is profoundly disparate; it is in constant excess of an

undifferentiated and individualised mass of power. For this ontological structure of

the individual, its role within the development of the process is crucial and manifold.

The individual becomes, in Simondon’s analysis, the theatre and protagonist of the

25

process of individuation, who poses and at the same time solves a problem of an

excess of heterogeneity within the system.

These are the main notions that have accompanied my inquiry upon

Spinoza’s ontology and politics. The study of Spinoza’s philosophy in the light of

Simondon has been decisive particularly for re-considering the theory of affects

examined in the Ethics, which has brought about the discovery of the role of affects

and passions as the ground of relational phases of psychic and political individuation.

The reading of Spinoza’s theme of affectivity through Simondon has brought to light

the great originality of Spinoza’s philosophy. This refers to the affirmation of the

autonomy of the affects from any possible alliance and subjection to the mind,

individuality, and more generally to any form of psychic or political deference. The

awareness of this process is crucial for understanding Spinoza’s political thought,

and specifically the constitution of the multitude as a proper political category and its

role within the realisation of democracy.

As aforementioned, Spinoza’s process of individuation continues within his political

thought. It is precisely in this context that the role of affectivity becomes the

cornerstone of crucial political gestures and thoughts. This refers to power of

activating a process, which signifies the entire political scenario and not only a

specific group of individuals. Affectivity sets in motion a series of invasive relational

movements, which brings into the existing domain a new order of flowings of time,

life, meanings and problems. Put differently, affectivity is the generative source of

the production of the ‘common’, which lies at the very heart of any forming and

existing community. As the expression of affectivity and passions, the multitude

becomes the protagonist, now manifest now latent, of Spinoza’s political quest.

Thus, the understanding of the process through which affectivity produces meanings,

relations and actions, is the only condition for thinking the multitude in a Spinozist

way. The multitude means not solely a composite political individuality alternative to

the categories of people, mass and citizen. It is rather a place and, at the same time,

constitutive element of the production of the political. The central role given by

Spinoza to the affective status of the multitude is essential for considering the

26

political stakes of his democratic theory. It is the affective and powerful life in

common of the multitude that guides Spinoza’s inquiry upon democracy; and

through which he recognised the impossibility of thinking democracy as a fixed

model of state alongside monarchy, aristocracy and tyranny. If democracy according

to Spinoza is the greater expression of human living in common, this has to be

thought as a pure open plane, which essentially means a heterogeneous, complex and

collective body nuanced by a variety of different affects such as love, joy, fear, hate

and sorrow. In this light, our awareness of the linkage between the multitude, affects

and democracy, I believe, might open unexplored avenues for re-conceptualising

democracy today, which should be able to embrace at once all the actual and forming

political individuals lying in the interstices of the social domain.

In order to develop my reading of Spinoza’s philosophy through Simondon’s

ontology of individual, I have structured my arguments in the following way. In

chapter I, I critically explore how the history of philosophical thought has

assimilated and reacted to Spinoza’s thought, paying close attention to Romanticism

and German Idealism. As anticipated, Spinoza’s ontology of individuation

commences with two crucial denials, the one of transcendence and the divide

between mind and body, which have generated no little preoccupation in the history

of philosophy, particularly in Hegel and Schelling. In this light, I have begun the

study of these refusals and the constitution of the plane of immanence by discussing

the ways in which the most influential thinkers of the philosophy of transcendence

have engaged a dialogue with Spinoza’s affirmation nature-God as one absolute and

multiple system. My aim is not to analyse the philosophical systems of Schelling and

Hegel as such, but rather highlight through Schelling and Hegel’s writings on

Spinoza’s notion of the absolute Being the different implications between an

ontology of absolute immanence and one of transcendence for the development of a

paradigm of materialism.

In chapter II, the focus is consequently upon the analysis of the paradigm of

materialism developed by Spinoza in the Ethics. I examine Spinoza’s conception of

reality as a continuous process of production, structured through the notions of the

27

absolute, immanence, power and multiplicity. Chapter III analyses Spinoza’s process

of the collective and affective individuation via Simondon’s philosophy. The

attention is given to Spinoza’s materialist conception of the individual based on the

view of the body as openness, the power of the affects and the collective dimension

of thought. Chapters IV and V discuss the political implications of Spinoza’s

ontology of individuation for the constitution of the political meaning of the

multitude. More accurately, chapter IV addresses to the relation between affectivity

and politics in Spinoza’s political writings, and how affects gives rise to complex

political communities, meanings and transformations. Chapter V explores the

interface between affectivity and democracy in Spinoza’s political reflections. It

investigates the centrality of affectivity within the formation of the democratic

community, and considers the ways in which the multitude becomes the protagonist

of the political scene. In chapters IV and V, I adopt a strategy of reading Spinoza’s

political texts through the use of conceptual-affective personae, which allows the

emphasis to be placed upon the notion of affectivity as a process of actualisation and

transformation of the political. A short conclusion summarizes my arguments and

suggests further avenues of research.

28

Chapter I

Spinoza and his readers: The problem of the absolute

By God I mean an absolutely infinite being, that is, substance consisting of infinite attributes, each of which expresses an eternal and infinite essence. Explication: I say “absolutely infinite” not “infinite in its kind”. For if a thing is only infinite in its kind, one may deny that it has infinite attributes. But if a thing is absolutely infinite, whatever expresses essence and does not involve any negation belongs to its essence. (E. I, Def. VI)

Introduction

There have been undeniably many great philosophers in the history of philosophy.

For many of them, the originality of their ideas has been measured by the power,

with which their thesis reached the interest of other philosophers in different

historical periods, determining the turn of a new epoch. This is the case of Plato,

Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, Marx, and recently Althusser and

Deleuze, among others, each of them has been, in one way or in other, a central

figure in history, inaugurating new paradigms of thought and undermining existing

ones. When a philosopher’s name becomes an ‘ism’ (Platonism, Cartesianism or

Marxism), it means that his ideas have re-signified profoundly the general

understanding of the world, humankind and history, and thereby acclaimed as a truth.

The same discourse cannot be made for Baruch Spinoza, whose fortunes in history

took a different path. The impact of Spinoza’s ideas upon the history of Western

thought is a distinct one. Certainly his influence had been pervasive amongst his

contemporaries and successive philosophers, nevertheless Spinoza’s conceptions

never, even today, become an ‘ism’ in the way others did. Although every cultural

movement has engaged in a fruitful debate with Spinoza, and many thinkers from a

29

variety of different intellectual field have praised his thesis, no one has attempted, at

least explicitly, to imitate his philosophical system. Yet, almost every thinker from

Leibniz, passing through Voltaire, Schelling, Hegel, to Nietzsche, Freud, Althusser

and Deleuze have been all scrupulous readers of his writings; and you may find

traces of Spinoza even in Marx.1 None of them, nevertheless, looked at him as a

potential founding father of a new intellectual era, calling the novel wave of though

with his name. Rather, from a broad range of philosophical background thinkers have

mostly sought the support of his thesis for corroborating their arguments, claiming

some possible alliances. More accurately, the treatment reserved to Spinoza through

the history of ideas has been characterised by a tendency towards a forceful inclusion

of his philosophy or parts of it within the cultural movement of a specific period.

Instead of becoming an ‘ism’, it might be said, Spinoza’s thought comes to express

and reinforce the many ‘isms’ in history, such as Rationalism, Romanticism and

Marxism. Spinoza was not the predecessor of any specific epoch; he was, so to

speak, a shared heritage of many emerging philosophies. As result, there has been the

emergence of a consistent number of different and opposing portraits of Spinoza;

such as a rationalist description, which challenges a pantheist or naturalist reading,

and also an individualist interpretation contrasting a communitarian definition.

Furthermore, when the affinity with Spinoza was conceptually impossible to be

established, this has given rise to vehement critique, as it has occurred with Hegel,

whose intensity of his reaction this chapter analyses.

Concerning these aspects, two fundamental questions immediately arise: why

and how does Spinoza’s philosophy occupy a quite controversial and somewhat

ambivalent position within the history of philosophy? It is to these questions that this

chapter draws particular attention. The discussion is directed to the analysis not of

the importance or influence of Spinoza’s thought within later historical periods, but

rather the problematic elements of his theoretical nucleus, which have caused a

variety of different reactions, each of which brings to light the impossibility of

locating Spinoza within an established cultural context. Specifically, the focus is

addressed to the presence of Spinoza’s philosophy within the main European 1 Concerning the presence of Spinoza in thinkers such as Nietzsche, Marx and Freud, see Moreau (1996: 423-429).

30

intellectual movements of the Enlightenment, Romanticism and German Idealism,

and investigates what parts of his thesis have posed crucial problems, raised

solutions, or been entirely ignored.

In the Enlightenment, Romanticism as well as German Idealism, the Ethics is the

major debated writings of Spinoza, within which he founds his ontology. The

definitions of God, nature and attributes exposed in the parts I and II of the Ethics

represent the most problematic notions, upon which Spinoza’s ontology and politics

are founded. Spinoza’s theory of God, nature and attributes is a very complex and

manifold theme. Spinoza conceives God as an all-inclusive being, which is self-

caused, free, one and absolute infinity; who produces the word immanently, in which

his power of acting is on a par with its power of existing. Furthermore, Spinoza

claims the equivalence between God and nature, which implies the refusal of the

vision of matter as the lower genera. These concepts broadly connote Spinoza’s form

of monism, upon which his paradigm of materialism is grounded and developed.

This begins with two crucial denials, which will have vast repercussions in

subsequent philosophies. The refusal of transcendence, which involves the dismissal

of any higher dimension beyond the world, and any act of creation or emanative

process; and also the negation of the ontological divide between God and nature,

matter and thought, which leads Spinoza not to affirm a sort of divinization of nature

or a materialization of God; but rather, he claims a form of parallelism between the

two, through which the structure and the development of the world follows the same

rules of God. It follows that Spinoza’s ontology is fundamentally based and

developed in the complete absence of negation, in which every creature and

predicates of Being are not conceived as contradictory elements but rather as

expressions of a different degree of reality.

From these definitions two orders of problems arise. First, Spinoza’s model of

monism raises the question of the constitution of ontology itself. As Spinoza denies

any contradiction or negation within Being, the difficulty entails whether this aspect

creates a static or dynamic ontology. As Spinoza negates any moment of creation and

emanation, the problem is what are the implications of thinking ontology in the

31

absence of an ‘opening’? Secondly, as Being is already its parts, the question

concerns the consistency of these in relation to God. Strictly speaking, singularities

are mere projections or rather expression of God. It is the definition of the absolute,

as I will examine, that will constitute our key notion for understanding Spinoza’s

complex form of monism. Furthermore, the absolute infinity of God acquires a

strategic position within our analysis of the many readers of Ethics during the history

of philosophy, from which different portraits of Spinoza’s monist vision of God

derive.

In order to examine the complexity of Spinoza’s ontology, in the first section

of the chapter I will give a broader overview of the Enlightenment’s supposed

affinity with the Ethics, pointing out the parts of Ethics somewhat ignored and

thereby its implications for the understanding of Spinoza’s theory of God and nature.

The discussion, then, draws particular attention to the portrait of Spinoza emerging

during the Romantic tradition of thought. Specifically, the focus is addressed to an

analysis of Goethe and Jacobi’s distinct engagement with the Ethics, and considers

the extent to which Spinoza’s definition of nature as a unique being shaped by

contingency and necessity poses significant problems to their respective

philosophies. Whilst the former eludes the question of the coexistence of contingent

and predetermined elements within nature by attributing to the material world divine

features, acclaiming the Ethics as a great example of pantheism, the latter envisages

in Spinoza’s conception of God-nature the affirmation of the ineluctability and

obscurity of reason. For this, Jacobi proposes a “mortal jump”, which is the

suspension of judgment for the impossibility of knowing the impenetrable order of

nature.

The study of Goethe and Jacobi’s treatment of the Ethics will show us not only the

ways in which Spinoza’s notions of God and nature have been translated into the

Romantic language, but also the conceptual impossibility of this translation. It is for

this reason that I have opted to examine Goethe and Jacobi’s positions, among other

Romantic readers of the Ethics, such as Lessing or Mendelssohn, because their

encounter with Spinoza is more a problematic dialogue rather than an appropriation,

32

which raises thoughtful questions about the complexity of Spinoza’s ontology. This

difficult encounter will bring about the discovery of Spinoza’s alternative paradigm

of materialist ontology, which begins with the affirmation of the absolute and

immanent nature of God. Given the purpose of this chapter, I will not draw attention

to Goethe and Jacobi’s thought as such, but rather I will offer a selective textual

analysis of their writings on Spinoza. Furthermore, Goethe and Jabobi’s

understanding of Spinoza’s ontology will prepare the terrain for the more

controversial reading of Ethics. This refers to the German Idealist interpretation,

which occupies the central arguments of the second section of the chapter.

In this section, the inquiry is addressed to Schelling and Hegel’s complex re-

elaborations of the themes of the Ethics, and the ways in which Spinoza’s mode of

thinking nature as a positive and absolute being haunts the certainty of their

philosophical systems. As with Goethe and Jacobi, for the purpose of the chapter, the

inquiry is directed not to the discussion of Schelling and Hegel’s philosophical

system themselves, but rather to their reaction to Spinoza. It follows that I will

examine their writings on the Ethics, and consider the extent to which Spinoza is a

problematic presence within their philosophy.

As mentioned above, Spinoza is a controversial figure within Schelling and Hegel’s

philosophy, with whom they inaugurate, in different ways, an extremely intense and

constant dialogue. Specifically, Schelling’s account of Spinoza’s paradigm of

monism is somewhat ambiguous. Schelling is initially attracted by Spinoza’s

affirmation of the one and absolute God, who poses himself through the contingency

of nature. For this, Schelling praises the Ethics as an ontology of pure activity, which

generates beings from an undifferentiated sources of production. Lately, Schelling’s

enthusiasm for Spinoza will be replaced by his critique of the Ethics as a static

system. The relevance of Schelling’s engagement with Spinoza, for our discourse,

concerns not his passage from a Spinozist position to its criticism, but rather the

abandonment of Spinoza’s ontology coincides with the consolidation of Schelling’s

philosophy of transcendence. The Spinozist moment reveals Schelling’s great

difficulty in thinking Spinoza’s absolute God as coexistence between subject and

33

object, which brought him to annihilate both in the source of indifference. In the

mature phase, the negation of Spinoza’s philosophy uncovers Schelling’s impasse in

theorising reality through immanence, which means the absence of negation, and

thereby his recourse to contradiction as the only possibility for producing powerful

singularities.

The encounter, then, between Hegel and Spinoza is central. As anticipated

previously, in Hegel’s view Spinoza is a hostile interlocutor, whose paradigm of

thought has to be avoided. As with Schelling, for Hegel the main problem of the

Ethics resides on Spinoza’s denials of transcendence and the distinction between

thought and matter. Hegel reiterates more strongly Schelling’s definition of

Spinoza’s ontology as a static and meaningless order, within which any form of

individuality is excluded. For Hegel, as we will analyse, Spinoza negates the world,

because he unifies under the absolute Being the production of the variety of different

singularities. The centrality of Hegel’s critique of Spinoza concerns the vehemence,

with which he condemns the system of the Ethics, which seems, in some cases, as

more a defence of his own philosophy than a systematic exegesis of Spinoza’s

ontology. It is thus through Hegel’s passionate treatment of Spinoza that the

originality of the themes of Ethics will come to light. These refer not only to an

impossible mediation between transcendent and immanent thoughts, but also the

different implications of theorising the production of the world through dialectical

movements of thesis, antithesis and synthesis and the Spinozian one of a pure

affirmation, which means through the world itself.

Taking into account these aspects, the arguments I will develop through this

chapter concern that the absolute is the question par excellence, which determines

the ambivalent position of Spinoza’s thought within the history of philosophy. It is

the definition of Substance as absolute infinity, I will argue, that lies at the very basis

of the problematic relations of the mentioned philosophers with Spinoza. In Goethe

and Jacobi, as anticipated, the absolute is a problem, which causes the reliance on a

divinisation of nature and a form of fatalism. For Schelling and particularly Hegel,

the absolute Substance, which does not allow negation, becomes the very impasse

34

that challenges them with the possibility of thinking the world as affirmative,

multiple and productive order. The necessity of returning, particularly, to Schelling

and Hegel’s critique of Spinoza concerns that from their respective impasse the

power of Spinoza’s ontology as paradigm of pure actuality will come to light, and

also how his conceptions of God-nature offers thoughtful arguments for anti-idealist

philosophies.

1. Spinoza in the Enlightenment tradition of thought

One of the central features that characterises the Enlightenment tradition of thought

is undeniably its fierce faith in the capacity and potentialities of human being. This

refers to the optimistic conviction of the power of human rationality in determining

the mechanism of nature, history and society. For Enlightenment thought, the

rational faculty is the very essence of humankind, upon which its intellectual and

material progress relies. Hence, this position favoured the abandonment of every

obscurantist philosophy, which negates human freedom and self-determination,

narrowing the status of individuals to a mere object of God or transcendental Being

as the Scholastic philosophy assumed (Israel, 2006: 43-60, 409-544; 2002: 1-23).2

The dismissal of certain Scholastic conceptions of the human being, nature and God

coincided, more generally, with the Enlightenment’s fierce opposition to

metaphysics as a defensible branch of knowledge, and its replacement with a

scientific method of the investigation of natural phenomena. The increasing belief in

the authority of the scientific method gives rise to the development of early

materialist theses about nature, ethics and politics, which led to the assimilation of

the meaning of materialism with empiricist and rationalist positions (Israel, 2006:

2Scholastic philosophy combines the principles of Aristotle’s philosophy with those of Christian religion. The inquiry is primarily directed to the study of the proofs of the existence of God throughout the usage of Aristotelian metaphysics and logics. It assumes the genesis of the world derived from divine creation and considers nature qualitatively divided in genres and substances, within which matter is considered the lower genera. The Scholastic doctrine attributes to human mind or soul an immaterial essence, which is eternal and superior to the body and, more generally, to the sensible world. The principal exponents of the Scholastic tradition are Duns Scotus (1266-1308), William of Ockham (1288-1348) and Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274). For a more exhaustive description of the central thesis supported by Medieval philosophers, see particularly Spade (1994), Stump (2003), Kretzmann and Srump (1993).

35

699-750; 2002: 704-713). Thus, the Enlightenment’s form of materialism was more

concerned with the question of how man can discover and transform the world given

its non supernatural origin, rather than what is nature considered in itself, and what

forces, elements and potentialities structure its genesis and becoming. The

Enlightenment’s analysis of past philosophies was mediated by this paradigm of

materialism, within which Spinoza was included.

In this fashion, the new philosophical turn re-draws attention to previous

philosophical ideas, which supported anti-metaphysical and religious themes. It is in

this intellectual context that the philosophy of Spinoza acquires great importance.

Philosophers such as Diderot and Voltaire, for example, envisage in Spinoza’s

thought powerful theoretical arguments, which meet the Enlightenment’s demands

for scientific formulations, rational and empiricist categories of thought and a more

atheistic vision of human nature. Specifically, the study of the Ethics was

concentrated mostly on Spinoza’s definitions of God as a self-generating union of

necessity and liberty, which the refuses the notions of contingency and freewill

within the order of nature, and the formula of the parallelism between matter and

thought. Moreover, his theory of mind and passions, the geometrical method adopted

in the Ethics, alongside the political discourses about freedom of speech and thought

and democracy developed in the Theological Political Treatise determined the

Enlightenment’s engagement with Spinoza, locating his philosophy, without

hesitation, within the rationalist tradition of thought (Israel, 2006: 43-60, 135-160;

2002: 157-174, 230-327, 591-598).

Spinoza in the Age of Reason

Although an accurate investigation of the Ethics was not fully developed during the

eighteenth-century, nevertheless the reflections upon Spinoza’s form of monism

bring to light important arguments concerning Spinoza’s model of materialism and

his supposed affinity with Enlightenment philosophy. For the purpose of the chapter,

I examine specifically the discussion surrounding the themes of the first and second

parts of the Ethics about Substance and nature, which are presented particularly in

36

parts I and II of the Ethics. It is from the eighteenth-century peculiar treatment of

these notions that the understanding of Spinoza’s philosophical project from his

ontology to politics depends.

In the Age of Reason, common to the readers of Ethics (for example Voltaire,

Diderot and La Mettrie) is the conviction that Spinoza’s ontological theses on

Substance, attributes, modes and nature aim at the severe negation of the

anthropomorphic idea of God, and the reinstatement of the value of nature as a

fundamental source of knowledge (Israel, 2006: 3-50, 699-761; Moreau, 1996: 417-

419).

Spinoza constructs his form of monism on the affirmations of Substance as

immanent cause of all things and the identity between God’s powers of thinking and

acting, within which the divine action entirely corresponds to the laws of nature (E. I,

Def. VII, prop. XV, corollary III, prop. XX, prop. XXXIV). As immanent cause of

beings, God is a generative source internal and contemporaneous to singularities (E.

I, prop. XVIII). It is internal because the thesis of immanence implies the denial of

an external Being to the world. It is contemporaneous to singularities because the

inclusion of a certain linearity and consequentiality within the production of reality

would inevitably re-introduce a transcendent dimension. Furthermore, Spinoza’s

definition of God as necessity implies the understanding of the genesis and becoming

of Substance governed by and through an immutable mechanism, which is created by

God and common to nature (E. I, prop. XXXIII and scholium). These notions of the

necessity and universality of the order of reality leads to the formulation of the

similitude between nature and God, upon which Spinoza’s denial of the divide

between matter and thought is founded and developed (E. II, prop. I, II,VII). The

recognition of the similar structure of nature and God brings to light Spinoza’s

alternative account of the distinction between the two orders of reality, which is not

based on a qualitative difference. If God and nature are parallel one to the other, it

means that the distinction between the two does not follow the logic of the division

in kind of perfection or essence but rather a difference through modes and

combination of levels of reality.

37

In the Enlightenment’s re-formulation of the Ethics, these notions express Spinoza’s

determinist vision of reality, through which his rationalist method of interpreting the

laws of nature is predicated. More accurately, Spinoza’s refusals of contingency and

the qualitative difference between God and nature become acclaimed as his

philosophical gesture of resolving the problem of the origin of Substance and the

related metaphysical redundancies through its effacement into nature. In turn, nature

is not conceived as a chaotic place, within which phenomena unpredictably come to

light, involving the impossibility of their understanding. By contrast, Spinoza affirms

that the emergence of every event and being within the world derives from a precise

concatenations of cause and effect, which is entirely intelligible by the human being

(E. I, ax. III, IV). Given this determinist structure, the domain of nature becomes

recognised as a composite body characterised by a linear process, which expresses

the rationality of reality as whole. As nature is characterised by rational

concatenations of cause and effect, the analysis of its mechanism proceeds through

the distinction between cause and effect, which entails solely the lumen naturalis

(rational faculty) possessed by every man (E. I, Appendix). This implies the

affirmation of the power of rationality as the exclusive source of knowledge, through

which the emancipation of human beings from dogmatic doctrines, and thereby the

encouragement of a scientific method might be realised. For the readers of the

Enlightenment, these arguments found Spinoza’s paradigm of materialism. More

precisely, the inclusion of the essence of God within the determinist system of nature

and the autonomy of reason from theology and metaphysics, Voltaire and La

Mettries among others have argued, connote Spinoza’s materialist thought, from

which his atheist convictions derive (Moreau, 1996:417-419; and Israel, 2006: 436-

512, 640-659; 684-703). It is this rationalist vision of the word that becomes

assumed as Spinoza’s materialist conception, which also determined the

Enlightenment’s appropriation of his philosophy within its intellectual heritage.

From this portrait of Spinoza many problems arise. The fundamental difficulty is not

the characterisation of Spinoza’s theory of Substance as a materialist thesis. The

38

definitions of God as necessity, self-caused and unique being and the identity

between thought and matter have certainly materialist implications. Rather, the

question concerns the other notions of the Ethics excluded by eighteenth-century

readers of Spinoza, which are constitutive elements of Spinoza’s model of

materialism. I refer to Spinoza’s definitions of the absolute infinity of Substance, the

unaccountability of attributes and modes, power and immanence, each of which is

crucial for understanding the meaning given by Spinoza to the material world. The

inclusion of these brings about the discovery of the alternative form of materialism

proposed by Spinoza, which goes far beyond the rationalist and atheist model

acknowledged by Enlightenment thought. The analysis of these reveals the

conceptual impossibility of locating the Ethics within the intellectual heritage of the

Enlightenment philosophy, undermining the alleged affinity between Spinoza and the

claims of the Age of Reason.

Enlightenment philosophy, we have seen, deduces Spinoza’s form of materialism

from the analysis of Substance solely in its aspects of necessity and nature, which in

turn is examined only in its dimension of rational mechanism structured through

causes and effects. Following this approach, certainly the notions of necessity and

the view of nature as a domain of physical phenomena and mechanical rules would

inevitably imply a rationalist vision of the world. However, if we include the theses

of the absolute infinity of God expressed by uncountable attributes, whose power of

existing is immanently on par with his power of acting, Spinoza’s meaning of

materialism as rationalist and determinist theory is no longer defensible. To be more

precise, if Spinoza’s account of God-Substance-nature was centred only on the

affirmations of necessity, the rigid concatenation of causes and effects and the

replacement of the theological figure of the Creator with a well-ordered set of

physical laws and phenomena, the form of materialism portrayed in the Ethics would

rightly correspond to eighteenth-century description of Spinoza’s ontology as great

example of rationalism. In this case, Spinoza’s materialist conception of nature

would undoubtedly indicate a stable and linear system, which can be entirely

investigated by human rational faculty.

39

However, the problem is that Spinoza poses the necessity of God and the formula of

parallelism between thought and matter alongside the notions of immanence, power,

the multiplicity of the attributes, and the contingency of the modes. The concepts of

immanence and power, which is crucially defined as the very essence of God,

inevitably suggest a certain idea of production and dynamism within Substance.

More rigorously, Spinoza states that God is an immanent cause of all the things,

whose essence is power (E. I, prop. XVIII, XXXIV). Let us focus on these two

themes more closely before proceeding further with our discussion.

Beside the thesis of the immanence of God, I think, it is its aspect of cause that is

crucial. The meaning of cause directly reminds us a specific function of creating

something (an event, being or, at the very least, an effect), which gives rise to

movements and transformations. In the Ethics, the theme of cause becomes

considerably more complicated, because this is connected with the argument of

immanence. By definition, we have seen, immanence implies the exclusion of any

external dimension to the world. It follows that Spinoza’s proposition of God as

immanent cause of all the things refers necessarily to the vision of reality shaped by

a force, a movement of transformation. Given its immanent character, this force has

to be thought inherent within reality itself, conferring a form of dynamism to the

entire system. Nevertheless, the idea of cause, however immanent, might be related

to the act of creating and generating, which would lead to conceive the material

world as a result of a phase of creation. In this case, immanence would simply

describe the position of God within reality.

In order to clarify his argument, Spinoza further enriches the definition of God-

nature with the notion of power as the very essence of God. As mentioned above, in

the Ethics Spinoza forwards the conception of the equality between the power of

acting, thinking and existing, for which these are coextensive and simultaneous one

to the other (E. I, prop. XX). For the language of the Ethics, to act means to exist,

and this means to think. In this light, the meaning of power sheds light on the

problem of the creation emerged with the thesis of God as an immanent cause of all

the things. This introduces the condition of production within the immanent system

40

of God-nature, which secures the structure of reality from possible return to a

condition of creation and emanative states. Specifically, it is through Spinoza’s claim

of the simultaneity between powers that the notion of the immanent cause acquires

the meaning of production, which refigures the domain of reality with more complex

phases of transformation and becoming.

From these primary considerations about the theory of God explained in the Ethics, it

seems that the Enlightenment philosophy completely misinterpreted Spinoza’s

arguments, as if it was reading another text. Yet, this is not the case. The themes of

necessity, rationality, deterministic order highlighted by eighteenth-century readers

occur in Spinoza’s ontology, occupying a very central position. Therefore, the

question arises as how Spinoza combines the determinist vision of reality with the

definition of God as power and immanent cause of all the things? More accurately,

the problem is how Spinoza thinks the rationality of the Whole shaped by a

mechanism of cause and effect, which is also immanently productive? For this, the

idea of necessity suggests that phenomena follow a predicable and linear structure,

whereas the notion of power examined before brings to light dynamic and

unexpected elements within the development of nature.

Furthermore, Spinoza’s claims of the infinity of the attributes and contingency of the

modes introduce within the strict determinist concatenation of cause and effect a

form of spontaneity and multiplicity, which exceeds the vision of nature as

mechanical a system. Ultimately, the formula of parallelism does not mean directly

that God is nature or within nature and vice versa, this would imply the

materialisation or the divinisation of nature without resolving the problem of the

genesis of the material world. Rather, Spinoza states that the order and development

of God is the same with that of nature, which implies the maintenance of the

distinction between the two dimensions of reality and, at the same time, the

similarity of their structures. It follows that from the inclusion of these notions

Spinoza’s vision of reality becomes very complex and manifold. The question, thus,

arises as what is at stake in Spinoza’s model of reality? And importantly, could we

still define the Ethics as an example of materialism? If this is the case, the form of

41

materialism supported by Spinoza’s ontology has to be conceived as an alternative

model to that of the Enlightenment tradition of thought.

In order to examine the meaning given by Spinoza to the material world, we need to

re-draw attention to the definition of God as positive and absolute infinity expressed

by an infinite number of attributes, which has been, instead, ignored by the readers of

the Enlightenment. The definition of the absolute infinity of God, I argue, is crucial

for understanding Spinoza’s account of reality, and thus whether or not this can be

recognised as a materialist position. The absolute embraces within one and unique

system the aspects of necessity and contingency, univocity and multiplicity, nature

and God. In other words, it is through the absolute that we enter the threshold of

Spinoza’s materialist vision of reality.

Spinoza in part I of the Ethics declares that God or Substance is an absolutely infinite

being constituted by an infinite number of attributes, each of each expresses its

essence (E. I, Def. VI). In the explication to this definition, Spinoza is concerned

with explaining his use of the term absolute within the notion of Substance. For this,

absolute infinity enables Spinoza to posit at the very basis of his ontology the One

and the Multiple within a unique plane, within which the position of the attribute is

central (E. I, Def. VI, explication). This refers to the role of actualising the essence of

God, which, we have seen, is power. By definition, the attribute is a mode of being

such as matter and thought, which describes the many ways in which Substance is

actualised (E. I, Def. IV, prop. XI). Given the identity between Substance and reality,

we might directly affirm that the attribute indicates the multiple dimensions of reality

(E. I, prop. IX).

Without venturing into the vicissitudes of Spinoza’s question of the absolute and the

attributes, which will be fully examined in the following sections of this chapter, for

the objective of this part, the theme of the absolute is fundamental for delineating the

anatomy of reality in the Ethics, and the modes in which this is not a model of

rationalism or empiricism and yet still materialism. The absolute infinity opens up

42

directly to the constitution of reality, disclosing the complex status of matter within

Spinoza’s ontology.

As mentioned above, the absolute sets forth a plane, which is actual, multiple and

positive. It is actual because the attributes, which express its essence, are defined as

actual and real in the Ethics. It is also multiple because infinite are its levels of

reality (attributes); and for the literal and ontological meaning that the term

“absolute” suggests, this plane is positive, which implies the denial of contradictory

moments internal or external to its domain. The absolute infinity brings about the

discovery of the material world as a multisided body, which is nuanced by a variety

of interconnections between levels of reality. Each of which produces multiple

effects, and these further existences in turn. Taken in itself, the absolute is a powerful

concept, which allows Spinoza’s inquiry to combine within an unique order the

instances of necessity and production, univocity and multiplicity. For this, the

affirmation of the absolutely infinity of God, which excludes negation, is directly

connected with the concept of necessity. More accurately, absolute infinity implies

itself the notion of necessity without however expressing rationalistic and

deterministic meanings as eighteenth-century readers have assumed. It is the positive

dimension of absolute infinity that articulates the aspect of necessity, which gives to

the entire system a determinate and somewhat inescapable structure. As

aforementioned, although Substance is an all-inclusive and determinate system, this

is not static, but instead, multisided and productive. It is for this reason, I think, that

the notion of the absolute is the key concept for understanding Spinoza’s constitution

of ontology, which might guide the readers of the Ethics within the labyrinthine

development of its propositions without eluding some of the arguments posed by

Spinoza.

Taking into account these themes, we might raise some conclusions. The

analysis of the Enlightenment’s disregard of the notion of the absolute has allowed

our inquiry to discover the effective stakes of Spinoza’s ontology of immanence. If

we re-configure Spinoza’s proposition of Substance as “immanent cause of all the

things” within the absolute plane examined before, immanence acquire a more

43

complicated meaning. This entails Spinoza’s awareness of immanence not or not

solely as a formal expedient for developing an atheist vision of the world, but rather

a different constitution of reality itself. It means that Spinoza opposes the thesis of

transcendence, and more generally metaphysics, not simply by postulating a

paradigm of atheism, instead, re-signifying entirely the domain of nature. This now

becomes recognised as a powerful organism. The questions of immanence and the

description of nature as living body will have consistent repercussions in successive

philosophical traditions, opposing the Enlightenment paradigm of thought.

Specifically, thinkers from the intellectual periods of Romanticism and German

Idealism will develop a fruitful debate about these aspects of the Ethics.

In the age of Romanticism, it is Spinoza’s treatment of nature as living

organism that attracts the attention of philosophers such as Lessing, Jacobi and

Goethe. In this philosophical wave of thought, the presence of Spinoza is

instrumental in developing different conceptions of nature and humankind, which

should replace the eighteenth-century scientific method with a somewhat mystical

way of thinking the material world. Strikingly, as we will analyse, Goethe, Jacobi

and Lessing read the same propositions of the Ethics, which Voltaire, Diderot and La

Mettrie have previously acclaimed as great example of rationalism and atheism,

discovering in these instead powerful anti-rationalist categories of thought.

In order to investigate the origin of these opposing interpretations of the Ethics, the

role of Spinoza’s philosophy within the intellectual stage of Romanticism is decisive.

The importance of returning to Romantic thought’s engagement with Spinoza resides

on its treatment of the notions of immanence, nature, the absolute and the formula of

parallelism, and its attempt to attuning these notions to Romantic positions. It is to

the readers of the Ethics during the phase of Romanticism that I now turn.

44

2. The Ethics in the circle of Romanticism: a pantheist image of nature

By the end of the eighteenth century, new philosophical demands grew up and

through them a different approach to Spinoza’s philosophy was established. In

particular, Lessing and Goethe, within the circle of Jena, re-opened the debate on

Spinoza. While Lessing appreciated the Spinozist lesson on the unity of Substance,

Goethe emphasised the theory of parallelism and imagination. Before proceeding

further with the analysis of the presence of Spinoza within the philosophical tradition

of Romanticism, I shall, firstly, draw attention to its main characteristics, which

determined the growth of interest towards the Ethics.

Romanticism’s inquiry is concerned mainly with the re-definition of the

status of nature within philosophy, and the relation of the human being with the

material world. Unlike the Enlightenment thought, for the Romantic tradition of

thought nature is a place permeated by unpredictable forces, for which human

rationality is an inadequate instrument of investigation. For Romantic philosophy,

the domain of nature is not an inanimate assemblage of parts, which can be explained

through the laws of physics and mathematics. By contrast, it is a living organism,

whose power impacts in a myriad of invisible and unsuspected ways upon the

formation of human knowledge. Given that nature is not the object of science, it was

argued, this has to be thought as form of subject, who produces not only physical

phenomena but also thoughts, passions, obscure events and powerful beings, which

are shaped by an impenetrable mechanism. This portrait of nature brings about the

need to search for alternative categories of thought, through which the richness of

expression of the material world might be determined. The central questions that

preoccupied Romantic philosophy are how we should conceptualise nature given its

non mechanical structure; and also what is the concrete impact of the power of nature

upon individuals?

These problems involve the resurgence of a certain sentimentalist spirit, the

development of an aesthetic approach to the sensible world and a form of mystical

vision of the becoming of nature. It was named Sturm und Drang (literally storm and

45

stress). As the term suggests, this intellectual wave of thought aspires to

conceptualise the powerful impact of the unknown nature upon the human subject,

through which the individual is somewhat disoriented and frightened. For

Romanticism, the encounter with nature is characterised by a continuous tension of

the singular being to penetrate the ultimate cause of reality. The understanding of the

universe, the Romantic movement claims, implies the abandonment of all the

certitudes (religious, scientific, ethical), which secure human life from possible

emotive shocks, and an opening towards sorrow and pleasure, in short, the indefinite

force of nature. The experience of the power of the material world, however

dramatic, enriches the human being’s awareness of his role within nature, through

which he recognises himself as an interconnected part of a more universal system

(Bowie, 2003: 49-68).

In this light, the emerging intellectual movement draws attention to past

philosophies, which treated nature as a living body, which greatly exceeds the linear

generation of physical phenomena. In order to re-theorise the mechanism of nature,

Romantic thinkers look to the Ethics, discovering in its thesis fundamental categories

of thought for re-thinking the material world as a powerful subject. The focus is

addressed to Spinoza’s theory of the parallelism between nature and God, the

absolute, power and immanence (Beiser, 1987: 16-91). These are the main concepts

that shape Romanticism’s reading of the Ethics.

A novel wave of thought with different claims, reactions and problems

emerges and contemporaneously new readers of the Ethics come to light, searching,

once again, in Spinoza’s ontology for possible answers and alliances. At the turn of

each new philosophical era the presence of Spinoza re-populates the debate of the

period and each time his philosophy seems to express different arguments. If the

Enlightenment included the Ethics within its intellectual heritage, now Romantic

thought acclaims Spinoza within the circle of its philosophers. In this case, Spinoza’s

philosophy passes from the definition of rationalism and atheism to the title of

pantheism. Therefore, our question about the origin of the controversial relation

between Spinoza and his readers returns, becoming even more urgent. Furthermore,

46

the problem is not only the analysis of the ways in which certain notions of the

Ethics have been conjugated with Romantic themes, but also what parts of Spinoza’s

ontology have not been assimilated within the Romantic thought. The investigation

of the notions excluded from the Romantic interpretation of the Ethics will indicate

the difficulties posed by Spinoza’s philosophy to these new readers. The

impossibility of attuning entirely Spinoza’s ontology to the Romantic position will

bring to light the complexity of his theory of God and nature, and also the ways in

which these concepts somewhat challenge the thesis of Romanticism.

The position of Spinoza within the intellectual movement of the Romanticism is

inaugurated by the reflections made by the philosopher Toland, who re-situates

Spinoza’s ontology within the dispute of the period. In his Letters to Serena (1704)

Toland coined the expression of pantheism, in order to describe Spinoza’s

conception of nature and God. Challenging the eighteenth-century portrait of a

rationalist Spinoza, Toland claims that Spinoza’s theory of Substance and nature

discloses, instead, a system of spontaneous forces, which goes quite behind a

determinist structure (Bowie, 1993:15-28). For Toland, nature is shaped by various

elements, which are characterised by a form of intrinsic power. As Spinoza’s theory

of parallelism states the perfect correspondence between God and nature, Toland

concludes, nature has to be understood as a living being, within which each element

is connected and co-expresses the power of the Whole. This specific view of

Spinoza’s notion of nature will influence significantly the Romantic study of the

Ethics, around which the affinity with his philosophy will be constructed (Israel,

2002: 609-612).

The event that gives rise to a renaissance of interest in Spinoza was the publication

of the Spinoza Letters by Jacobi (1785). The publication of the Letters caused an

unexpected controversy. The dispute goes in literature under the name of the

Spinozism or The Pantheism Dispute. This was initially concerned with the

discussion of the philosophical meaning of Spinoza’s philosophy, and the relevance

of his ontology within Romantic tradition of thought. The focus was upon the

definition of the Ethics itself, whether this supported rationalist and atheistic claims

47

or rather a divine and dynamic conception of nature and human beings. These themes

of the rationalist and subjective vision of nature raised more universal problems,

which moved the dispute from a specific debate around the Ethics to a more general

discussion on the constitution of philosophy itself. German intellectual life was

wholly involved in the controversy of transcendence versus immanence, free will

versus determinism, reason versus sentimentalism (Beiser, 1987: 44-48; Della Rocca,

2008: 283-287).

Goethe and Jacobi’s engagement with the Ethics is a critical one within the general

pantheist controversy. They read both the Ethics with particular attention to the

themes of the absolute, immanence and parallelism, developing two different

approaches. Goethe gives full right of citizenship to Spinoza within the Sturm und

Drung circle, whereas the latter locates the Ethics within a form of radicalisation of

the rationalist thesis of the Enlightenment. For Jacobi, Spinoza’s philosophy of

nature discloses a strict determinist order, which is moved fundamentally by an

obscure mechanism. Jacobi will conclude with envisaging a tendency towards a

certain fatalism within the Ethics, which leads to the recognition of the limits of

human rationality as a source of knowledge. In order to examine the controversial

dialogue between these mentioned philosophers with Spinoza, let us analyse their

writings about the Ethics in depth. In the section below, I draw attention, first, to

Goethe’s portrait of Spinoza.

48

2.1 The Ethics through Goethe’ s eyes: The divinisation of nature

Goethe is undeniably one of the prominent figures of the Sturm und Drung period.

An eclectic and extremely productive thinker, Goethe’s studies vary from

philosophy, literature to science, each of which reflects the general tendency of the

Sturm und Drung movement. The central theme that dominates the entirety of

Goethe’s speculation is the question of the re-foundation of the paradigm of nature,

upon which new conceptions of the human being, science and history might be

predicated. Moving beyond Sturm und Drung’s thesis of the astonishing and

pervasive force of the sensible world, Goethe is fundamentally persuaded of the

unity of nature, which is expressed through the harmonic connections between

creatures and the material world. It is in this unity of nature, Goethe affirms, that

perfection and beauty lie.

The recognition of the harmonic structure of nature leads Goethe to view the material

world as a more complex subject, who generates and transforms incessantly beings,

phenomena and movements. The understanding of the unity and affinity between

beings informs Goethe’s own inquiry from poetry, philosophy, biology, physics to

religion. More rigorously, Goethe’s form of eclecticism is an open attempt of re-

locating the diverse branches of knowledge within the unity of nature, through and

solely through which the ultimate cause of the universe might come to light. The

originality of Goethe’s intellectual gesture resides in his search for the connections

between creatures, which is based on the rigorous combination between experience

and theory.

Goethe finds untenable the definitions of nature proposed by theology, Romantic and

empiricist theories. Theology narrows the status of nature to a mere matter, ascribing

the divine status to God. The problems with empiricist and Romantic methods

concern that the former stresses the value of the experience and the visible

phenomena as source of knowledge, whereas the latter claims the priority of theory

and abstraction. As result, both of them, Goethe notes, lose the unity of reality,

acquiring a partial awareness of the order of nature. In contrast, Goethe overcomes

49

the schism between theory and practice, a priori and a posteriori through the study

of every specific phenomenon such as the anatomy of plants or psychological states

as perception as consequences of more general process, which is inherent within

reality. In this light, the understanding of a singular event will certainly imply the

knowledge of the entire mechanism of the universe and vice versa (Steuer, 2002:

160-169). In his theory of colours, Goethe reiterates more strongly his vision of

nature, within which the perception of a specific colour derives from more complex

mixtures of levels of light (Goethe, 1967: 316-322). For example, the redness of an

object is a singularity immerged within a chaotic universe, whose peculiarity is not

possible to be easily determined.3 This paradigm of reality as interconnections

between singularity and universality, nature and individuals guides Goethe’s reading

of past philosophies. Goethe’s interest is directed to every philosophical system,

which defines nature as a powerful organism structured through a variety of infinite

relations between beings and levels of reality. It is precisely in this context that

Goethe’s dialogue with Spinoza takes place.

Goethe reads Spinoza

Goethe’s engagement with the Ethics acquires great significance within our inquiry

upon the controversial relation between Spinoza and his readers. This refers to the

possibility of determining, on the one side, the ways in which Spinoza’s theory of

nature enriches Goethe’s treatment of the material world as powerful and divine

subject. On the other, the encounter between Goethe and Spinoza brings to light how

Spinoza’s definitions of nature, God and singularities greatly exceeds the pantheist

formula proposed by Goethe, and more generally, the Sturm und Drung movement,

revealing a more problematic conception of the material world.

Although Goethe’s extensive outlook includes a variety of different cultural sources

such as Catullus, Voltaire and Euripides, the presence of Spinoza within his works

acquires a distinct position. I have discovered in many of his writings such as the

3For an interesting interpretation of Goethe’s theory of colours in terms of dynamic confluences of various forces, see Deleuze and Guattari (1994: 161-162).

50

Theory of Colours, the Metamorphosis of Plants and poems, the influence, now

latent now manifest, of certain Spinoza’s claims, which delineate the strong impact

of the reading of the Ethics upon Goethe’s own theoretical production (Bell,

1984:153-170). Goethe’s focus on the Ethics mainly is directed to Spinoza

definitions of Substance as union between essence and existence, power and

immanence, and also the theory of parallelism, which he attempts to read through the

lenses of the Sturm und Drung movement. In order to delineate the ways in which

Goethe re-elaborates Spinoza’s theory of Substance-nature, let us return to these

notions exposed in the Ethics.

As discussed before, Spinoza in the first part of the Ethics affirms that God is

an absolute infinity, which possesses its own essence and existence. Singularities,

instead, are distinguished one from the others through their different level of

actuality and not by essence, which they share with Substance. Further, Spinoza

defines God as the immanent cause of all the events in nature (E. I, prop. XVII). This

implies the denial of the religious figure of the Creator and the metaphysical thesis of

the transcendent origin of the universe, through which nature becomes recognised as

a self-organised and productive system. In the following proposition XIX, he claims

the eternity of God and all his attributes. Given the identity between God’s essence

and existence and God is an immanent and self-caused Being, Spinoza deduces the

eternity of Substance. Spinoza defines towards the end of the part I of the Ethics the

essence of God, that is, power (E.I, Prop. XXXIV). As the existence of nature is not

preceded by any moment of creation and emanative phase, the generation of all the

elements within the world is directly connected to nature itself. This involves the

understanding of the material world as extremely productive and dynamic body. In

the part II of the Ethics, Spinoza states the correspondence between God and nature

(E. II, prop. VII). For this proposition, nature and God are characterised by a similar

structure (“order”) and development (“connection”).

In Goethe’s re-formulation of the Ethics, these arguments delineate Spinoza’s

paradigm of pantheism. Goethe reads Spinoza’s form of monism as the divinisation

of nature, through which the material world is elevated to the status of powerful and

51

living subject. More accurately, Goethe constructs his pantheist portrait of the Ethics

on the definition of the one and common essence for all the singularities (modes)

embodied by Substance. In this light, Spinoza’s negation of several essences within

reality becomes recognised as the consolidation of the unity of reality, within which

each element is harmonically connected one to the other; and also these together

express the totality of nature as living organism. Spinoza’s claims of the immanence

and power of God are understood not as his gesture of avoiding the theological

argument of the generation of the world from an act of free will, and thus his atheist

conclusion, but rather as the reinstatement of the autonomy of nature from religion

and, at the same time, Enlightenment discourse. In Goethe’s eyes, Spinoza’s

definitions of immanence and the power of God reveal the great move of

disseminating the properties generally attributed to a transcendent Being

(omniscience, generation, eternity etc.) into the world (all is God: “pan”-“theos”),

which in turn acquires the status of divine subject.

Moreover, the theory of the parallelism between matter and thought espoused in part

II of the Ethics, further consolidates the pantheistic vision of nature, through which

matter is conceived as thinking organism and not as a mere assemblage of physical

phenomena. Importantly, the meaning of parallelism comes to signify not the

similitude of the two dimensions of reality (thought and extension) but rather the

identity between the two, by which “the order and connection of ideas” is entirely

attuned with the “order and connection of things”. This means that the proposition of

God as parallel to nature is translated directly into God is nature, implying the

replacement of the formula of parallelism with the notion of identity. In other words,

through Goethe’s reading of the Ethics we are witnessing, I would argue, his attempt

to construct a theory of the subject around Spinoza’s conception of nature. In

accordance with the dominant tendency of the Sturm und Drung tradition of thought,

which sustains the subjective dimension of the material world, Goethe too aims at

conceptualising nature in terms of autonomous subject. If in his philosophy the

transformation of nature into an independent subject is fully developed, Goethe

cannot apply entirely the same procedure to the Ethics. In order to read in the first

part of the Ethics the divinity and individuality of nature, Goethe has inevitably to

52

elude or omit some aspects of Spinoza’s theory of God-nature. It is precisely in this

context that his relation with Spinoza becomes critical.

Certainly, Goethe is not a scholar of Spinoza. He did not develop a

systematic study of the Ethics, instead we find different acknowledgements to

Spinoza throughout his writings. However, this does not indicate that the role of

Spinoza’s ontology within Goethe’s thought is less important. By contrast, the

themes of the Ethics are central and, at the same time, problematic within Goethe’s

speculation. As the title Goethe reads Spinoza given to this discussion suggests, the

reading of the Ethics does not mean that Goethe becomes a Spinozist either Goethe

defines Spinoza as his precursor. Rather, Goethe initiates through the reading of the

Ethics a dialogue, within which the figure of Spinoza is not manifest and yet

omnipresent.4 Goethe’s study of the Ethics does not conclude with an appropriation

of Spinoza’s thesis. Although Goethe undeniably attempts to view the Ethics as the

affirmation of a pantheist and divine vision of the world, nevertheless his analysis

cannot proceed any further in this direction. Goethe’s Spinozist phase remains

anchored on the divinisation of nature, whereas Goethe’s concern with the

constitution of nature as a proper subject coincides with the consolidation of his

alliance with the Sturn und Drung philosophy.5

In this fashion, we might discover echoes of the Ethics within Goethe’s theory of the

genesis of plants, which reveals Goethe’s form of mystical empiricism. Specifically,

in the Metamorphosis of Plants, in which Goethe states that every organism shares

the same original structure within an eternal becoming, I think, the lesson of the

Ethics resonates throughout the thread of the poem (Middlenton,1994: 155). I refer

particularly to the notions of the common essence for all singularities, and also the

definitions of nature-God as generative and eternal source of production, around

which Spinoza sets forth his conception of the unity of reality (Bell, 1984: 147-175).

4“After I looked around the whole world in vain for a means of developing my strange nature, I finally hit upon the Ethics of this man […]. Here I found the serenity to calm my passions; a wide and free view over the material and moral world seemed to open before me. Above all, I was fascinated by the boundless disinterestedness that emanated from him.” (Bell, 1984: 151). 5 Concerning Goethe’s theory of the subject, see particularly the critique offered by Deleuze and Guattari (2004b:392-425).

53

By contrast, in Goethe’s celebration of nature as divine subject, the Spinozist

element is less influential and yet still present. As the lyric recites

If the eye were not sun-like, How could it ever spy the sun? If God’s own power lay not inside us, How could divinity delight us? If all the things pour out lust for life, The smallest and the bigger stars, Yet all this striving, all this struggle Is eternal peace in God the Lord (Middlenton, 1994: 165)

Beside the lyrical structure of the writing, these verses, in my view, greatly

exemplify, on the one side, Goethe’s assimilation of Spinoza’s definition of God as

immanence, power and the theory of parallelism; on the other, Goethe’s treatment of

nature as a composite, however powerful, individual strongly reflects the Sturm und

drang themes, and thereby abandoning Ethics. These arguments raise more crucial

questions, which shape the entire relation of Goethe with Spinoza. This refers to why

Spinoza cannot be considered entirely a pantheist philosopher. Let us discuss the

impossibility of defining Spinoza as pantheist.

In order to construct the pantheist portrait of Spinoza, Goethe has to ignore Spinoza’s

definitions of necessity and, importantly, the absolute infinity of God. This implies

the omission of the determinist aspect from Spinoza’s theory of Substance, and

crucially, the vision of God-nature as a plane shaped by a variety of infinite attributes

and modes, upon which immanence and the formula of parallelism are grounded and

developed. By contrast, Spinoza’s notions of immanence, parallelism and power are

detached from the thesis of the absolute infinity and necessity of God, which leads

Goethe directly to deify Spinoza’s theory of nature. In this way, nature becomes God

in all but name, reintroducing the metaphysical themes within the Ethics. The

exclusion of the notions of the absolute and necessity from the analysis of the Ethics

has further and more fundamental implications. These refer to the loss of the multiple

and material dimension of reality, which are supported by the absolute and necessary

infinity of Substance. Thus, Goethe’s pantheist account of Spinoza’s conception of

54

nature lacks materiality, which means the exclusion of the actuality and power of the

attributes and modes that populate Spinoza’s vision of the sensible world.

Goethe’s exclusion of the absolute from the study of the Ethics involves the

assimilation of Spinoza’s thesis of nature on the pantheist position, which implies the

subjective and metaphysical definition of the material world. For this, the

propositions of immanence, power and the formula of parallelism taken in

themselves would certainly lead towards the divinisation of nature, and thus its

constitution as a form of subject. In turn, if nature has to be thought as a subject, this

reintroduces the argument of the free will within the system of reality, which would

contradict Spinoza’s refusal of contingency. By contrast, the theme of the absolute

allows Spinoza to overcome the question of the divinisation of nature and thus the

problem of the free will. As discussed in the previous section, the definition of the

absolute sets in motion a plane, which is plural, inescapable and fundamentally real.

The absolute plane of multiple and actual attributes prevents Spinoza’s conception of

nature from supporting any pantheist formula and thus any theory of the subject.

This involves the maintenance of the centrality of the material aspect of nature

within Spinoza’s ontology.

Taking into account these arguments, we might draw some general

conclusions. The analysis of the presence of Spinoza within Goethe’s philosophy

and, more generally the Romantic tradition of thought, has brought to light the

complexity of Spinoza’s theory of nature, which exceeds the paradigm of pantheism.

Through Goethe’s reading of the Ethics, we have learnt that the withdrawal of

Spinoza’s conception of nature-God from the Enlightenment philosophy does not

imply the inclusion of the Ethics within any mystical thesis of the subjective

meaning of the material world. If Spinoza is certainly not a precursor of rationalist

thought, equally he is not a pantheist philosopher. More rigorously, if Goethe thinks

of Spinoza’s account of nature as a pantheist vision of the world, this is possible only

by eluding the question of the absolute infinity of God. Absolute infinity gives

priority to the actual dimension of nature, bringing to light the materialist character

of Spinoza’s ontology.

55

It is Spinoza’s definition of absolute infinity that opens up to a vision of reality as a

multiple plane and not a divine subject, constructing ontology in a materialist way.

Without the analysis of Substance-nature as absolute infinity, Spinoza’s philosophy

would constantly lead one to vacillate between a rationalist and pantheistic

interpretation. The engagement of the philosopher Jacobi with Spinoza, discussed

below, in this regard, exemplifies this continuous oscillation between a rationalist

elaboration of Spinoza’s theory of Substance and a mystical one. It is to this that we

will now turn.

2.2 Jacobi’s portrait of the Ethics: The dilemma between rationalist and fatalist

vision of reality

The philosophy of Jacobi reflects the influences of different philosophical

movements. He was a contemporary of Goethe and inspired by him, but also he

supported the empiricist and rationalist positions inherited through the

Enlightenment. Therefore, Jacobi’s inconstant beliefs between a form of mysticism,

rationalism and empiricism leads to rather confused retrospective of his works.

Jacobi acquires a certain importance in relation to his Spinoza Letters, which caused

the “Pantheist controversy” as noted above. The work is mainly centred on a series

of correspondences between Jacobi himself and Mendelssohn discussing Lessing’s

affirmation of being a Spinozist (Jacobi, 1994:187). The philosophical relevance of

these letters concerns the definition Spinoza’s philosophy itself, whether or not

Spinozism should be considered as synonymous with a certain form of rationalism or

rather pantheism.

As we have seen above, for Goethe, Spinoza’s ontology unveils the pantheist vision

of nature. For him, Spinoza’s proposition VII on the ontological equality between

God and nature is translated into the assertion of the divine and powerful status of

the natural order. Jacobi, instead, reiterates the eighteenth-century definition of the

Ethics, claiming the rationalist and empiricist character of Spinoza’s philosophy. In

common with the Enlightenment position, Jacobi focuses to the definitions of

56

Substance as a self-caused union of necessity and freedom and the theory of

parallelism. These are the basis, in Jacobi’s view, upon which Spinoza’s strict

paradigm of rationalism is founded and developed.

The importance of discussing Jabobi’s reading of the Ethics concerns the distinct role

played by Spinoza within Jacobi’s own thought. The analysis of Spinoza’s theory of

God-nature impacts profoundly on Jacobi’s philosophical convictions, undermining

his beliefs on the power of reason and the authority of the empiricist method. The

determinist order of reality proposed by Spinoza, of which Jacobi approves, leads in

Jacobi’s philosophy to the recognition of the limits of human rationality in the

acquisition of universal truth. The impossibility of knowing and transforming reality,

as we will see, moves Jacobi towards certain fatalistic and mystical positions. More

accurately, the reading of Spinoza’s notion of Substance as necessity confronts

Jacobi with the problem of the advantage of the rationalist method for the

development of human life. The impenetrable structure of Spinoza’s nature (as he

sees it) brings Jacobi to question the consistency of science (Beiser, 1987: 80-90). It

is in this moment that Jacobi’s philosophy begins to oscillating between rationalist

and mystical theses. Taking into account these prerequisites, let us expand on the

main aspects of the dilemma posed by the Ethics to Jacobi.

As anticipated above, for Jacobi Spinoza is undeniably the greatest rationalist

thinker of the history of philosophy. Jacobi is persuaded that Spinoza’s theory of

Substance-nature is entirely pervaded by a determinist mechanism, within which the

role of human mind is central for unveiling its laws. Jacobi deduces the rationalist

constitution of the Ethics from the strict concatenations between causes and effects

affirmed in the Ethics, which is further corroborated by Spinoza’s affirmation of the

identity between thought and extension. Jacobi understands proposition VII of part II

of the Ethics as the definition of the rationality of nature. Given that the order and

connections of ideas is the same with the order and connection of things and also

thought and matter are equally two of the infinite attributes of God, Jacobi concludes

that Spinoza’s vision of the material world is driven by a solid and immutable

rationality. The importance of Spinoza’s ontology, in Jacobi’s analysis, resides on

57

the reinstatement of the primacy of the scientific method and the centrality of

empirical investigation for the attainment of knowledge. Following eighteenth-

century logic, he interprets the principle of universal causation espoused in the Ethics

as Spinoza’s affirmation of the autonomy of reason, which in turn corresponds to

Jacobi’s own theory (Jacobi, 1994: 187-188).

Up to this point, Jacobi’s treatment of the Ethics echoes the Enlightenment’s

explanation. Nevertheless, his discourse becomes progressively more indeterminate,

when he draws the implications of the paradigm of rationalism embodied by Spinoza

for the general foundation of philosophy. It is precisely in this moment that the doubt

of Jacobi about the certitude of reason emerges.

Jacobi recognises that the determinist philosophy of Spinoza leads directly to the

marginal status of the human being and the affirmation of the model of atheism

within society, which in turn imply the growth of fatalism as a doctrine. For him,

Spinoza’s denial of contingency within nature means the negation of human freedom

(Della Rocca, 2008: 283-288; Beiser, 1987: 83-90). If every phenomenon within the

universe is already pre-determined by the immutable laws of nature, Jacobi reflects,

what then is the place attributed to human beings? More accurately, for every

determinist system, Jacobi observes, human beings do not have any impact upon the

becoming of the sensible world. If this is the case, Jacobi questions why do we need

science and, more generally, why do we struggle with reasoning?

In order to answer these questions, Jacobi has to decide whether the maintenance of a

rationalist position is still justifiable, given the necessity of nature. Importantly, it is

the reading of the Ethics as a cogent rationalist system that confronts Jacobi with the

limits of the mind. It means that Jacobi does not oppose Spinoza’s vision of nature as

a place regulated by a firm principle of causation, which Jacobi himself supports.

Differently, Jacobi is more concerned with the concrete consequences of this system

upon the general understanding of the value of science and philosophy.

58

In the perfect determinist structure of the Ethics, Jacobi envisages the affirmation of

a fatalist conception of nature, which delineates Spinoza’s atheist philosophy. As

God is characterised by necessity and he also is inherent within nature, in Jacobi’s

reformulation, this inevitably means the effacement of God within the world, which

is in turn dominated by the laws of causation. In this light, the solution proposed by

Spinoza is the passive acceptance of the will of the higher reason (Jacobi, 1994:

189). If Spinoza’s rationalist paradigm ends up necessarily with the fatalist vision of

the world, then Jacobi’s own reflections on the determinist order of nature, which he

shares with Spinoza, moves him towards certain mystical positions (Jacobi, 1994:

193).

In order to prevent the growth of fatalist and atheist ideas that might emerge from a

possible affirmation of Spinoza’s ontology, Jacobi proposes a “salto mortale”

(literary “a mortal jump”) (Jacobi, 1994: 189). This refers to the suspension of the

rational faculty and the recourse to “unconditionally blind faith”. Whilst the

perseverance of the rational method exemplified by Spinoza produces exclusively

fatalist and atheist conceptions but not the attainment of truth, Jacobi’s

encouragement of a certain “blind faith” towards the becoming of reality would

introduce elements of contingency within the material world. This would recover the

status of human being from a marginal position to a more central one. For Jacobi, the

replacement of the ineluctability of the mechanism of nature with faith and

contingency is the only way in which the significance of individual actions and

thoughts can be preserved (Della Rocca, 2008: 283-288; Beiser, 1987: 83-92).

Concerning Jacobi’s portrait of Spinoza several questions arise. Although

many of the problems derived from Jacobi’s rationalist account of the Ethics reflect

the limits of the Enlightenment definition of the Ethics, Jacobi’s relation with

Spinoza raises a further important theme. This refers to Jabobi’s preoccupation with

the consequences of the Spinozist method of necessity for the re-conceptualisation of

philosophy and science. Specifically, Jacobi does not question the validity of the

rationalist aspect of the Ethics itself. What is at the stake in Jacobi’s entire

engagement with Spinoza is the risk of the consolidation of Spinoza’s monist

59

philosophy within the nineteenth-century tradition of thought. For Jacobi, the

implications of Spinoza’s ontology are the effacement of the importance of the

human being, which is overshadowed by the ineluctable supremacy of reason. Like

the Enlightenment philosophy, it is the definition of God as necessity and univocity

that lies at the very heart of Spinoza’s monist thought. Unlike the eighteenth-century

reading, this form of monism does not lead to materialist conceptions of history,

science and philosophy, but rather to fatalist beliefs and the devaluation of the role of

human being within the world.

In this light, Jacobi rightly observes that a rationalist vision of reality inevitably loses

the material aspect of nature and thus the centrality of human being. It offers an

understanding of nature as a static body, within which any possible transformation is

entirely avoided. Therefore, Jacobi in his study of Spinoza intuits the ontological

problem inherent within every paradigm of rationalism, including his model too,

which entails the tendency towards a form of repetition and the absence of

production. However, if Jacobi correctly envisages the limits of a rationalist

ontology, then the question is whether or not this argument can be applied to

Spinoza’s philosophy too. The problem arises as to how and why Spinoza becomes,

in Jacobi’s reading, a radical rationalist thinker? Does Spinoza’s theory of God-

nature lead solely to a fatalist position?

As with Goethe and the Enlightenment’s appropriation, the definition of the absolute

infinity of God, once more, sheds light on the difficulties emerging in the encounter

between Jacobi and Spinoza. As with the Enlightenment’s re-formulation of the

Ethics, Jacobi too derives the all-inclusive and absolute nature of God from

Spinoza’s claim of the necessity and self-generation of God. In Jacobi’s analysis, it is

necessity that poses the absolute infinity of God and not vice versa. This inevitably

leads him to understand Spinoza’s theory of Substance as the affirmation of the

dominance of an absolute mind upon human life, which in turn implies the loss of the

richness of expression of the material world. Following this logic, Spinoza’s

ontology would never be attuned to any materialist position. As we have already

discussed, it is the notion of the absolute that drives the entire system of the Ethics,

60

which posits the necessity of God. By definition, absolute infinity means the

multiplicity and actuality of the plane of reality, which is shaped by uncountable

attributes and modes. Spinoza’s attention to the priority of the absolute brings to light

an alternative mode of thinking the necessity of God-nature, which is through a

multiple plane.

Although Jacobi’s reading of the Ethics did not proceed further, he implicitly

brings about the discovery of the problematic relation between finite beings and the

infinite Being within Spinoza’s thesis of God. The dilemma faced by Jacobi

concerning the constitution of philosophy brings to light a more fundamental

question. This refers to the problem of the commencement in philosophy, whether or

not this occurs in a matter or the Concept. Schelling and Hegel, we will see below,

fully articulate these arguments. For Schelling, in his period of the philosophy of

Identity, nature is contemporaneous to the Concept, whereas for Hegel Thought is

prior to the object. In this dispute, both thinkers will engage with Spinoza’s theory of

Substance-nature, which affirms both reality and thought through the notions of the

absolute Being and immanence. In the following section, I draw attention to the ways

in which Spinoza’s notion of the absolute becomes the crucial and somewhat

disturbing question within Schelling and Hegel’s philosophical systems. It is through

Schelling and Hegel’s critique that we might be able to determine the implications of

thinking reality through transcendence and immanence.

61

3. German Idealism and the rejection of the Ethics

The Romantic movement favoured the growth of interest in philosophers such as

Spinoza and Leibniz within the philosophical tradition of German Idealism. German

Idealism reinstates the importance of these modern thinkers at their height, pointing

out their respective limits and perspectives. Regarding Spinoza, German Idealist

philosophy contributes to the establishment of a more rigorous method of analysing

the Ethics, focusing upon the foundation of his ontology itself. This implies the

recovery of the autonomy of Spinoza’s philosophy from the appropriations made by

the intellectual movements of the Enlightenment and the Sturm und Drung, which

have attuned the meaning of the Ethics on rationalist and pantheistic positions. In this

sense, the study of Spinoza’s paradigm of monism brings about the centrality of the

notions of immanence and the absolute within Spinoza’s ontology.

The renewal of interest in Spinoza’s notions of the absolute and immanence

derives from a more general discussion within late eighteenth-century German

philosophy concerning the re-foundation of the paradigm of philosophy itself. The

necessity of re-constructing the domain of philosophy emerges from the growing

awareness within German thought of the crisis and failure of the Enlightenment ideas

raised by the Romantic movement. German Idealism brings about the urgency of re-

positioning the importance of the value of reason, nature and the unity of reality

within philosophical speculation, which have been corrupted by the radicalisation of

eighteenth-century beliefs in scientific naturalism and rational criticism. Whilst the

former has caused the growth of materialist conceptions of nature and human being

based on the vision of the sensible world as a mere assemblage of physical

phenomena and also the refusal of notions such as eternity and freedom, the latter

has nurtured the expansion of fatalist and sceptic convictions about the certitude of

the rational judgment, as we have seen with Jacobi’s proposal of the “mortal jump”

(Beiser , 2000: 18-25; 2002: 1-16).

62

In order to recover the authority of thought and the status of nature, German Idealism

poses the need of re-signify the concept of reality itself. It is through the re-

theorisation of reality that more solid notions of humankind, matter and knowledge

might be established, and thereby alternative philosophical systems. More accurately,

German Idealist thought raises the crucial problem of the conceptualisation of the

commencement of reality. This involves the search for the principles and conditions

that lie at the very basis of the generation of the order of the real. This philosophical

gesture aims at the discovery of the system of production of reality, through which

the origin and ends of specific historical events, individuals and communities might

be revealed. The theme of how reality is produced engages a variety of crucial

notions such as the concepts of temporality, the configuration of space, individuality,

universality and the attainment of self-consciousness. German Idealist philosophy is

precisely concerned with the analysis of these arguments.

Given the complexity and indeterminacy of the notions involved within the theme of

the commencement of reality, German Idealism finds misleading both the deductive

and empiricist methods assumed by the Enlightenment and the pantheist formula

adopted by the Romantic wave of thought. By contrast, German Idealist draws

attention to metaphysical arguments as powerful sources for re-configuring the

meaning and production of reality. The rehabilitation of metaphysics within

philosophy brings about the resurgence of concepts such as transcendence, Being,

becoming, immanence and absolute as fundamental categories of thought, through

which the properties and finalities of the process of production of reality might be

uncovered. The rediscovery of metaphysics leads to articulate different and more

complex questions, which are concerned with the problems of the relation between

nature and thought, the essence of reality, the role of humankind and the final object

of the system of production. Strictly speaking, the main preoccupations of German

Idealist philosophers is whether the commencement of reality has to be related to

nature or rather a higher mind, and the function of human being within the this

process. The ways in which each philosopher addressed these problems give rise to

63

different intellectual positions, which runs from the transcendental idealism of Kant,

ethical idealism of Fichte and the absolute idealism of Schelling and Hegel.

Without entering into the vicissitudes of these various forms of Idealism, for

the strong connection with the ontology of Spinoza, I shall draw particular attention

to the main thesis elaborated within the intellectual movement of absolute idealism.

Although some of the themes developed within this movement have been anticipated

by authors such as Novails, Schlegel and Holderling, the rigorous systematization of

the paradigm of absolute Idealism is undeniably indebted to the works of Schelling

and Hegel. Despite their innumerable differences, Schelling and Hegel share the

conviction that reality has to be understood as Substance, from which a variety

distinct of individualities and modes of beings (such as time and space) are

generated. There are not independent existences within the order of real; rather each

element is interconnected with the other and its role responds to a specific intent

within the process of production (Beiser, 2002: 349-374; Guyer, 2000: 37-55).

Moving forward the themes advanced by the Enlightenment philosophy, Schelling

and Hegel are convinced that the system of reality is directed by a higher rationality,

within which each singularity is the concrete manifestation of this transcendent

archetype. For both thinkers, an awareness of the anatomy of this rational Being is

the task of philosophy, which has to formulate universal categories of thought able to

determine the process and objects of this system. It is in this context that their

respective approaches take different directions. If both philosophers develop monist

ontologies centred on the absolute essence of reality-Substance, it is the

understanding of the absolute itself that marks irremediably the divergence between

the two thinkers. For Hegel, as we will see, the absolute is the final result of a

process, where the Mind acquires consciousness through a series of dialectical

phases. Schelling, particularly in his period of transcendental naturalism, instead,

argues that nature is the absolute source of production, through which the “I” can

achieves awareness of its own existence.

64

For the manifest references to Spinoza’s definition of the absolute as a self-caused

and unitary Substance, both Schelling and Hegel engage in an intense debate with the

model of monism espoused in the Ethics. Both readings of the Ethics are focused

upon the interpretation of Spinoza’s notion of absolute infinity as well as the

definitions of immanence and parallelism. These arguments bring Schelling and

Hegel to question how Spinoza conceptualises the genesis and development of

reality by conceiving the absolute Being as a positive infinity, which embraces all its

predicates such as matter and thought. Moving from a Spinozist to a more

transcendental phase, Schelling will argue that Spinoza’s definition of the absolute

implies a static and meaningless vision of the world, which in turn produces a certain

form of fatalism. Hegel will develop one of the most vehement critiques to the

Ethics, defining Spinoza’s ontology as the negation of the world, a paradigm of

acosmism.

In order to examine Spinoza’s form of materialism, I think, an inquiry upon

Schelling and Hegel’s definition of the Ethics as the effacement of the world,

become crucial. This enables us to consider the implications of thinking reality

transcendentally or immanently, and examine the extent to which Spinoza’s ontology

of the absolute offers philosophical insights for the development of novel materialist

discourses. First, let us flesh out the engagement of Schelling with the Ethics.

65

3.1 Schelling and the abyss of Spinoza’s ontology of the absolute

Schelling is one of the most influential thinkers along with Hegel and Fichte within

the philosophical tradition of German Idealism. The reputation of Schelling within

the history of philosophy has been somewhat limited to a consideration of his model

of Idealism as transitional between Fichte and Hegel. Furthermore, Schelling’s

divergent positions have contributed to the growth of a certain suspicion about the

consistency of his philosophical project. By contrast, the variety of his ideas raises

fecund arguments, which have been discovered recently.6 These refer, among others,

to the multisided and powerful role of nature, the identity between Subject and

Object and the innovative account of absolute Being, which is understood as an

unconditional source of individualities, beings and movements.

Schelling’s multisided form of Idealism might be distinguished into three main

phases. These are the period of the “Philosophy of Nature”, which ascribes to nature

the status of an ontological Being, contrasting with rationalist and scientific theories.

The second phase is named the “Philosophy of Identity”, which develops an anti-

subjectivist account of the notion of absolute reality, and is embedded in the legacy

of Spinoza. The third one is usually referred to the writing The Age of the World,

which focuses upon the analysis of the opposing forces that determine the becoming

of the material world. These phases express the ways in which Schelling responds to

the crisis of the eighteenth-century certainty of reason, elaborating distinct

philosophical demands.

In the phase of the Philosophy of Identity, Schelling is fascinated by Spinoza’s

theory of absolute infinity. Schelling focuses upon Spinoza’s definition of the

6Concerning contemporary reading of Schelling, see particularly the recent collected essays edited by Normann and Welchman (2004), Zizek (1996), and Bowie (1993; 2003: 102-139).

66

absolute Substance, and specifically the ways in which Spinoza combines contingent

existences such as singular subjects, individual thoughts and historical events within

one and self-generated Being. However, the encounter with Spinoza becomes more

problematic, we will see, particularly when Schelling discusses the status ascribed by

Spinoza to finite beings, raising the fundamental question of the differentiation

within the absolute.

The centrality of Schelling’s engagement with the Ethics, for our discourse, concerns

the solutions and problems posed by Spinoza throughout the development of

Schelling’s philosophy. These entail to the question of thinking the material world as

a self-generative body shaped by a variety of actual and heterogeneous elements

within an absolute plane, which somewhat challenges Schelling’s conviction.

Furthermore, the presence of Spinoza within Schelling’s thought corresponds to two

distinct philosophical positions. In the period of the Philosophy of Identity and more

generally, the Philosophy of Nature, which reflects the assimilation of Spinoza’s

ontology, Schelling comes closer to certain contemporary materialist arguments than

Idealist assumptions. In his Spinozist period, Schelling conceives reality as

structured from a unitary principle of production, within which thought is not prior

and transcendent to the actuality of the universe. Rather, these are considered as two

expressions of reality. This suggests that Schelling ascribes to the material world a

productive and dynamic status. In contrast, the rejection of Spinoza’s philosophy

coincides with Schelling’s consolidation of the Idealist thesis. Therefore, an inquiry

into the encounter between Schelling and Spinoza might shed light on the model of

materialism supported by Spinoza’s ontology, and the extent to which this impacts

effectively upon Schelling’s thought.

In his phase of the Philosophy of Identity, to which I shall draw my attention,

Schelling’s concern is addressed to the question of the relation between the “I” and

the world. Specifically, Schelling questions whether it is the “I” that poses the

object-world or, rather it is the object that poses the “I”. If thought (the “I”)

constitutes the material world, then the concept produces the actual reality. If it is the

world that shapes the awareness of the Subject, this implies the reinstatement of

67

nature (the object) as a generative source of knowledge, meaning and individuality.

For the young Schelling, both solutions are unacceptable (1978: 15-31).

In order to overcome the dualism between the “I” and the object (the ideal and

actual), Schelling proposes an independent principle, which generates both thought

and matter. More rigorously, Schelling affirms that the relation between subject and

object emerges from a unitary Being, within which thought and extension are its

predicates. Schelling calls this unique Being “absolute identity” (Schelling, 1980:

Letter III). Absolute identity, Schelling explains, is a point (a source), from which

opposite and varied phenomena are developed within one, dynamic and eternal

system. The understanding of the absolute as a pure source of production, Schelling

sustains, is the basis, upon which the solution to the problem of the disclosure of

Being to the world might be revealed (Schelling, 1980: 110-116). The

undifferentiated essence of the absolute is the ground of the all possible forms of

individuality and, more generally, differences.7 It is in this moment that Schelling

moves away from the Idealist model, which postulates the priority of the Concept

transcendent to nature, and moves towards the themes of the Ethics.

3.2 Schelling encounters Spinoza

In contrast with the eighteenth-century interpretation of Spinoza as a rationalist

philosopher, Schelling is the first reader of the Ethics to liberate his definition of

Substance from the meaning of pure necessity (Schelling, 1988: 53-54; Toscano,

2004: 114-116). He conceives Spinoza’s theory of Substance as characterised by a

more complex mechanism, which includes a variety of aspects such as necessity,

eternity and contingency (Schelling, 1980: 63-69). For Schelling, the concept of

Being espoused in the Ethics has to be understood as an eternal source of forming

potencies, better, a pure activity, within which nature and thought are two

dimensions of one system, that is, the absolute.

7 Concerning Schelling’s notion of the principle of indifference, see particularly Deleuze (2004: 239-241).

68

As mentioned, the central preoccupation of Schelling is the foundation of a system,

which should embrace contemporaneously the power of the “I” and the actuality of

nature. In order to determine the production of reality without attributing the primacy

exclusively to the Subject or the object, Schelling seeks for the support of the Ethics.

For the centrality given to the notions of the absolute and the identity between

thought and extension, Spinoza is an obvious referent from the past. Schelling

discovers in Spinoza’s definition of the absolute and positive Being a powerful

category of thought, which escapes the dualist logic of the “I” and the “Non-I”

(Bowie, 1993: 15-17). In order to understand the central role played by Spinoza’s

ontology within Schelling’s period of Identity, we need first to return to Spinoza’s

definition of the absolute, in which he states

By God I mean an absolutely infinite being, that is, Substance consisting of infinite attributes, each of which expresses eternal and infinite essence. Explication. I say “absolutely infinite, not “infinite in its kind”. For if a thing is only infinite in its kind, one may deny that it has infinite attributes. But if a thing is absolutely infinite, whatever expresses essences and does not involve any negation belongs to its essence. (E.I, Def. VI)

In this definition Spinoza tells us that Substance is an absolute and positive infinity.

In the following explanation, Spinoza clarifies that the absolute dimension of

Substance derives from the uncountable attributes, by which infinity is formed (“for

if a thing is only infinite in its kind, one may deny it has infinite attributes”). By this

definition, attributes are not independent essences or properties of God such as

eternity, truth or good; instead, these are modes of Being, which are considered as

existences (E. I, Def. IV). It means that absolute infinity is directly related with the

dimension of the actual. More accurately, it is actuality itself.

In Schelling’s reading, the absolute becomes recognised as the core of Spinoza’s

paradigm of monism. Schelling conceives the category of the absolute presented in

the Ethics as the fundamental principle, which poses the unity of reality under an all-

invasive Being. In this way, Spinoza’s notion of the absolute is viewed as the

generative source of production of the universe, which embodies and actualises all

69

possible existences. Given his attention to the aspects of inescapability and

univocity, thus, Schelling considers Spinoza’s definition of absolute God solely in its

dimension of positive infinity. Importantly, this means that Schelling does not

deduce the meaning of Spinoza’s notion of the absolute from the multiplicity of the

attributes, which is affirmed in the explanation to definition VII of part I. As a

consequence, the theme of the commencement of reality emerges not from the

actuality and heterogeneity of the attributes but instead from a unique and all-

embracing Being. It is this understanding of the absolute as a unitary principle that

shapes entirely Schelling’s engagement with the Ethics from his initial appreciation

to the final rejection.

In order to construct his ontology of the absolute, Schelling nuances Being

with the features of the Spinozian Substance. In his assimilation of Spinoza’s theory

of Substance, Schelling defines the absolute as a positive and self-caused infinity, the

union of the ideal and the actual (Beiser, 2002: 465-564). Following the logic of the

Ethics, Schelling recognises that the disclosure of Being is not the move of the “I”

towards its objects, who reflects upon the actuality of the world. By the same token,

it is not the world that gives rise to the power of the concept. By contrast, the

disclosure of Being is an act of self-disclosure, through which the One, revealing

itself, unveils its predicates.8 In his phase of the Philosophy of Identity, the absolute

is a point indifferent (neutral) to its predicates, which unifies contrary aspects of

reality such as extension and thought. It follows that Subject and object are two

modes of expressing Being, which are equally inherent within the system of reality.

Given the identity between the predicates of Being, this implies that the action of

thinking is directly connected with the material dimension of reality and vice versa.

It means that the concept is grounded on the sensible world, which in turn becomes

acknowledged as a generative source of meanings.

The novelty of Schelling’s philosophical gesture resides precisely in his account of

the absolute. Schelling replaces the regulative role of the absolute with a constitutive

and dynamic status. This involves the treatment of the absolute as a pure activity, 8 An illuminating example of Schelling’s principle of indifference is the image of the volcanoes offered by Deleuze (2004:289).

70

which is not transcendent to the “I” and the object, but rather a more complex system

of production. The powerful function ascribed to the absolute undeniably marks out

Schelling’s withdrawal from the Idealist paradigm, for which absolute Being controls

and directs the becoming of the world. By contrast, in his Spinozist phase, I would

argue, Schelling reaches materialist tones, portraying the idea of the absolute as

powerful ground of thoughts, potentialities and bodies. Specifically, Schelling’s idea

of Being as the embodiment of all the determinations of the actual and the ideal to

some extent anticipates contemporary materialist ontology concerned with a more

extensive and dynamic vision of matter and the becoming of reality.

Schelling and the end of the alliance with Spinoza: The rise of nihilism

If Schelling’s non subjective account of Being seems to as advance a materialist

thesis, the successive steps towards the constitution of absolute Identity reveal

instead a more ambiguous position. This refers to Schelling’s analysis of the relation

between the One and its parts. Having affirmed the principle of neutrality as the

commencement of reality, Schelling passes to investigate the ways in which

heterogeneous beings emerge from an undifferentiated Being. Specifically, Schelling

poses the question of the differentiation of the absolute. Considered in itself, he

recognises, the point of indifference does not directly explain the mechanism,

through which diverse modes of reality such as thought and matter coexist within

one powerful order. In this sense, the notion of unconditional Being indicates solely

that the absolute is a pure source of activity, from which the genesis and becoming of

reality proceed. This does not describe how the unconditional power of Being

produces the world, and especially the status of the ideal and the actual within the

absolute. In other words, although the point of indifference depicts the absolute as an

extremely dynamic and generative being, this still leaves unresolved the problem of

the meaning of the ideal and the actual and how they operate. The awareness of this

is crucial for determining the mode in which any form of individuality such as

thoughts, bodies, time and space populate the boundless territory of the absolute, and

also the extent to which these impact upon the development of reality.

71

In order to re-consider the question of the actual and the ideal from an alternative

perspective, Schelling re-draws attention the Ethics, focusing particularly upon the

theory of parallelism. As mentioned already, by the formula of parallelism Spinoza

claims that “the order and connection of ideas is the same with the order and

connections of things” (E. II, prop. VII). For this, Spinoza intends that Substance is

formed equally by the power of matter and thought, and these are developed through

a similar process. Spinoza’s notion of parallelism offers to Schelling fecund

arguments, upon which the dilemma between the actual and the ideal might be re-

positioned within a novel ontological paradigm.

Schelling, once more, follows the lesson of the Ethics, in attempting to integrate the

formula of parallelism within his model of Being. In this case, however, his move

will not generate the positive results that occurred at the beginning of the

conceptualisation of the point of indifference. It is through this gesture of further

adopting the notions of the Ethics that the dialogue between Schelling and Spinoza

becomes considerably critical, through which the conceptual impossibility of

incorporating Spinoza’s ontology within Schelling’s paradigm of the absolute

Identity will come to light. The problems encountered by Schelling in his

appropriation of the theory of the parallelism prepare the terrain to the definitive

rupture with the philosophy of Spinoza and the return to the Idealist tradition.

If Schelling has been able to transfer comfortably the definition VI of the absolute

infinity from the Ethics to his Philosophy of Identity, the theory of parallelism will

not resolve Schelling’s concern with the actual and the ideal. In contrast, this re-

signifies entirely Schelling’s engagement with Spinoza, impacting also upon the

definitive systematisation of the ontology of the absolute Identity. More accurately,

Schelling’s difficulty with the paradigm of parallelism is not the understanding of the

formula itself, but rather the mode in which Spinoza combines the concept of

absolute infinity with the similarity between nature and thought. This confronts and

somewhat disorients Schelling’s convictions of the essence of the absolute and the

meaning of Identity.

72

Passing from an initial influential position, in this moment, the presence of Spinoza

becomes perceived as a problem, which brings about the impasse of Schelling in

fully conceptualising the plane of reality proposed in the Ethics. It is in this phase

that the two philosophies of the absolute take opposing directions. Whilst Schelling’s

ontology of absolute Identity culminates in a nihilist move, the climax of Spinoza’s

conception of absolute infinity is the affirmation of the multiplicity of the actual.

Schelling rightly reads, on the one side, the theory of the parallelism between

thought and extension as the recovery of the status of nature from the position of

mere object to the constitutive element of Substance, which shapes and further

actualises its power. On the other, for Schelling the model of parallelism means the

re-signification of thought, which considerably reduces its supremacy upon the

material world. As result, the plane of reality is a unitary system, which is nuanced

by complex confluences of thought and matter. Therefore, in Schelling’s view,

Spinoza resolves the problem of the actual and ideal in a precise manner, defining

these as functions of an all-inclusive being.

As anticipated above, Schelling’s difficulty emerges when he connects this

conception of the ontological equality between thought and extension to the

preceding definition VI of the absolute infinity. The absolute mediated through the

theory of parallelism assumes the meaning of the identity of contraries. In this way,

Schelling interprets Spinoza’s claim of the unity of reality in terms of the identity of

opposing dimensions, which in turn means the understanding of the difference

between attributes characterised by negation. The importance of this interpretation

resides in the implications this has upon Schelling’s own development of an ontology

of the absolute.

Bearing in mind this conception of Spinoza’s plane as identity, Schelling applies

Spinoza’s notions of parallelism and absolute infinity to his unconditional Being.

This attempt confronts Schelling with the problem of the cogency of the “I” and the

object in relation to Being. More precisely, if Being means the identity of contraries,

the problem raised by Schelling is whether the predicates of reality persevere to exist

73

after its gesture of self-disclosure. Put differently, Being’s act of self-disclosure is the

realisation of the principle of identity, whereas the affirmation of its predicates

involves the maintenance of differences and oppositions within the realm of the

absolute. Thus, the problem arises as to whether the modes of being and Being can

coexist. For Schelling, the actualisation of absolute identity implies directly the

annihilation of both the “I” and the object. It is in this moment that Schelling’s

ontology of Identity enters the threshold of the dark night of the absolute, as Hegel

later will comment. This nihilist tension coincides also with his impasse in fully

following the arguments of the Ethics.

Spinoza’s theory of Substance presents to Schelling the question of thinking the

absolute as affirmation of both the One and its parts, which greatly exceeds the

identity of contraries. As we have seen, for Spinoza absolute infinity means the

multiplicity of its attributes, which are existences. Therefore, the absolute involves

the notion of actuality. The inclusion of the concept of the actual within the realm of

the absolute indicates the difference between this model of the absolute with that of

Schelling own formulation of absolute identity. If absolute infinity is the actuality of

the attributes, this cannot be thought as indifferent or neutral to its predicates. For the

Ethics, absolute infinity emerges from the actuality and multiplicity of its predicates.

In this light, thought and extension form the cogency of the absolute and not vice

versa. It follows that the formula of parallelism presented in part II of the Ethics does

not delineate the gesture of disseminating singularities within the absolute but rather

its actualisation. In Schelling, instead, the path of Being towards the absolute

proceeds through the dissolution of all determinations of thought and nature within

the unconditional domain of Being. This inevitably leads him to postulate the

primacy of Being over its predicates, which consequently acquire a marginal role.9

Although Schelling definition of the absolute is not transcendent to both nature and

thought, nevertheless this is viewed as different to both dimensions. As result, in

order to maintain the absolute as identity of contrary terms, Schelling is drawn to

9 For different and thoughtful readings of Schelling’s form of nihilism as an ontology of pure activity, production and multiplicity, see particularly Toscano (2004: 106-124) and Zikek (1996: 11-91; 2004: 33-41).

74

efface thought and extension. Given that the point of indifference is qualitatively

different from its predicates, for Schelling, the union of the two sides of reality

within one order means precisely the disappearance of subject and object. In this

way, Schelling re-formulates Spinoza’s claim of the correspondence between nature

and God as the annihilation of all determinations that reality might assume. Whilst

Spinoza’s notion of the positive absolute depends on the multiplicity of the

attributes, Schelling’s concept of absolute identity poses itself through the negation

of its specifications.

As he declares,

Hence, if I posit all in the subject, I thus deny all of the object. Absolute causality in me does away with all objective causality as objective for me. In widening the limits of my world, I narrow those of the objective world. If my world as mine no longer had any limits, then all objective causality as such would be annihilated for me. I should be absolute. In criticism, my vocation is to strive for immutable selfhood, unconditional freedom, unlimited activity. Be! Is the supreme demand of criticism. (Schelling, 1980: 192)

In this advocacy of nihilism, Spinoza, certainly, is no longer present. However,

Schelling’s nihilistic gesture raises crucial themes. As anticipated above, in his

reading of the Ethics Schelling encounters the problem of the conceptualisation of

the absolute as pure actuality, multiplicity and production. Specifically, in the

definition of the absolute Spinoza warns his reader that it is the heterogeneity of the

attributes that lies at the very heart of absolute infinity. Schelling, we have seen,

follows Spinoza on the necessity of posing reality as a unity of the actual and the

ideal. For Schelling the disclosure of Being is based on the absolute identity of

contraries, through which singular potentialities are differentiated. However, moving

forwards Spinoza’s theory of parallelism, Schelling is drawn to the annihilation of

every form of subjectivity. The question arises as whether it is Spinoza’s definition

of the absolute that leads one inevitably to suppress the multiplicity of reality. In

other words, the problem is whether or not Schelling’s form of nihilism derives from

his alliance with Spinoza.

In the Ethics, we have analysed how the actuality of the attributes poses the absolute

infinity of Substance. Thus, this notion of the absolute assigns to the attributes the

75

role of constituting Substance as absolute infinity. Given the central status of the

attributes, the realisation of the absolute does not entail the loss of the modes of

Being. Instead, such realisation corresponds to the further enhancement of the

attributes (Macherey, 1997: 71-85; Deleuze, 1992: 41-82). As attributes are

existences and not autonomous essences, the absolute is a pure actuality.

Importantly, this actuality is not an undifferentiated reality neither is it a uniform

identity, but rather an extremely heterogeneous and multiple plane. In this sense,

Spinoza’s claim of the parallelism between nature and God, thought and extension is

not the identity and consequent annihilation of these within the all-invasive Being as

Schelling suggests. By contrast, this formula of parallelism indicates the multiple

ways in which absolute infinity is incessantly nuanced by a variety of heterogeneous

beings. Assuming that there is no suppression, even potential, of reality and

individualities behind the Ethics, the question still remains, how does Schelling pass

from the Spinozian absolute to the model of nihilism?

The mains problems of Schelling’s engagement with Spinoza derive from two

fundamental themes, I would argue, which draw Schelling towards the nihilist thesis.

These are, firstly, the argument of the commencement of reality, which involves the

notion of the disclosure of Being, whether from the concept, matter or self-

generation; and secondly, the question of the meaning given by Schelling to the

concept of difference, which characterises the relation between singularities.

Schelling considers Spinoza’s notion of the absolute from the perspective of positive

infinity. This implies the undervaluation of the status of the attributes, upon which

the cogency of the absolute relies. In this light, Schelling is persuaded that Spinoza’s

absolute Substance means an all-inclusive Being, which embodies the various

determinations of reality. This leads him to conceive Substance greater than its parts,

which in turn involves its detachment from the attributes. For Schelling, Spinoza

postulates the commencement of reality from a unitary Being, which unifies its

predicates within an undifferentiated and positive infinity. Schelling, thus, deduces

that the theory of the absolute proposed in the Ethics is the affirmation of the

principle of identity. Schelling’s attention to the aspect of positive infinity has a

further implication. This refers to his understanding of the absolute as the disclosure

76

of Being to the world, which crucially involves the affirmation of the difference,

temporal, spatial and ontological, between this and the attributes. As result,

Spinoza’s theory of Substance will necessarily mean a static system, within which

the modes of being such as matter and thought acquire a marginal role.

By contrast, if we begin our inquiry upon Spinoza’s formula of the absolute from the

explanation to definition VI, we discover that the absolute is not the disclosure of

Being to world; and also the absolute dimension of Substance does not derive from a

principle of identity, but instead from the conditions of multiplicity and

heterogeneity of its attributes. This allows Spinoza to consider Substance as qua-

disclosed, which means already unfolded through and within its predicates. To put

this in a more Schellingean manner, we might say, in the Ethics it is the absolute God

that is scattered in all its attributes and not these in the boundless territory of

Substance. The conception of the absolute as already disclosed through its

determinations (mode and attributes) indicates a plane nuanced by a variety of

thoughts, actions, meanings and bodies, which suggests the idea of Substance as

essentially dynamic, multiple and complex.

The theme of the centrality of attributes and modes within the realm of absolute

infinity leads our discussion to the second difficulty experienced by Schelling in his

assimilation of the Ethics. This refers to the ways in which Schelling conceives the

difference between attributes, which affects his understanding of Spinoza’s model of

parallelism and also Schelling’s own nihilist position. Schelling thinks the difference

between predicates of Being characterised by opposition. Although singularities

equally refer to one and absolute principle, for Schelling these are opposing aspects

of reality. In this way, the couples of the actual and the ideal, or the “I” and the

object are contrary terms, which fulfil different functions within the becoming of

Being. It is for this reason, in my view, that the self-disclosure of Being, which

corresponds to the affirmation of the principle of identity, inevitably implies the

annihilation of all its predicates. More accurately, given that singularities are viewed

as contrary elements and Being is the identity of contraries, the realisation of the

absolute identity implies the effacement of any form of individuality. For the

77

attention addressed to Being, in the period of the Philosophy of Identity, Schelling

advances nihilist claims, which signal his passage from a certain Spinozian-

materialist discourse towards a more dialectical and transcendental approach. In the

mature work of The Age of the World, Schelling’s return to the Idealist model

initiated in the Philosophy of Identity is definitely realised. In this writing Schelling

focuses to the genesis, anatomy and becoming of universe. Although Schelling’s

interest is directed not to the meaning of Being, but the forces that govern the world,

this expresses the definitive consolidation of his vision of all the modes of reality as

contrary elements. In the case of The Age of the world, Schelling envisages the

mechanism, from which the world emerges, characterised by opposing phases.

It is through this paradigm of difference that Schelling reads the Ethics, especially

the theory of parallelism between thought and matter. For him, consequently

Spinoza’s definitions of the attributes and modes, thought and extension proceed

through opposing movements, which fragment the unity of absolute reality. In this

light, Schelling interprets the formula of parallelism as the dispersion of differences

between predicates of Being within the positive infinity of Substance. It follows that

Spinoza’s conception of the absolute developed in the absence of negation through

Schelling’s eyes becomes the dissolution of all determinations of matter and thought

within an all-inclusive Being. If this portrait of Spinoza’s category of the absolute

fully meets Schelling’s search for a solid principle of absolute identity, in the

conclusive stages of his intellectual path Spinoza’s system of reality will be defined

as lost in its immobility. Having assumed the dynamics between attributes in the

Ethics shaped by opposing elements, the emergence of the philosophical interest in

the status of individuality and the becoming of the world draws Schelling necessarily

towards the dismissal of Spinoza’s ontology as the effacement of singularities and

the cogency of the world.

As we will analyse in more details in chapter II, Spinoza addresses the theme of the

difference between attributes and modes of Substance from an alternative

perspective. In the Ethics, Spinoza tells us that particularities (attributes and modes)

have a common essence, which is the one of Substance. These actualise the essence

78

of God-nature. Given that singularities do not differ from one another by opposing

essences, Spinoza puts forward the idea of a modal difference. By a modal difference

Spinoza mainly means that each being expresses a distinct mode of reality.

Singularities are formed through a specific confluence of various levels of reality,

which are actual, heterogeneous and fundamentally multiple. This conception of

difference allows Spinoza to overcome the problem of the absolute essence of

Substance and the heterogeneity of attributes and modes. As particulars are not

opposed reciprocally, the affirmation of absolute identity does not imply their

effacement, but rather the further expansion of the grade of complexity (multiplicity)

of the real.

Taking into account these arguments, we might raise some more general

reflections upon the encounter between Schelling and Spinoza. In the history of the

affirmation of Spinoza’s philosophy, Schelling represents undeniably a crucial reader

of the Ethics. From his praise to the refusal of Spinoza’s ontology, Schelling brings

to light important themes developed through the propositions of the Ethics. Schelling

discovers the great complexity and originality of Spinoza’s plane of reality, which

exceeds both the determinist mechanism supposed by the thinkers of the

Enlightenment and the subjective account acclaimed within the circle of Romantic

philosophers. Schelling’s engagement with Spinoza brings about the discovery of

Spinoza’s theory of absolute Substance as a complex system, which introduces a new

awareness of the meaning and potentialities of reality. Spinoza presents to the young

Schelling, concerned with the re-foundation of the paradigm of the absolute identity,

an absolute infinity, which does not proceed through a linear mechanism of cause

and effect, or an irrational and divine force. It is, instead, an expansive source of

production, which grounds and further develops singularities such as attributes and

modes. Schelling tells us that definition VI of part I of the Ethics unveils a vision of

Being as a pure activity, which articulates an innovative response to the question of

the disclosure of Being. The originality of Spinoza’s philosophical gesture resides in

his account of the commencement of reality not as the move of the “I” or the object

but instead the principle of identity. This principle of identity, in Schelling’s view,

unifies contrary predicates of Being, overcoming in this way the dilemma between

79

the actual and the ideal. Schelling rightly observes that Spinoza gives equal

importance to both sides of reality, which implies a quite different understanding of

the meaning and role of thought and matter. Therefore, the notion of absolute infinity

offers to Schelling, in the phase of the Philosophy of Identity, fundamental

theoretical instruments for constructing his ontology of the absolute. Following the

logic of the Ethics, Schelling poses the genesis of reality not from the “I” or the

object, the ideal or the actual, but instead from an independent basis, which embraces

its predicates. This leads him to define the disclosure of Being as a self-disclosure,

through which its affirmation coincides with the annihilation of all its parts. It is in

this moment that Schelling begins moving away from Spinoza’s ontology and returns

to an Idealist model.

In order to examine the form of materialist ontology proposed by Spinoza, I think

that Schelling’s progressive withdrawal from the Ethics acquires more significance

than his alliance. The impasse of Schelling in fully assimilating Spinoza’s conception

of the absolute indirectly opens up to the alternative meaning given to the notion of

actuality by Spinoza. This refers to the constitution of the absolute as a multiple

plane, which importantly does not embrace or unify the actual dimension of reality.

By contrast, it is the actual itself, within which particulars are the constitutive

elements of the absolute. This brings about the discovery of the the material world as

a powerful place of transformation, heterogeneity and becoming.

Developing further Schelling’s mature critique of Spinoza’s ontology, Hegel too will

define the ontology espoused in the Ethics as meaningless system. Hegel undeniably

represnts one of the most vehement denials of Spinoza’s philosophy, describing

Spinoza’s notion of the absolute as an abyss. An inquiry into Hegel’s reading of the

Ethics is crucial for determining the ways in which Spinoza introduces problems and

alternative solutions within Hegel’s ontology of transcendence. Furthermore, the

focus to Hegel’s reading of the Ethics might delineate the extent to which Spinoza’s

theory of absolute Substance challenges the certainty of the Hegelian logic of

dialectics. It is to this that I now turn.

80

4. Hegel and the ban of the Ethics: The question of the absolute

Hegel personifies the main thesis of German Idealism, whose influence has

dominated various areas of the history of thought from ontology, logics and

epistemology to politics. Hegel systematises and further develops the dominant

concerns of the German Idealist tradition of thought, moving forward, for example,

the Fichetean theme of the power of the Subject and Schelling’s interest in the

essence of nature. Specifically, Hegel’s inquiry is addressed to the re-foundation of

the ontology of the absolute, which should articulate alternative responses to the

questions of the meaning of subject, object, thought, matter and, more generally, the

commencement of reality.

In order to re-signify the paradigm of absolute Idealism, Hegel proposes the

establishment of a system structured through a dialectical process, within which the

ontological categories of transcendence, immanence, negation, identity, becoming

and individuation acquire new meanings and roles. This refers to the vision of the

genesis and development of reality traversed by the inescapable dialectical logic of

thesis, antithesis and synthesis (aufgehoben), each of which expresses a specific

moment of consciousness of the mind. Hegel locates human history precisely within

these states of consciousness, within which the third one (synthesis) integrates and

surpasses the first two. Hegel’s vision of history and human events inaugurates a new

course of studying social phenomena of the past, individuality, art and politics,

which has been largely assimilated by successive intellectual traditions. Even

philosophies emerging as counter systems to the Hegelian model such as Marxist

philosophy have adopted at least part of the dialectic method.

Given the inheritance of numerous philosophical movements within the Hegelian

paradigm, the study of Hegel’s system has represented an unavoidable step for

analysing the origins of many contemporary waves of thought, attributing to his

ideas an uncontested central position within the history of philosophy. Furthermore,

81

the influence of Hegel’s arguments has impacted not only on later philosophers such

as Marx, Adorno and Habermas but also on the understanding of previous thinkers

such as Descartes and, over all, Spinoza. Hegel has offered a very rigorous exegesis

of past philosophical models from the Ancient Greek period to the Modern age,

whose re-reading has been pivotal for various successive scholars. Related

particularly to Spinoza, Hegel launches one of the most fierce campaigns against the

illusions of the Ethics, which had had an enormous resonance through the history of

ideas (Macherey, 1979: 17-40). Hegel’s critique has been crucial for the affirmation

of Spinoza’s thesis in many different ways. These refer, on the one hand, to the

marginal position of the Ethics within the history of ideas derived from Hegel’s

analysis. On the other, the vehemence of Hegel’s exegesis has favoured the growth

of interest in Spinoza’s ontology from those philosophies, which were opposing the

Idealist paradigm.

In this light, Hegel’s refusal of Spinoza’s arguments has incidentally brought about

the re-discovery of the great modernity of the Ethics especially in recent years. Given

the multisided impact of Hegel’s interpretation of the Ethics, two questions

immediately arise as what are the origins of his ban of Spinoza’s model and why

such intensity? In order to examine these questions, a preliminary discussion of the

general structure, claims and objectives of Hegel’s philosophy is essential. This will

delineate the conceptual perspective, from which his critique of the Ethics emerges,

and also the ways in which Spinoza becomes inevitably the disturbing interlocutor

within the development of Hegel’s paradigm of absolute Idealism.

82

Hegel’s paradigm of absolute Idealism10

Hegel’s ontological inquiry is characterised by two fundamental elements, around

which his entire system is constructed. These are, firstly, a pervasive use of the

dialectical logic and, secondly, the category of the absolute. The dialectical method

directs the general organisation of his philosophy: the Logic, the Philosophy of

Nature and the Philosophy of Spirit. Similarly, the Phenomenology of Spirit, which is

the introduction to the Science of Logic, follows rigorously the dialectical procedure.

The adoption of dialectics responds to Hegel’s need for the re-foundation of

philosophy as an objective and demonstrable science.

The importance of Hegel’s use of the dialectics is that he extends the dialectical

method from the epistemological sphere to ontology. In Hegel’s reformulation,

dialectics does not only entail the possibility of developing true judgements, but also

a more complex system of production of reality, from which history, art, religion and

society derive. This delineates the path of thought towards the attainment of the

Absolute Knowledge, within which contradictory terms (thesis and antithesis) are

constitutive elements of a higher truth (Burbidge, 1993: 86-100; Forster, 1993: 130 -

170). In other words, Hegel envisages an ultimate cause beyond singular events,

which explains the emergence of every historical phenomenon. It follows that the

strategy of the mind is precisely its tension towards the absolute, better to become

absolute truth. This implies a quite different understanding of the category of the

absolute, which is not considered as the essence of Being or the moment of its

disclosure to the world, instead, as the conclusive phase of more complex process.

The absolute is the result, not the beginning, of the struggle of the mind for

becoming truth. This idea of the absolute is the cornerstone of Hegel’s paradigm of

Idealism (Beiser, 2005: 51-79). It is this conception of the absolute that lies at the

very heart of Hegel’s refusal of Spinoza’s ontology. Before analysing Hegel’s

10 Taking into great consideration the complexity of the Phenomenology of Mind and differences between this and the Science of Logic, a discussion on Hegel’s philosophy as such is not the material of this section, rather our focus will be an analysis of Hegel’s critique of the Ethics. Hence, I will give a general account of Hegel’s system, including the main themes of both the Phenomenology of Mind and the Science of Logic.

83

engagement with the Ethics, let us discuss in more detail his model of absolute

Knowledge.

Hegel offers a very innovative genealogy of the ontological and

epistemological constitution of the Mind, which is articulated through conceptual

phenomena (noumena). These express different degrees of consciousness, through

which the Mind-Spirit progresses towards the attainment of self-consciousness:

Absolute Knowledge. In this process, the Mind is not assumed as a static category,

from which reality proceeds as past and other Idealist models supposed. For Hegel,

the Mind is an extremely dynamic and powerful principle, which is the ground of

movements, transformations and meanings. More accurately, the various levels of

consciousness of the Mind activate new flowings of time, space, individualities and

tension, which move forward the system of production of knowledge (Williams,

2001: 27-32). In this sense, Absolute Knowledge means the affirmation of the

autonomy of the Mind from apparent constraints, and thereby the recognition of the

external world as part of its generative power.

In the Phenomenology of Mind, Hegel investigates the phases of consciousness of the

Mind, whereas the analysis of Absolute Knowledge is the core of the Science of

Logic. Following the thread of the Phenomenology of Mind, the rise of Spirit towards

the Absolute Knowledge proceeds through moments of consciousness (broadly

Subjective, Objective and Absolute Spirit), within which conceptual events favour

the advancement of the Spirit towards self-consciousness. In each stage of

consciousness, the Spirit or Mind incorporates and improves on the recognition of

the contents of its knowledge, passing from the perception of the self to its certainty

(Absolute Knowledge). The conceptual events structured through theoretical figures

as the “unhappy consciousness” and historical societies from Greece to Hegel’s time

delineate a particular equilibrium of the Mind, which is characterised by a diverse

confluence of time and space, individualities and meaning. The role of these

conceptual personae is the gradual unveiling of the essence of consciousness,

through which the reconciliation of the unconscious Spirit with the objects of its

knowledge is realised.

84

Importantly, the process of consciousness is guided by an immanent reason (Hegel,

1967:115). Hegel gives a very innovative account of the rational mechanism, which

traverses the production of knowledge. This refers to the recovery of the conception

of the rational system from the Enlightenment tradition of thought, which has

narrowed its meaning to a mere series of mechanical rules and predictable

phenomena. Although Hegel shares with Enlightenment philosophers the conviction

that reality is ordered through rationality and not through obscure forces, this is not a

set of mechanical laws. For him, rationality derives not from science but from logic,

precisely dialectics. This allows Hegel to consider rationality as an extremely

productive and dynamic process, which is formed by expansive movements of

transformation, tension and meaning. This understanding of the rational system is the

ground of the genesis and becoming of the mind, which governs the passage from

one state to the others (Hegel, 1967: 10-46).

Following the dialectical system, these moments of consciousness are structured as

terms of a syllogism, within which any category (thesis) posits and collapses in its

contradiction (antithesis) that in turn seek a further category to generate a new mode

of contradiction. The new concept, in this case the phase of consciousness, is more

complex and reconciles these opposites by incorporating and expanding these. The

dialectical synthesis between thesis and antithesis is the fundamental moment within

Hegel’s Phenomenology. This is not a mere mathematical addition of thesis and

antithesis, rather the first two terms of the syllogism are sublated (aufgehoben) into

the third one.

In this light, the disclosure of Being in its modes (Nature, Thought, State or History)

is moulded though and within the opposition of subjective spirit (the unconscious

moment) with its objective counterpart (the contents of its knowledge), within which

consciousness, initially, discovers the object of its knowing as disagreeing with its

constitution. Constituting the dialectical antithesis, the objective spirit is the crucial

phase towards the attainment of self-consciousness. The objective spirit plays the

pivotal role of revealing the real object of comprehension to the subjective mind,

85

through which the latter passes from the condition of self-contemplation towards the

meditation upon the objects of reality. This sets in motion a process, through which

the subjective spirit begins with searching for the identity between its self-reflective

knowledge with that of the Objective Spirit. It is precisely the moment of negation

that opens up to the achievement of self-consciousness (aufgehoben). The

recognition between the object of knowledge and the mind gives rise to the

acquisition of the Absolute Knowledge. This is, thus, conceived as a dialectical

synthesis, which succeeds by a sort of struggle between contrary conditions of

Being.

In this drama of syllogistic personae, nature is the embodiment of the objective

knowledge, whose role is fundamental. It is the antithesis of the subjective mind,

which opposes the one-sided thought of the mind with the contingency of the world.

This is, thus, the negation of thought, through which the subjective mind,

transcending its self-reflective consciousness, achieves a more complex state of

knowledge. The new degree of knowledge attained by the mind derives from the

subjective mind’s gesture of sublating the actuality of the world in the really created

category of thought. Therefore, nature as the medium term is the ground, upon which

Absolute Knowledge might be achieved (Hegel, 1967: 46-79). It is in this context

that Hegel’s position becomes considerably controversial. If Hegel seems as giving a

central position to nature as the embodiment of the real contents of knowledge,

nevertheless this is the medium term of a dialectical triad, which has to be eclipsed

within a further dimension.

Therefore, two main questions immediately arise. Firstly, what is the very meaning

of nature within Hegel’s model of Idealism? And secondly, given that nature is

assumed as the medium term within the dialectical mechanism that has to be

incorporated within a further category, the problem arises as regarding which

elements of the world of pure actuality might persevere in the domain of the

Absolute Knowledge, once it is reached? These themes of the status of nature and its

relation to mind have nurtured a myriad of philosophical positions, each of which has

proposed thoughtful explanations concerning the value of the Objective Spirit within

86

Hegel’s philosophy. Without venturing into a detailed analysis of the debate upon

Hegel’s philosophy of nature, for the purpose of this chapter, we need to consider the

ways in which the notion of nature has been interpreted, and also the difficulties

inherent within the dialectical method.

Many post-Hegelian thinkers (for example Croce, Gentile, Adorno and Marcuse,)

have claimed that objective spirit acquires a crucial position within the path of mind

towards Absolute Knowledge, envisaging a powerful materialist component within

the Idealist structure of Hegel’s thought. Given that the actual world holds on to the

contents of absolute mind, nature plays a pivotal role within the thread of the

Phenomenology. This refers to the attainment of self-consciousness, without which

subjective mind would remain merely contemplative. In contrast with this materialist

approach, post-modern thought has fiercely rejected the model of nature and, more

generally, the ontology of the absolute proposed by Hegel. Developing further both

Marx and Nietzsche’s anti-Idealist discourses, post-modern critique (Althusser,

Deleuze, Foucault, Agamben recently) has pointed to the position of negativity given

by Hegel to nature. This implies the effacement of the multiple potentialities

embodied by the material world. As nature is the negative term within the Hegelian

triad, this is not a constitutive element of the Absolute Knowledge; it is merely

device of the mind. It simply mediates between self-reflective knowledge and the

absolute, disclosing objects to the mind. This function of disclosure reality does not

involve the production of knowledge, which inevitably leads to assume the

superiority of the Ideal over the actual.

This interpretation of Hegel’s notion of nature as a place of negativity has driven

post-modern thought to cast doubts on the entire paradigm of Absolute Knowledge.

The critique has been directed to the adoption of the dialectical method for the

understanding of reality. The vision of the genesis and becoming of the mind

developed through antithetical terms suggests that a certain logic of lack guides the

system of reality, within which each element expresses a state of deprivation and

dependency from its contrary counterpart and these in turn from the moment of

synthesis. More accurately, the problem of Hegelian dialectics is that considered in

87

themselves singularities lack autonomy, and need to be sublimated in a higher Being

to acquire cogency. In this way, the commencement of reality expresses not the

power of the “I” to produce the world but rather a gesture of poverty, from which the

mind begins its journey towards the absolute. The realisation of Absolute Knowledge

is thus the result of a series of negative movements, which culminates in the

hegemony of the mind over singularities. Hegel’s concern with dialectics, post-

modern thought has argued, introduces a philosophy of the negative, within which

reality and any form of subjectivity are not shaped by expansive and powerful

movements rather needs and oppositions. 11

Besides the different ways in which Hegel’s conception of nature has been viewed,

these commonly have pointed out that his application of dialectics to the system of

reality situates nature in a quite critical position. Furthermore, the dialectical method

formed through determinate phases of thesis, antithesis and synthesis suggests the

idea of the becoming of reality structured through a fixed process, within which

unpredictable and unsuspected events are avoided. Hegel’s account of reality

traversed by a dialectical mechanism implies necessarily the restraint of any possible

excess of Being, which might arise from self-reflective consciousness or nature

(Deleuze, 2004: 215-245; Badiou, 2005: 161-170).

This conception of reality grounds Hegel’s exegesis of past and contemporary

models of monism, which draws him to refute any ontology developed in the absence

of negative dimensions. For the centrality given to the category of the absolute as

positive infinity, in Hegel’s study of the history of philosophy Spinoza becomes an

antipathetic figure. He reads the Ethics through the paradigm of dialectics, whose

analysis will culminate in the ban of Spinoza’s philosophy as a form of acosmism.

Hegel’s engagement with the Ethics has had strong influence within contemporary

readings of Spinoza. Although all the possible refutations and explanations on his

portrait of Spinoza are exhausted, there is still a consistent literatures utilising

Spinoza’s philosophy, which relies heavily upon Hegel’s evaluation of the Ethics,

11 For an accurate analysis of the theory of negativity in the history of philosophy, see Coole (2000).

88

particularly in relation to the theory of Substance. These, generally, refer to the

shared conviction that Spinoza’s conception of Substance-nature implies a static

vision of the world and the reduction of the role of the individual to the image of the

Being.12 In order to re-situate the modernity of Spinoza’s materialist ontology within

contemporary debate, a discussion of the relation between Hegel and Spinoza is of

crucial importance. It is to the analysis of Hegel as reader of the Ethics that I now

turn.

4.1 Hegel’s contra Spinoza: philosophy of the ideal versus ontology of the

actual

Unlike Schelling’s engagement with Spinoza’s ontology of the absolute, the

encounter between Hegel and Spinoza is not characterised by an initial praise of the

Ethics followed by a retreat. By contrast, Hegel’s inquiry upon the Ethics is

immediately marked out by a vehement refusal of its thesis. Hegel’s critique of

Spinoza’s paradigm of monism might be grouped into three main aspects. Firstly, it

is addressed to Spinoza’s Substance as an absolute and positive infinity. Hegel’s

dismissal of the model of the absolute espoused in the Ethics brings to light the two

modes of conceptualising the genesis and becoming of reality: the one of the

commencement (Hegel) with the other of the actual (Spinoza). Whilst for Hegel

reality begins with an act of poverty of the mind, from which its path towards the

absolute commences, in Spinoza the absolute uncovers the abundance of the world

and brings about the discovery of a system moulded through an excess of modes of

beings, upon which the production of reality is developed.

Secondly, Hegel’s aim is to refute Spinoza’s theory of parallelism as the identity of

reality under different dimensions as thought and extension. This second critique is a

12Badiou’s analysis of the Ethics resembles the Hegelian definition of Spinoza’s ontology as a circular system (Badiou, 2005: 112-120). Although non Hegelian, I have found that even some analytic approaches to the Ethics, for example Curley (1998), concerning the immobility of Substance are, to some extent, rooted in Hegel’s critique. Ultimately, Yovel insists on the great similarity between Spinoza’s form of rationalism with that of Hegel, Yovel (1992b: 25-50); Della Rocca (2008) has strongly reiterated the definition of Spinoza’s ontology as great exponent of the principle of sufficient reason.

89

direct consequence of the first one on the absolute. In Hegel’s view, the positive

condition of the absolute infinity of Substance necessarily implies the identity of

thought and extension. This examination of the theory of parallelism, as we will see,

brings to light two conflicting methods of structuring ontology: as mentioned,

Hegel’s system proceeds through dialectical states, the other through different

movements and combinations of thoughts and bodies. Hegel’s critique of parallelism,

then, moves to his third attack, that is, individuality. As result of his view of both the

theory of parallelism and the absolute in terms of motionless and meaningless system

of reality, the resulting constitution of the individual is, for Hegel, an empty and false

category. For him, in the Ethics the status of individuality is entirely restrained by the

all-inclusive Substance. In order to examine Hegel’s account of the Ethics, we need

to re-draw attention to its main themes, around which his critique is constructed.

As discussed before, Spinoza’s form of monism begins with his theory of the

absolute. The category of the absolute grounds the formula of the parallelism

between thought and extension, immanence, power, the multiplicity of attributes and

modes and, more generally, the entire system of production of reality. Related

particularly to Hegel’s reading of the Ethics, definition VI occupies a central

position. This immediately confronts Hegel with an alternative mode of thinking the

anatomy and becoming of reality. For Spinoza, the absolute is a positive and multiple

Being, whose move of producing the world corresponds to the world itself. Unlike

Hegel’s paradigm of the Absolute Knowledge, in Spinoza Substance is absolute,

because it is not limited and opposed by any other Being such as nature and thought.

Even its predicates (attributes) are not conceived as antithetical to Being but are

inherent within its essence. More accurately, the multiplicity of the attributes forms

the absolute dimension of Substance. In other words, Being is absolute, because it is

shaped by an uncountable number of attributes, each of which expresses its power.

As we have seen through Schelling’s reading of the Ethics, this implies the direct

connection between the meaning of the absolute with those of multiplicity and

actuality.

90

Given that absolute infinity is an all-inclusive being, which is not prior or contrary to

its parts, Spinoza locates the theme of the commencement of reality within the

actuality of world. For him, the genesis of reality is developed through an immanent

cause, from which singularities proceed. This leads him to conceive a self-organised

system, within which the power of producing is contemporaneous with its products.

The vision of reality as self-generated order brings Spinoza to dismiss the model of

the superiority of the mind over matter, affirming instead the parallel structure of the

two. The formula of parallelism between nature and God states the unity of reality

under different dimensions (E. II, Prop. VII). This means that thought and matter are

not contrary predicates of Being, but rather different modes of actualising its essence.

As matter is not opposing or inferior to thought, considered in itself nature, is perfect

(E. II, Def. IV). Hegel’s critique is mainly grounded on these propositions of the

Ethics, which undeniably challenge his model of Absolute Knowledge.

Hegel’s critique of the Ethics: a paradigm of acosmism

Hegel’s study of the Ethics begins with the analysis of the method adopted by

Spinoza for explaining his thesis. For Spinoza, the geometrical method better

supports the ways in which the becoming of reality proceeds. In the Ethics, a

rigorous sequence of geometrical propositions, definitions, axioms and postulates

founds Spinoza’s ontology. Since the very beginning of the inquiry upon the Ethics,

Hegel, thus, is confronted with an alternative mode of articulating ontological claims,

which greatly differs from his logic. Whilst Hegel’s ontology follows the rules of

Aristotelian syllogism, the Spinozian one adheres to Euclidean principles. 13

As discussed before, in Hegel, the theme of the method does not respond to a mere

style of espousing philosophical claims, but rather this is philosophical itself. This

allows the rational development of Being into its modes of consciousness. Similarly

to Hegel, for Spinoza the method is crucial for the foundation of philosophy. In

contrast with Hegel, however, Spinoza considers Aristotelian logic as lacking rigor

(EP. 56), hence, he decides in favour of the Euclidean system. The geometrical

13I will give greater weight to the question of the geometrical method in the following chapter.

91

method of the Ethics responds to a precise intent of Spinoza, namely his demand for

an alternative conceptual mechanism, which should reflect the actuality, multiplicity

and dynamism of reality. For the procedure adopted in geometry, this offers the

possibility of establishing a theory of Being and reality through a non fixed structure,

which allows for changes, transformation and movements.

In the Ethics, each definition, axiom and proposition is a new concept deduced from

the previous ones, which greatly exceeds its initial theoretical assumptions, notably

without contradicting or sublating them. If we look at the succession of definitions

and propositions on the theory of God, for example, from the definition VI of the

absolute to proposition XXXIV of the power of God, we might observe a progressive

expansion and differentiation of the constitution of Substance, within which each

term proceeds necessarily from the previous assumptions and, at the same time, goes

beyond them. Spinoza’s proposition of the essence of God as power, for example, is

a new category of thought, which overflows the definition of the absolute infinity of

Substance, without searching for the mediation of a contradictory term.

This organisation of ontology as a geometrical treatise opens up directly to the first

objection of Hegel. Hegel sustains that geometry and, more generally, mathematics

do not offer adequate categories of thought. The geometrical method assumes

without demonstrating crucial issues such as the definitions of Substance, thought,

nature, attribute and infinity (Hegel, 1955: 263). The exposition of fundamental

categories as geometrical theorems is fundamentally limited in form:

[…] the difficulty which presents is due partly to the limitations of the method in which Spinoza presents his thoughts, and partly to his narrow range of ideas, which causes him in an unsatisfactory way to pass over important points of view and cardinal questions . (Hegel, 1955: 256)

The passage above, in my analysis, signals the beginning of Hegel’s difficulty in

reading the thesis of the Ethics. This refers not to the critique of the geometrical

method itself, but rather to the mode in which he responds to Spinoza’s use of

geometry in ontology. Hegel reacts to the complexity of the structure of the Ethics by

dismissing entirely its strategy. Hegel seemingly ignores the ways in which

92

Spinoza’s treatment of ontological themes as propositions, axioms and postulates

discloses a distinctive plan (Macherey,1997: 43-94). As aforementioned, in the

Ethics propositions, definitions and postulates do not assume as indemonstrable

truths notions of God, Being, singularities and nature, instead their role is to expand

these concepts. Spinoza presents to Hegel an alternative model of conceptualising

Being and the becoming of reality, which follows a logic of expansive movements.

This crucially articulates important categories of thought such as absolute,

immanence and matter in the absence of the dialectical play between thesis,

antithesis and synthesis. The question of method, for our discourse, is central. This

prepares the terrain to Hegel’s fundamental critique of the Ethics, which is the

paradigm of the absolute proposed by Spinoza.

Hegel’s campaign against the thesis of Spinoza’s philosophy is mainly

centred on the definition of Substance as an absolute and positive being, which is

formed by infinite predicates. It is in this context that Spinoza’s notion of the

absolute becomes the philosophical question par excellence. Commenting with the

definition VI of the absolute espoused in part I of the Ethics, Hegel draws attention

to the positive anatomy of Being that emerges from this definition. He observes that

Spinoza’s account of the absolute supports a different paradigm of reality, which

does not require the presence of negative phases and beings for differentiating its

essence. In the Ethics, Hegel discovers a theory of Substance, which overcomes the

question of the commencement of reality. In Spinoza, Substance is a perfect circle,

Hegel explains, which means the absence of any gesture of disclosure (Hegel 1955:

263). As discussed above, the Ethics begins with the actuality of the infinite

attributes of Substance, through which Substance passes from the condition of pure

virtuality to actuality (Macherey, 1997: 74-84).14

Beside Spinoza’s disregard for the commencement of reality, I would argue, the

main difficulty encountered by Hegel does not refer to the definition of the absolute

itself, but rather its resulting explanation. It is the positive status of absolute infinity

14 I follow here Deleuze’s general distinction between the virtual and the actual. For Deleuze virtual is not opposed to reality, but simply to the actual (Deleuze, 2004: 208-209; see also Delanda, 2002: 30-41).

93

that lies at the very basis of Hegel’s engagement with the Ethics. For Spinoza, the

actuality and multiplicity of the attributes form the realm of the absolute. In turn,

these are not conceived as external and contraries to Substance, but rather inherent

within Being. As every element of reality is part of Substance, Spinoza deduces the

positive character of the absolute, within which the function of its predicates is that

of expanding and not negating its essence.

Hegel reads in Spinoza’s account of the absolute as positive infinity the affirmation

of the principle of identity. More accurately, Hegel understands Spinoza’s gesture of

including the attributes within the domain of the absolute as the identity between

Being and its predicates. In this way, Hegel argues that Spinoza deduces the notion

of the absolute from the principle of identity, which is an empty category of thought.

As he states:

To consider any specific fact as it is in the Absolute, consists here in nothing else than saying about it, while it is now doubtless spoken of as something specific, yet in the Absolute, in the abstract identity A=A, there is no such thing at all, for everything is there all one. (Hegel, 1967: 79)

In Hegel’s view, the identity between Being and its modes expresses the unconscious

moment of spirit. This cannot be assumed, we have seen, as the element of the

absolute essence of Being. For this, Hegel concludes that Spinoza’s conception of

Substance merely describes an initial moment of Being, which corresponds to the

self-reflective condition. It is in this context that Hegel alters the Ethics or, at least,

ignores certain important notions. Spinoza describes Substance unfolding through its

attributes and modes (E. I, Prop. XI). Further, he rejects the ontological model of the

plurality of essence within reality, which assigns an independent essence to every

being. By contrast, Spinoza sustains the multiplicity of existence under a common

generative principle, which is the power of God. It follows that attributes and modes

have to be thought as pure actuality, which implies the refusal of ideal elements

within the constitution of reality (Macherey, 1997: 74-75; Deleuze, 1992: 41-82).

Spinoza’s focus to the actuality of attributes and modes is crucial for determining his

ontology of the absolute.

94

As Spinoza deduces the positive and absolute infinity of God from the attributes and

these are actuality, the notion of the absolute involves a more complex meaning,

which greatly exceeds the principle of identity claimed by Hegel. As anticipated

above, the absolute is the actuality of the world, which is multiple and contingent. If

the absolute means actuality, this immediately implies the denial of the presence of

the ideal dimension within the realm of Being, which transcends and directs the

becoming of the world.

The incompatibility between Hegel and Spinoza on the theme of the absolute

becomes more intense, when Spinoza in part II of the Ethics fiercely states the form

of parallelism between nature and God. The formula of the parallelism discloses

more clearly Spinoza’s distinctive ontological position, which is the affirmation of

immanence and thereby the dismissal of transcendence. This constitutes the core of

Hegel’s ban of the Ethics.

From the formula of parallelism, Spinoza tells his reader “ the order and connection

of ideas is the same with the order and connection of things” (E.II, Prop. VII). By

this, Spinoza does not mean that nature is thought neither thought is nature.

Differently, proposition VII involves an innovative account of the relation between

matter and thought. Spinoza states that matter is not the object of the mind, and the

sensible world is not the source of thought. Both cases would imply a form of

spiritualisation of nature and materialisation of thought, which in turn would re-

establish the primacy of one element upon the other. By contrast, Spinoza aims to

develop an alternative mode of thinking the difference between the two. This refers

to the notion of difference based not through genres and essences, which would lead

to the constitution of a hierarchic structure of reality. Rather, Spinoza forwards the

idea of a modal difference between attributes. Modal difference means that each

being expresses a diverse degree of reality, which is a distinct combination of

elements. This notion of difference has a direct impact upon the general structure of

reality. The theory of parallelism centred the modal differences between attributes re-

situates thought and matter within the domain of the actual. It involves that both

categories mean actuality, which directly implies the denial of the dimension of the

95

Ideal from ontology. The becoming of reality or Being, consequently, follows a

different path.

As we will further examine in chapter II, Spinoza’s move against Idealism brings

about the rediscovery of the notion of immanence as unavoidable condition of

actuality. In this light, the centrality given to the notion of actuality and the resulting

effacement of the category of the Ideal inevitably sets Spinoza’s ontology aside from

the paradigm of Idealism, which claims the authority of the ideal over the actual.

More accurately, Spinoza’s gesture of re-establishing the cogency of the actual

implies not only the dismissal of the ideal, but also the refusal of the validity of

transcendence as a defensible principle of reality.

In his reading of the Ethics, Hegel fully understands the impossibility of including

Spinoza’s philosophy within the Idealist tradition of thought. Embedded in the logic

of the hegemonic status of the transcendental “I”, Hegel can merely recognise the

formula of parallelism as a further argument added by Spinoza for supporting the

principle of identity, which forms the category of the absolute. In this way, Hegel is

drawn to conceive Spinoza’s gesture of thinking the absolute not as an actual and

multiple plane but the affirmation of the subjective status of Substance. Given the

absence of higher and contradictory elements within the domain of Substance, Hegel

concludes that the absolute is an empty and static system (Hegel, 1955: 261).

In his preface to the Phenomenology, referring to both Spinoza’ and Schelling’s

systems Hegel defines these conceptions of the absolute as follows (Beiser, 1993: 7):

The need to think of the Absolute as subject, has led men to make use of statements like “God is the eternal”, “the moral order of the world”, or “love” etc. In such prepositions the truth is just barely stated to be the Subject, but not set forth as the process of reflectively mediating itself with itself. In a preposition of that kind we begin with the world God. By itself, this is a meaningless sound, a mere name; the predicate says afterwards what it is, gives it content and meaning: the empty beginning becomes real knowledge only when we thus get to the end of the statement. […]. Yet at the same time this acceptance of the Absolute as Subject is merely anticipated, not really affirmed. […]. The anticipation that the Absolute is subject is therefore not merely not the realisation of this conception; it even makes realisation impossible. For it makes out the notion to be a static point, while its actual reality is self-movement, self-activity. (Hegel, 1967: 84)

96

This extract from the Phenomenology greatly exemplifies, in my view, Hegel’s

impasse in conceptualising Spinoza’s vision of the absolute as pure actuality.

Specifically, Hegel’s definition of the absolute as result of the principle of the

identity brings about the discovery of the limits of his theoretical paradigm in

determining the strategy of the Ethics. This refers to the difficulty in thinking reality

beyond the dialectical mechanism, which calls for a transcendent principle beyond

reality. Spinoza presents to Hegel an ontology of the actual, which opposes the logic

of the dialectical divide with a modal difference, the expectation of the absolute

synthesis with the concrete abundance and multiplicity of reality. Hegel, I would

argue, intuits the challenge that emerges from Spinoza’s conception of the absolute

plane as actuality, which reveals the nonessential value of the notions of

transcendence, the ideal and negation.

In order to impede a possible rise of Spinoza’s ontology and thereby the decline of

the Idealist thought, Hegel responds to the thesis of the Ethics by ignoring entirely its

founding claim, which is the concept of the actual world as productive system of

various heterogeneity. Hegel omits the vision of actuality as abundance and excess of

movements, tension and transformation. In this context, his critique passes from a

denial of the principles of the Ethics to a defence from the disastrous consequences

that might derive from the realisation of the ontology of the actual. This refers to the

conclusions he draws from Spinoza’s model of the absolute. For Hegel, the

implications of Spinoza’s theory of absolute Substance, which poses reality in the

absence of the negative, means the annihilation of the cogency of the world.

As Hegel claims

But if Spinoza is called an atheist for the sole reason that he does not distinguish God from the world, it is a misuse of the term. Spinozism might really just as well or even better have to be termed Acosmism, since according to its teaching it is not the world, finite existence, the universe, that reality and permanency are to be ascribed, but rather to God alone as the substantial. […]. The world has no true reality, and all this that we know as the world has been cast into the abyss of the one identity (Hegel, 1955: 281).

Similarly with Schelling, for Hegel Spinoza’s conception of Substance implies the

dissolution of the world and all singular beings within the “abyss” of the absolute

97

identity. More strongly than Schelling’s critique, Hegel understands the absolute

Being explained in the Ethics as the constitution of a theory of the subject, through

which the finite existences are emptied of all their meanings and potentials. Hegel’s

verdict on the Ethics is, thus, extremely severe. As stated in the passage above, for

Hegel Spinoza’s ontology of the absolute denotes a paradigm of acosmism, which

literally means the non-existence (indicated by the initial a) of the world (cosmos).

Taking into account these arguments, we might draw some more general

reflections upon the problematic dialogue between Hegel and Spinoza. Through

Hegel’s analysis, impasse and final verdict upon Spinoza’s theses of Substance and

nature, we have discovered the complex anatomy of reality that emerges from the

category of the absolute, which opens new avenues for non-Idealist conceptions of

matter and thought. The power of Spinoza’s philosophical gesture resides in the

withdrawal of thought from the domain of the ideal to the realm of the actual. In turn,

this implies the reinstatement of the autonomy of the meaning of the actual from the

ideal. The re-evaluation of the actual does not lead Spinoza to support any rational

and empiricist positions, which considers the world ordered though mechanical rules;

either this brings Spinoza to transfer the characteristics of the ideal within the actual,

becoming a philosophy of the ideal in all but in name. By contrast, Spinoza gives a

very complex account of actuality, which becomes a place of transformation,

multiplicity, tensions and movements. It is the notion of the absolute as positive and

multiple Being that poses the actuality of the world as the only condition of the

genesis and becoming of reality. Specifically, the definition of the absolute discloses

the conception of the actual as an extremely abundant, multiple and productive plane.

The understanding of this view of the actual is crucial for determining the alternative

model of materialism proposed by Spinoza, and the extent to which this might offer

cogent arguments for contemporary thought.

Hegel’s impasse, I argue, in following the coherence of the arguments of the Ethics

fully exemplifies the great modernity of Spinoza’s materialist ontology. It is for this

reason that a return to Hegel’s critique of Spinoza has been imperative. Hegel’s

campaign against the illusion of the Ethics has brought about the discovery of

98

Spinoza’s ontology of the actual, which poses itself as powerful antagonist of the

Idealist tradition of thought. As we will see in the following chapters, Spinoza

proposes a model of materialism structured through movements of composition and

decomposition of multiple existences, which re-signifies entirely the traditional

divide between organic and non organic matter. Specifically, in the next chapter, the

question, I investigate, concerns how Spinoza’s account of the absolute as pure plane

of actuality can be thought as a system of production. In other words, having

excluded the hegemony of thought and the transcendence of Substance from

Spinoza’s ontology, the problem is the understanding of the ways in which the

world, producing itself, generates forces, singularities, thoughts and bodies. It is to a

consideration of this theme that I will now turn.

99

Chapter II

Spinoza’s ontology of the actual: The power of nature

From the necessity of the divine nature there must follows infinite things in infinite ways. (E. I, prop. XVI)

Introduction

In chapter I, I examined Spinoza’s ontology of the absolute, and argued that this not

a form of rationalism, pantheism and acosmism. It introduces, instead, a more

extensive account of the notion of the actual, which re-signifies entirely the meaning

of the concrete and, more generally, reality. Spinoza’s conception of the material

world is centred on his denials of transcendence and the commencement of reality.

For him, the emergence of reality does not derive from an obscure and transcendent

archetype, which suddenly creates the world. This would imply a return to a form of

agency and logic of telos. By contrast, Spinoza claims that reality is produced

immanently, which means the vision of nature as pure activity and self-organised

system. Furthermore, Spinoza enriches the notion of immanence with the concept of

power and the formula of parallelism, through which thought is re-positioned within

the domain of the actual. In turn, as the embodiment of Substance, the actual

expresses the power of thinking, acting and existing.

Spinoza’s thesis of the actuality of world as a powerful and self-generated order

raises crucial questions. Firstly, these refer to the concept of actuality itself assumed

by Spinoza. The problem is how the vision of the world as activity implies directly

the function of producing. Put differently, in chapter I, we have seen, for example,

that Schelling’s move of thinking the absolute as an unconditional source of activity

leads him to annihilate the world and all its predicates within the point of

indifference. In this way, we have learnt that taken in itself, absolute Being, however

100

powerful, is not productive. Similarly, Spinoza’s ontology of the absolute is

constructed around the notion of power as the very essence of Substance. Thus, the

problem is how and whether Spinoza’s thesis of the absolute is directly related to the

meaning of production. Secondly, the difficulty presented by Spinoza’s plane of

absolute reality concerns the status of its predicates. Given that nature is an all-

inclusive being, the question is the extent to which particular beings once produced

are not immediately incorporated within the boundless realm of the absolute. This

brings us directly to question the meaning attributed to immanence by Spinoza. If

immanence implies the constitution of nature as self-organised order, this might

suggest the vision of nature as an organism, which is situated above individuals.

Therefore, the difficulty is whether the thesis of immanence involves the affirmation

of singularities rather than their dispersion. This chapter engages these issues.

Specifically, the discussion draws upon the system of production delineated in the

Ethics.

In order to investigate these problematic aspects of Spinoza’s ontology, the

analysis will be preceded by a discussion regarding his presence within twentieth-

century philosophy, and will consider some of the ways in which this has

inaugurated a different method of reading the Ethics and the political Treatises. The

reconsideration of certain Spinoza’s claims about nature, Substance, affectivity and

politics offered by twentieth-century thought is central to determining the richness of

his system of production of reality and, more generally, his materialist ontology, to

which the present study is largely indebted. This refers not to the definition of the

materialist foundation of Spinoza’s ideas but the originality of his model of

materialism, which differs greatly from other seventeenth-century materialist

conceptions such as the Cartesian and Hobbesian paradigms. By contrast, post-

modern investigations have brought about the discovery of the complexity of

Spinoza’s materialism, which is mainly centred on the recovery of the meaning of

materiality. Thus, body, contingency and actuality become recognised in Spinoza’s

writings as powerful sources of thoughts, individuals and meanings.

101

In this light, in the first section of the chapter, the focus is directed to twentieth-

century philosophy’s engagement with Spinoza, highlighting the origins and

characteristic of its interest in the Ethics and the political Treatises. The attention is

given to the ways in which thinkers such as Balibar, Matheron, Tosel, Deleuze,

Macherey, Negri and Giancotti, following Althusser’s metaphor of the “detour of

Marx via Spinoza”, have relocated the importance of Spinoza within contemporary

thought. For the centrality given in this chapter to the themes of immanence, power

and attributes the discussion draws particularly upon Deleuze’s re-interpretation of

the Ethics as a plane of immanence.

Moving forward Deleuze’s arguments, in the second part of the chapter, I investigate

Spinoza’s plane of absolute immanence, and the ways in which this activates a

system of production of reality. In order to examine the implications of Spinoza’s

treatment of reality as a plane of immanence, the analysis of the geometrical method

is one of fundamental importance. As anticipated in chapter I, this allows Spinoza to

overcome the Aristotelian syllogism of thesis, antithesis and synthesis, and establish

his theory of reality through a logic of expansive movements. It is for this reason that

in the thread of the chapter the re-exposition of the role of the geometrical method

within the Ethics is prior to the analysis of the system of production. This constitutes

the central prerequisite for determining the development of Spinoza’s ontology of the

actual.

Following the geometrical structure of the Ethics, the arguments, I will develop

through this chapter, concern that the relevance of Spinoza’s paradigm of

materialism does not only refer to the dismissal of transcendence through the

affirmation of the plane of immanence, but more importantly his idea of actuality as

a complex process. Spinoza’s conception of absolute immanence is not only a plane,

but a never-ending process of production, which is structured through a multiplicity

of phases and, at the same time, a multiplicity of modes of being. In this sense, for

Spinoza, nature is an open set nuanced by actuality and potentiality. An inquiry into

Spinoza’s process of production is imperative. This constitutes the basis, upon which

Spinoza’s theory of humankind, ethics and politics are founded and developed.

102

Spinoza’s political reflections and the definition of the individual derive directly

from his ontology of production.

1. Spinoza after Marx: Towards a dynamic materialistic ontology

The need for a materialist conception of philosophy, politics and society is not

exclusively a demand of the present age. The importance of theorising a materialist

philosophy has been generally a common concern in the history of philosophy. This

interest mainly emerges from the denial of every philosophy of essence, logos,

origin, telos, which would create and orient the world and individual actions. Thus,

attention has been drawn to the investigation of the sensible universe through which

thoughts, bodies, broadly any physical phenomena is grounded and developed. In

this sense, the emergence of materialist explanations of the world and its phenomena

run from the Ancient Greek philosophers as Heraclites, Democritus, Epicurus,

passing through Bruno, Spinoza, Hume, Leibniz to Marx.

As anticipated in the introduction of this work, Althusser’s preoccupations about the

poverty of the twentieth-century paradigm of materialism occupy a central position

within the development of contemporary materialist conceptions of philosophy,

politics and history. These refer to the need to re-shape the meaning of the material

field, and the multiple ways in which this produces thoughts, imaginations, actions

and relations.15 The centrality of the sensible world comes to light not as place of

mechanical rules or rational order, but rather as constitutive and productive power of

existences (Althusser, 2006: 163-105). The focus of materialist philosophy should be

addressed, Althusser suggests, upon the analysis of the active connections between

the individuals and their milieu, through which infinite mixtures of thoughts and

bodies are produced (Althusser, 1976: 126-132).

15 References to Althusser in this chapter do not consider his ‘structuralist’ reading of Marx. Although the Spinozist components within his thought remain important, this is outside the purpose of the thesis.

103

This emerging model of materialism questions the assumptions of a certain Marxist

orthodoxy, which has explained the emergence of any form of subjectivity within the

repetitive mechanism of the economic structure (the dependence of the

superstructure upon the structure); and it also casts doubt on Marx’s theory of

materialism itself for narrowing the conception of the modes of production and the

constitution of human beings to a dialectical correspondence or conflict between

structure and superstructure. By contrast, reality progresses throughout a variety of

unexpected events developed in the absence of “contradiction”. The expectation of

the “class struggle” never comes to light, or at least, as Marx imagined. Thus,

through the gap between Marx’s materialist philosophy and the material world itself,

it becomes crucial to articulate alternative questions shaped by, on the one side, the

reality of human beings as unique combinations of materiality and imagination; on

the other side, the necessity of looking through the structure of universe as a

confluence of heterogeneous phenomena and not exclusively as struggles between

forces.16

In order to look for different arguments for a materialist philosophy,

Althusser suggests the return to Spinoza. Althusser proposes a “ detour of Marx via

Spinoza” (Althusser, 1976: 142) for a better understanding of the complexity of

society after Marx. Spinoza offers materialist conceptions of reality and individuals,

which examine how imaginations, bodies, rationality are combined and especially

how they operate concretely. For Althusser, over all, Spinoza’s philosophy gives a

thoughtful account of the role of imagination. The relevance of Spinoza’s theory of

imagination, Althusser indicates, concerns how the sphere of imagination is

investigated as aspect of ideology and mystification, and as the productive element

of social cohesion (Althusser, 1976: 137).17 Althusser’s reflections give rise to a

resurgence of interest in Spinoza as a materialist philosophy alternative to rationalist,

pantheist and empiricist models. Although Althusser’s analysis of Spinoza’s

philosophy did not go further, however he contributes to the recognition of the

16 Althusser in the later writings (1978-87) would refer to Epicurus’s notions of clinamen and atoms, which derive from Heraclites’s naturalist ontology, see Althusser (2006: 163-205). 17 On Althusser’s account of imagination, see particularly Williams (2001: 56-77).

104

cogency of Spinoza’s thesis for the development of twentieth-century discourse

(Montag, 1999: XIII-XXI, 119-123).

The novelty of the twentieth-century’s engagement with Spinoza concerns not only

the definition of Spinoza’s philosophy as form of materialism, which was already

asserted by the Enlightenment philosophers. Rather, it is the approach to Spinoza’s

writings that connotes the difference from past interpretations of his philosophy. In

contrast with previous studies of Spinoza, which analyse his works separately,

twentieth-century philosophy focuses to the continuity between Spinoza’s texts,

which runs from his ontological discourses to the political Treatises. This brings

about the discovery of a distinctive strategy, which traverses the entire Spinoza’s

speculation. In Spinoza, ontology supports political theory and vice versa. It means

that ontological thesis such as immanence, absolute, thought and matter have a direct

impact upon political claims about democracy, sovereignty, civil and natural rights,

and these further enrich ontological themes. The novelty of his philosophy resides on

an indissoluble linkage between ontology and politics. This linkage between

ontology and politics is the cornerstone of Spinoza’s paradigm of materialism.

If Spinoza’s materialist model is constructed around the connection between

ontology and politics, this means the rehabilitation of the authority of the ontological

inquiry for developing materialist claims and also its autonomy from metaphysics,

which has narrowed its meaning to formal proofs of the existence of Being. By

contrast, for Spinoza, ontology becomes a science of the actual, which offers

important categories of thought for investigating the richness of expression of the

material world. In this way, specific metaphysical notions of immanence, absolute,

multiplicity and difference become fundamental instrument for comprehending the

anatomy of the world, upon which new conceptions of history, human being and

society might be predicted.

105

The Spinozist turn: Reading the Ethics in the Twentieth Century

By 1960, the presence of Spinoza acquires a central position within the intellectual

debate particularly in France. The attention is given to both Spinoza’s ontology and

politics, and the ways in which his thought offers a more extensive account of human

being, society and nature. This growth of interest in Spinoza emerges from a more

general discontent maturated initially within the French academic atmosphere, which

questioned the authority of the philosophies of Descartes, Hegel, Husserl and

Heidegger. French contemporary philosophy contested the reduction of the

spontaneity of human subjectivity within a rational structure or transcendental

principle, which explains the formation of knowledge in terms of a one-sided relation

between subject and object. This implies, on the one hand, the loss of the multiple

factors, which generate thoughts such as desire, imagination and also relations. These

express a more complex mechanism, which exceeds the fixity of both the Hegelian

and the Cartesian structures and, over all, are not rational. On the other, the decrease

of the status of the material world under the supremacy of a rational subject involves

the dismissal of the multiple ways in which the world and subject are interconnected.

Most significantly, the treatment of matter as an object ignores the multiform of the

order of nature, which exceeds the divide between organic and non organic forms of

life. Nature is an extremely dynamic process, which is traversed intensively by

forces, movements and transformations. Our awareness of this, twentieth-century

thought claims, is essential for re-thinking humankind, history, politics and society in

a materialist way. 18

Without venturing into the disputes surrounding French thought during the twentieth

century, for the purpose of this chapter, the importance of its reaction to dominant

intellectual systems resides in the significant position ascribed to Spinoza. In order to

escape the obscure rationality of the Cartesian paradigm, the messianic expectation

of the Hegelian Absolute Knowledge, and also the repetitive movements of his

18 For an accurate account of the question of the subject within contemporary French philosophy, particularly in Althusser, Derrida, Foucault and Lacan, see Williams (2001).

106

dialectics, Spinoza becomes a fundamental reference point of the past alongside

Nietzsche and Marx.

Following Althusser’s metaphor of the “detour of Marx via Spinoza”, the

emerging readers of the Ethics such as Tosel (1994), Matheron (1988), Macherey

(1979), Deleuze (1992, 1998) and Balibar (1995) not to mention the great

contributions of Giancotti (1995) and Negri (1998) in Italy have commonly

acclaimed Spinoza as a powerful antagonist of Descartes, Hobbes and the Idealist

philosophies. Discussing Hegel’s critique of Spinoza, Macherey, for example, points

out that Spinoza’s theory of Substance developed through positive and absolute

infinity, the multiplicity of attributes, immanence and the formula of parallelism

constituted a great challenge to Hegel’s dialectical ontology. As analysed in chapter

I, this refers to a different mode of theorising the relations between individuals, the

material forces of production, which operates in the absence of conflicts and negative

phases (Macherey, 1979: 259-260). Furthermore, for the thinkers mentioned above,

the turn to Spinoza’s philosophy signified the possibility of rescuing Marxist

materialism from the negative logic of the dialectic and from certain scientific

interpretations (Tosel, 1994; Montag, 1999: XI-XXI). Twentieth-century thought

envisages in Spinoza’s thesis thoughtful conceptions of the world, humankind,

affectivity and rationality, which combined with the themes of the political Treatises

on the critique of the religious ideology, sovereignty and the role of the mass in

politics might further enrich Marxist materialism and its philosophy of praxis.

The significance of the twentieth-century philosophical gesture of describing

Spinoza’s thought as a cogent anti-Hegelian model, and also positioning his thesis in

the same line with the Western Marxist movement concerns, for our discourse, the

affirmation of the autonomy of his thesis from Descartes, Hobbes and, more

generally, the seventeenth-century metaphysical tradition. As aforementioned,

traditionally, the study of Spinoza tended to ignore the connection of his ontological

themes with the political ones. Whilst Spinoza’s ontology was associated with

Cartesian philosophy, his political thought was assimilated to Thomas Hobbes. The

inclusion of Spinoza’s ontological thesis within the Cartesian paradigm derived in

107

part from his study of Descartes and the use of Cartesian vocabularies in the Ethics,

but also for the strong Cartesian tradition in France, indicated above, to which

Spinoza was inevitably associated. On the other hand, the assimilation of Spinoza’s

political theory to that of Hobbes was motivated by the focus of both philosophers

upon the notion of the contract as the origin of the civil society. 19

Concerning the affirmation of Spinoza’s philosophy as ontology of the actual, no one

can deny that conspicuous part of recent interpretations are largely indebted to the

analysis of the Ethics offered by Deleuze. Deleuze delineates a portrait of Spinoza,

which strongly opposes Hegelian and analytic readings, disclosing how Spinoza’s

ideas fully meet the demands of post-modernity. Although Deleuze did not develop a

specific study of the political Treatises, nevertheless the power of his reflections

reveals the mechanism through which Spinoza’s notions of immanence, absolute,

power, body, thought and multiplicity are political in a materialist way. It is to the

dialogue between Deleuze and Spinoza that I now turn.

1.1 Deleuze encounters Spinoza: The plane of immanence

Deleuze occupies a crucial position within twentieth-century philosophy, whose

ideas reflect the change of the intellectual climate initiated in France. He takes a

fundamental role within the general reaction against Idealist philosophy,

existentialist ontology and theories of the subject, indicated above. Deleuze’s denial

of these established traditions is very incisive, which had a profound impact upon

contemporary modes of thinking history, arts and politics.

Without attempting to engage in a retrospective of Deleuze’s multifaceted

philosophical production, which is still a highly controversial issue among scholars,

for the purpose of this work, we need to trace, at the very least, the intellectual

19Spinoza assumes the origin of the body politic from a collective pact between men. For Hobbes, instead, the contract derives from an act of subjection of singular men to the authority of the Leviathan. However, for Negri and Balibar, the model of the social contact represents only a stage within the evolution of Spinoza’s political thought, which will be replaced by the theory of the consensus espoused in the later Political Treatise, see Balibar (1998) and Negri (1998). These themes of the contract and consensus will be fully investigated in chapters IV and V.

108

origins of his form of materialism. These indicate the role of Spinoza within

Deleuze’s inquiry and consequently some of the ways in which the Ethics supports

an alternative materialist strategy, which might be defensible in our contemporary

society. In order to delineate Deleuze’s engagement with the Ethics, in this section,

the discussion draws particular attention to the early phases of his philosophical

project, within which the presence of Spinoza acquires a distinct position.

One of the fundamental themes that shape the beginning of Deleuze’s speculation is

a fierce critique of Hegel’s paradigm of Idealism. The Hegelian dialectical logic was

enormously pervasive and dominated the study of the history of philosophy (the

interpretations of Marx and Spinoza are exemplary in this regard), psychological and

social investigations upon human behaviour, and the mode of thinking the evolution

of the historical process. Given the omnipresence of Hegel within social and political

theories and also philosophical principles, a reaction to his system meant not solely

the opposition to the dominant culture, but also the establishment of a different

paradigm of thought.

As we have viewed in chapter I, Hegel’s form of Idealism is constructed around an

inescapable dialectical mechanism, within which the mind progresses towards the

achievement of Absolute Knowledge. In this process, the progressive acquisition of

consciousness proceeds through the conflict between opposing terms such as the

subjective and the objective aspects of the mind. In turn, these are sublated in a new

category of thought, which incorporates and transcends the two phases. The

attainment of the Absolute Knowledge is the ultimate result of a series of negative

moments, which celebrates the hegemony of thought over matter, and, more

generally, the supremacy of the ideal over the actual. This means that taken in itself,

the material world is not a powerful source of concepts and transformations, which

are instead prerogatives of the mind. In other words, Hegel reiterates more rigorously

the Aristotelian-Scholastic tradition, which assumes nature as the lower genera and

thereby contrary to thought. The Hegelian undervaluation of matter has further and

more crucial implication. This refers to the status of the singular within Hegel’s

Idealist structure. This theme of singularity involves the questions of the role of

109

contingency, individual practises and thoughts within Hegelian dialectics.

Considered in itself, the singular describes a state of lack, which acquires

significance only within the higher project of the mind, the acquisition of the

Absolute Knowledge.

In this fashion, the rejection of Hegel’s philosophy implied not only the re-

theorisation of a specific field of knowledge such as ethics, politics and

epistemology, but more importantly the refusal of the linearity and fixity of the

Hegelian structure. The awareness of this brought to light the very challenge for

twentieth-century thought, which was the re-foundation of the domain of philosophy

itself. If Hegel’s model of Idealism has to be challenged, this was only possible

through the theorisation of a radically alternative paradigm, which might overcome

the limits of his thought.

Deleuze’s form of anti-Hegelianism constitutes one the most radical gestures of

escaping Hegelian dialectics through the foundation of a really new plane of thought.

Deleuze recognises that an anti-Hegelian philosophy has to re-draw exclusive

attention to the actuality of the world, and recover matter from its status as lower

genera. For Deleuze, the reinstatement of the cogency of nature does not mean the

return to empiricist and rationalist theories, which rely heavily upon a non-organic

vision of the world, and analyse its structure from the human standpoint. By contrast,

Deleuze’s move against Hegel and his heirs is the re-establishment of an alternative

ontology, which re-connects the concept with matter. Deleuze proposes the

foundation of an ontology of the actual, which might re-formulate the notions of

existence, contingency, thought, difference and the singular. The foundation of this

ontology of and upon the world is the basis of Deleuze’s form of materialism. It is in

this moment that the dialogue between Deleuze and Spinoza commences.

Deleuze discovers in Spinoza a powerful antagonist of the Idealist tradition, whose

philosophy offers important arguments for avoiding the Hegelian structure. Deleuze

is fascinated by the absence of the negative within the entire system of the Ethics,

which is developed through the affirmation of nature as a generative source of

110

singularities, concepts, bodies and movements. For Deleuze, Spinoza’s philosophy is

a reflection upon the actuality of the world articulated from and within the world

itself. The originality of Deleuze’s interpretation of Spinoza resides on the

recognition of the material dimension of certain ontological concepts such as

immanence, attribute, the absolute, power, body and affectivity, and also the ways in

which these support a different political practice.

The study of the Ethics characterises the early stages of Deleuze’s philosophical

career, in which he draws attention to the history of philosophy. He analyses

respectively Bergson, Nietzsche, Spinoza and lately Leibniz; each of them expresses,

in different ways, not only an anti-Hegelian position but also a completely different

ontological system. Although Bergson, Nietzsche and Leibniz play equally an

important role within the development of Deleuze’s thought, his engagement with

Spinoza is a distinctive one. Furthermore, this constitutes his doctoral thesis

(together with Difference and Repetition), and culminated in the publication of

Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza (1968) followed by a second study Spinoza:

Practical Philosophy (1970).

However, Deleuze’s inquiry upon the Ethics does not terminate with these two

books. Rather, these delineate the beginning of an intense relation between the two

philosophers. The figure of Spinoza passes from constituting an academic interest to

an omnipresent interlocutor, now manifest now latent, with whom Deleuze

inaugurates an intense and continuing dialogue. Even in the period of his

collaboration with the psychoanalyst Guattari, the presence of Spinoza is situated

somewhat between the two thinkers, raising questions and glimpsing solutions.20

Since Deleuze’s explanation of Spinoza’s ontology has been a fundamental phase

within the history of Spinozian philosophy, similarly Spinoza’s ontological concepts

20 Discussions surrounding Deleuze’s engagement with Spinoza have been multisided. The main problem, which still divides to some extent Spinozist and Deleuzian scholars, arises as whether Deleuze forces the arguments of the Ethics in order to affirm his thesis; or rather it is Spinoza’s ontology that grounds fundamental Deleuzian notions such as difference, immanence, body and affectivity. Concerning these questions, see particularly Hardt (1993: IX-XV, 56-111), Macherey (1998: 117-124), Howie (2002) and Zizek (2004).

111

of immanence, power, parallelism, body, difference have significantly been

stimulating notions within the development of Deleuze’s own philosophy. In What is

Philosophy?, for example, which constitutes a sort of culmination of his

philosophical milieu, Deleuze firmly renews his tribute to Spinoza, calling him “the

Christ of philosophers” (Deleuze and Guattari, 1994: 60). Given the centrality of

Spinoza within the evolution of Deleuze’s materialist ontology and equally the

significance of Deleuze’s analysis for understanding the materialist strategy

underneath the Ethics, a return to his re-exposition of the themes of the Ethics is

imperative. Let us, then, flesh out Deleuze’s reading of the Ethics.

Spinoza through Deleuze: The affirmation of the actuality of the world

The importance of Deleuze’s reading of Spinoza concerns the exposition of

Spinoza’s concepts of Substance, nature, modes and attribute as a constitutive

elements of more complex system, which is fundamentally based on the recognition

of the world as living body (Deleuze, 1988: 126-128). The awareness of this strategy

expressed in the Ethics, Deleuze suggests, might offer thoughtful theoretical sources

for the establishment of a contemporary materialist philosophy, opening novel

possibilities for political practice and thought.

Deleuze’s focus is addressed, on the one side, to the theory of Substance, the role of

the attribute, the absolute, the notion of immanence and the theory of parallelism; on

the other side the question of body and three kinds of knowledge (imagination,

rationality and intuitive science). In his reading of the Ethics, Deleuze returns, not

accidentally, to the analysis of the same themes of the absolute, attributes, and the

formula of parallelism, which Hegel vehemently condemned. The question of the

absolute and the attributes of God, once again, become crucial, in order to examine

Spinoza’s system. Unlike Hegel, Deleuze views Spinoza’s theory Substance

structured through absolute infinity as the foundation of a materialist conception of

ontology.

112

In order to delineate the complexity of Spinoza’s form of materialism, Deleuze

employs the theory of ontological expressionism. For Deleuze, this drives the entire

system of the Ethics, explaining the relation between Being and its parts.

Specifically, Deleuze states that Spinoza’s theory of Substance begins with actual

existences through and solely through which, Being becomes real. Thus, there is not

in the Ethics, Substance separated from its parts. Neither is Substance simply nature.

In contrast, Spinoza’s notion of God-Nature discloses a self-organised and living

system (the essence of God is power), which is constructed around the categories of

the absolute, attributes, modes, the formula of the parallelism and immanence.

Deleuze calls this system the plane of immanence (Deleuze 1988; 1992).21 Central to

Deleuze’s inquiry is the role of the attribute, which involves the ontological problem

of the differentiation of Substance-nature. In turn, the analysis of theme of difference

in Deleuze follows the status attributed by Spinoza to singularities. Deleuze

discovers in Spinoza’s formulation of the attribute a distinct paradigm of difference,

which is not structured through opposition between contrary substances. In contrast,

Spinoza conceives the difference between attributes, modes and Substance as modal.

For Spinoza, beings express different degrees of reality, which entails a distinct

composition of movements, matter, thoughts and affectivity.

As noted above, the role of the attribute is explained in definition VI of part I on the

absolute. Deleuze presents an alternative analysis of the meaning of the absolute,

which challenges the Hegelian interpretation. The theme of infinity is central for

both Deleuze and Hegel in their respective studies of the Ethics. The chief difference

between them emerges precisely from their approach to infinity. We need, then, to

briefly return to Hegel’s definition of Spinoza’s ontology.

In chapter I, we noted that Hegel denounced Spinoza’s definition of absolute infinity

for a number of reasons. Firstly, it is an empty notion, because the absolute is

deduced from the principle of identity, which is assumed as the initial phase of the

disclosure of Being to the world and not the conclusive state of the realisation of the

power of Substance. Secondly, for Hegel the absence of contrary elements within the 21 In a later writing Deleuze would define Spinoza’s plane of immanence as a plane of consistency (Deleuze and Guattari, 2004b: 280-287).

113

realm of the absolute implies a motionless system, which maintains Substance in a

self-reflective position. Thirdly, as the absolute is a positive identity, this involves

the inclusion of all its predicates within its essence. In Hegel’s re-reading, this

indicates the effacement of the cogency of the world and all singularities within an

all-embracing Being.

In contrast with the Hegelian logic, Deleuze’s approach to the category of

absolute infinity follows an alternative strategy. He employs the argument of

ontological expressionism as a key-reading for understanding the positive aspect of

the absolute. In this way, Deleuze replaces the dialectical method of analysing the

Ethics with that of expression.22 This recourse to the thesis of ontological expression

is fundamental, and allows Deleuze to overcome the problem of the absence of

negative moments within Spinoza’s absolute Substance. More importantly, it sheds

light on the status of attributes and modes in relation to Being. Following the model

of expressionism, Deleuze draws attention to every element of the Ethics, which is

expressive (attributive) of something, without considering whether or not its status is

negative. As Spinoza begins first with ascribing to the attribute the role of expressing

the infinity of God (E.I, Def. VI), Deleuze focuses to the relation between Substance

and attributes, which is explained in the definition of the absolute.

Whilst for Hegel the main limit of Spinoza’s ontology was the absence of the

negative, this becomes in Deleuze’s inquiry the very power of the Ethics. Deleuze

observes that the positive character of the absolute is constructed around a new

ontology of difference. This replaces with the lesson of difference in itself two modes

of thinking distinction, the numerical and the one in kinds. For Deleuze, this

conception of difference grounds the notion of positive infinity, which resolves the

difficulty of the coexistence between generality and singularity, eternity and

contingency within the absolute plane.

22 Deleuze’s theory of expression is based on a triad, where “substance expresses itself, attributes are expressions, and essence is expressed”, see Deleuze (1992: 27).

114

In the Ethics, difference is understood, Deleuze claims, as modal, through which

absolute infinity is actualised in its parts (E. I, prop. XV, Scholium). Put differently,

the absolute cannot be distinguished both numerically and qualitatively; it must

follow an alternative mechanism of differentiation. From definition VI of the

absolute, Spinoza tells the reader that the absolute status of Substance derives from

the infinite number of attributes that express its essence. In turn, by definition,

attributes are real existences, which delineate modes of Being (E. I, prop. XV,

Scholium). Given the centrality of the attributes, Deleuze concludes that the relation

between Being and its parts is structured through the rules of the modal difference,

which is crucially real. It is real because attributes are existences, which actualise the

essence of God. It is also modal because they express a specific level of reality. For

Deleuze, Spinoza’s account of difference has a further implication. The notion of

difference is not only descriptive of a particular state of reality, but more

significantly it is productive. Attributes, we have seen, express the essence of Being,

that is, power. The role of actualising and differentiating Substance is directly

connected with the function of producing. In this light, the status of the attribute

within the theory of Substance is extremely active (Deleuze, 1992: 41-67).23

This is a crucial move within Deleuze’s re-reading of the Ethics. Deluze’s

recognition of modal difference casts doubt on the entire philosophical tradition from

Schelling onwards, which has defined Spinoza’s absolute as a principle of identity

(Deleuze, 1992: 67). Furthermore, it allows Deleuze to overcome the Hegelian

impasse in conceptualising Spinoza’s category of the absolute as one and, at the

same time, multiple. In Hegel, we have seen, this difficulty drives him to accuse

Spinoza’s ontology of acosmism (the absence of the world). Deleuze, instead, praises

Spinoza’s discovery of modal difference as the affirmation of the world.

Given that the absolute means the multiplicity and actuality of the attributes, and

these disseminate the power of Substance within nature, nature is not a dimension of

Being, but a more complex and powerful body. If Spinoza’s account of the absolute

23 Spinoza’s ontology of the modal difference would impact strongly upon Deleuze’s own philosophy, see Hardt (1993: 59-66).

115

implies the vision of the world as a living being, this might suggest a return to forms

of pantheism and animism, which would in turn reintroduce the question of the

subjective status of nature, as we have discussed through Goethe’s portrait of the

Ethics in chapter I. In order to prevent possible interpretations of Spinoza’s

conception of God-nature as a theory of the subject, Deleuze puts forward the

argument of the plane of immanence, which is the core of his reading of the Ethics

and his own philosophy. Deleuze deduces the notion of the plane of immanence by

connecting Spinoza’s definition of the absolute, the theory of parallelism, power and

the notion of difference (Deleuze, 1992: 99-143, 169-186). The implications of

thinking Spinoza’s theory of Substance as a plane of immanence concerns the re-

conceptualisation of the actual world as self-organised system, which is equally

productive of thoughts and actions. It is the plane of immanence, Deleuze fiercely

concludes, that lies at the very heart of Spinoza paradigm of materialism (Deleuze,

2001: 26).

Deleuze’s re-exposition of the themes of the Ethics has many important implications.

As aforementioned, his analysis shapes profoundly the general approach to Spinoza,

undermining meticulously many commonplaces in the history of philosophy

concerning the theoretical edifice of the Ethics. In this light, Deleuze’s study

produces a rupture within the history of ideas, and inaugurates a new mode of

reading the Ethics. Deleuze constructs a different intellectual milieu for Spinoza,

which runs from Democritus, Heraclites, Epicurus to Nietzsche and Bergson. Each of

them supports an ontology of the actual, which dismisses the authority of thought. In

this philosophical tradition envisaged by Deleuze, Spinoza acquires a fundamental

role. Spinoza presents a unique plane of reality, which is intensely populated by a

variety of bodies, thoughts and forces.24 This is, in Deleuze’s view, the great and

most difficult lesson of the Ethics, that is, the plane of immanence (Deleuze,1988:

122-130). In his later writing, Deleuze (2001) would argue that our awareness of this

plane of immanence is knowledge of life itself.

24 The question of one nature for an infinite number of bodies is the focus of the third chapter, in which I will read Spinoza’s definition of nature through Simondon’s categories of pre-individuality and metastability.

116

Although Deleuze’s account is very suggestive and certainly explores

rigorously the system of the Ethics, his reading raises further questions. These

emerge from the logic of expressionism adopted for interpreting the Ethics. The

problem is that this strategy does not entirely explain the extent to which nature,

expressing itself, produces beings. If the method of expression conceives Spinoza’s

notion of the absolute as a multiple and active plane of reality, this is not directly

related to the function of producing. Similarly with Schelling’s engagement with

Spinoza, the status of expression implies the understanding of beings and Being as

pure activity and difference. The notion of activity, however multiform and dynamic,

I would argue, does not contain in itself the power to produce reality.

The question of the production of beings is crucial for structuring a materialist

conception of ontology. The investigation of the ways in which nature produces itself

through the actuality and finitude of beings implies a quite different understanding of

the relation between individualities and nature. In order to address these themes, I

propose to re-consider the method of the Ethics. Without re-examining the method

adopted by Spinoza, our inquiry into the form of materialism supported in the Ethics

cannot proceed any further. It is to the method of the Ethics that I now turn

2. The Method of the Ethics: Ontology and geometry

The Ethics is Spinoza’s masterpiece. It was published together with his works (the

Political Treatise, the Letters, the Jewish Grammar and the Treatise on the

Emendation of the Intellect) by the circle of his friends posthumously (1677). The

complete title of the Ethics is Ethics. Demonstrated in geometrical order and divided

into five parts (Ethica, more geometrico demonstrata, et in quinque partes distincta),

which introduces the reader to the method and the structure adopted. Spinoza decides

to organise his philosophical system as a treatise of geometry through definitions,

propositions, postulates and so on.

Although Spinoza had previously adopted the geometrical method (for example in

the Short Treatise), only the Ethics is written entirely in geometrical manner

117

(Giancotti, 1995: 14-21). Therefore, we might deduce that in the systematisation of

the arguments of the Ethics geometry occupies an important position. The question I

investigate in this section concerns whether Spinoza’s use of the geometrical scheme

responds to a seventeenth-century tendency; or rather supports a specific strategy.

The problem is whether Spinoza needs geometry for conceptualising his materialist

ontology. In this light, an inquiry upon the role ascribed by Spinoza to geometry is a

fundamental prerequisite for understanding his philosophical project.

Spinoza’s readers from the past and present have amply discussed the geometrical

method of the Ethics. In the previous chapter, we have seen, Hegel addressing his

first critique to the limitation of the method, which, for him, lacks rigour and

consistency (Hegel, 1955: 256). By contrast, the Enlightenment philosophers

conceive the exposition of metaphysics in geometrical order as a form of rationalism

and thus atheism. Twentieth-century scholars of Spinoza offer divergent explanations

of Spinoza’s use of geometry. For Curley, and, more generally, the analytic

interpretations of the Ethics, the geometrical method of the Ethics reveals the strong

influence of Descartes’s philosophy upon Spinoza (1988: 3-10). In this way, the

geometrical order of the Ethics delineates a rationalist strategy followed by Spinoza,

within which metaphysical claims are obtained through the use of reason.

In contrast with these views, Deleuze approaches the Ethics “by the middle”. Thus,

he draws attention to the argumentative parts of the Ethics, which are precisely the

scholia (Deleuze, 1988: 122). Deleuze observes that the order of the scholia greatly

differ for the one of propositions and definitions, disclosing two conceptual levels

within the Ethics. Deleuze, underlines that the structure of the Ethics does not

proceed in a linear way from definitions to propositions, which would be further

clarified in the scholia. The scholia, instead, follow their own logic and are disjoined

from propositions and definitions. He envisages a subterranean content within the

Ethics, which expresses the authentic thesis of Spinoza’s ontology. Deleuze

concludes that the radical notions of Spinoza’s ontology lie secretly in the scholia,

which formulate the real constitution of Being as a plane of immanence (Deleuze,

1997: 21-32).

118

Similar to Deleuze’s arguments, Negri recognizes a theoretical difference between

definitions, propositions and scholia. For Negri, however, this corresponds to a

systemic caesura, which reflects a crucial intellectual moment within the evolution of

Spinoza’s philosophy. This refers to Spinoza’s turn from a Platonic position towards

a materialist one. In this sense, Spinoza’s theory of Substance, which is mostly

espoused in part I of the Ethics, expresses the persistence of Platonic elements within

Spinoza’s thought, within which his ontology is still a reflection upon reality.

Spinoza’s conceptions of the attributes and modes, which particularly refer to parts

III and IV, delineate his passage to a materialistic project, which is concerned with

the constitution of reality (Negri, 1998: 22-44).

The problems that emerge from these interpretations are that the structure of the

Ethics appears as divided, fragmented into several doctrines, each of which follows

an independent strategy and objective. Referring to Deleuze’s argument concerning

the subterranean message of the Ethics, this explanation might lead one to read

exoteric and esoteric doctrines in the Ethics. From both approaches, two questions

arise immediately. Why Spinoza would have ordered his ontology into different

theoretical principles? If this is the case, where does the authentic doctrine of Ethics

reside, in scholia or rather in the propositions? These questions involve a more

fundamental problem. This concerns how we should read the Ethics, whether from

the middle as Deleuze suggests or rather deductively as Curley proposes? In order to

address these arguments, I follow a different approach.

Taking into great considerations both Deleuzian and analytic views, I propose

to read the Ethics as it is. The Ethics is a treatise of geometry. This structure is

somewhat ambiguous, which enables one to stress singular parts at the expense of the

whole. In this sense, we have seen in chapter I, many thinkers resolutely acclaim

Spinoza within their intellectual heritage, reading in the Ethics the demands of the

period. From Voltaire, passing through Goethe, Jacobi, Schelling, Hegel to

nowadays, the propositions of the Ethics come to support models of naturalism,

pantheism, rationalism and acosmism. Although many of these different portraits of

119

Spinoza’s ontology undeniably derive from the complexity of its conceptual nucleus,

as I have argued in the previous chapter, perhaps, a further reason might be traced in

the difficulty of the geometrical structure itself.

If we re-draw attention to the geometrical order of the Ethics, we might come closer

to the mechanism through which Spinoza made his claims. In order to follow the

development of Spinoza’s ontology, I think, we should not extrapolate his thesis

from the method. The method enables Spinoza to reach certain conclusions and

construct new hypothesises. Separating, then, the notions of the Ethics from its

structure can lead one easily to ignore or force the consistency of the arguments

themselves.

In the previous section, we have discussed, Deleuze’s recognition of Spinoza’s

ontological system as a plane of immanence, within which attributes and modes

express the actuality of Being. However, the problem encountered, in Deleuze’s

theory of expressionism, concerned that the role of expression is not synonymous

with production. The logic of expressionism, rather, indicates that the system is real

and powerful through the existences of modes and attributes. In order to examine the

question of ontological production, the focus, first of all, has to be addressed to the

structure, through within Spinoza poses the immanence of God. Spinoza introduces

the theme of the immanence of God-Substance-nature through a geometrical

proposition. This means that immanence derives from a demonstration. The

immanence of God, therefore, is an outcome of an accurate strategy, which is

supported by this geometrical method.

Therefore, we should first consider the hypothesis, better the definitions, through

which Spinoza affirms immanence. In doing so, we will observe that Spinoza does

not consider immanence as an indemonstrable truth; rather immanence proceeds

from a precise investigation of nature. This means that crucial notions within the

Ethics are supported and demonstrated and not self-reflective. This suggests the idea

that the geometrical method is not simply a style of writing, but rather a fundamental

mechanism, which supports Spinoza’s ontology. An awareness of this might shed

120

light on the coherence of the plan of the Ethics. In order to examine the meaning of

geometry in the thread of the Ethics, I shall draw attention to the main characteristics

of the geometrical method itself, and consider how this has been used by Spinoza’s

contemporaries.

The plan of the Ethics: Euclidean geometry against Aristotelian syllogism

Generally, the focus of the treatise of geometry is not exclusively addressed to the

articulation of rational arguments. A treatise of geometry, as will see, is centred

mainly on a logical development, which does not aspire to rationalise reality. By

contrast, it is a method of investigation, which follows a different mechanism for the

acquisition of categories of thought and concepts. This is not the epistemological

logic of dialectical syllogism, which proceeds through opposition and reconciliation

of terms. Rather, this is articulated through continuous and progressive movements

between propositions, definitions, axioms and scholia.

In geometry, any proposition is demonstrated step-by-step by definitions and axioms,

each of which expresses universal, self-evident properties of triangles, lines and so

forth. The demonstration of each proposition follows the deductive logic of

mathematics. The geometrical treatise is constituted by a universality, which is

modelled upon reality. Universality means that each definition, axiom, proposition is

valid, or applicable to any singular phenomenon in any time and space. The method

is named also formal. The properties of triangle or quadrate, for example, are always

valid for any given triangle in any historical period. The real (“modelled upon

reality”) means that the formulation of laws or principles derives from an

investigation upon the elements in nature. Importantly, geometrical laws and

propositions do not precede reality, rather principles and laws come out of nature

itself.

During Spinoza’s age, a great number of scientists and philosophers, such as Galileo,

Copernicus, Kepler, Bacon and Descartes, have been extremely influenced by the

axiomatic-deductive method. They, in fact, created their own system of axioms,

121

definitions and propositions, following this deductive method. The use of the

deductive-axiomatic method in philosophy and science responds to a precise

purpose. This refers to the attempt to connect human rationality with the observation

of nature. Descartes, for example, adopts the style of the geometrical treatise rather

than as a proper method of research. He wrote some parts of his Meditationes in

geometrical style. Based on a pure mathematic logic, the Cartesian rationalist method

constitutes in this regard a sufficient example. Although Spinoza follows this cultural

tendency of the period, however, his usage of the geometrical demonstration is a

different one.

In contrast with the Cartesian philosophical use of geometry, Spinoza follows

the geometrical scheme as method of philosophical investigation. He aspires to

develop an ontological system, in which any metaphysical arguments are

demonstrable throughout an accurate investigation from and within reality (E. III,

Preface). Nature, however, does not follow a linear progression of phenomena,

which might be easily rationalised and calculated. As we have noticed with the

definition of the absolute and attributes, Being means a multiplicity of elements,

which are different and ontologically equal. As the attributes of God (the modes of

beings) are infinite, the absolute is not an addition of parts. Given the complexity of

reality, the question of the methodology might appear to Spinoza very crucial. The

problem concerns, firstly, what method might better support the multiplicity of

Being, which traverse the absolute? Secondly, how it is possible to construct

materialist arguments based on universality and reality? In other words, the question

is what method might fully embrace contingency and generality.

In the previous chapter, I have argued that Spinoza does not apply the Aristotelian

syllogism intentionally. In several letters, Spinoza criticises Aristotle’s philosophy

for separating God from the world through the establishment of several and

unknowable substances (Letter 56). The Aristotelian syllogism, I would argue, might

seem, firstly, to reflect his metaphysical structure. However, as we have seen in the

Hegelian dialectics, the Aristotelian syllogism is organised through the principle of

negation, whereas Spinoza’s ontology follows the principle of modal difference.

122

Therefore, the Aristotelian logic should appear to Spinoza too formal, which does

express the dynamic progression of reality.

In order to found ontology on actuality and difference, universality and contingency,

Spinoza discovers in the method of geometry fecund categories of thought, upon

which his philosophy might be constructed (Letter 76). The geometrical method

offers to Spinoza the possibility to ground a system, within which each notion

(immanence, power, parallelism) proceeds logically from the previous assumptions,

without mediating and sublating these. More importantly, by definition the Euclidean

geometry does not include contradictory terms, rather it literally composes new

theories.25

Translating this method to ontology, this means the constitution of process through

expansive movements, within which new concepts enrich the meaning of a previous

definition and scholia, expand the contents of the preceding propositions. To return

to the Deleuzian arguments of the subterranean doctrines of the Ethics, perhaps, the

divergence between scholia and propositions might derive from the logic of the

geometrical method, within which attributes, scholia, propositions and axioms

occupy specific roles. In this case, the role of scholia is that of expanding complex

notions, which would otherwise remain ambiguous. The scholia also prepare the

terrain to the successive arguments. It is for this reason that the language might differ

from definitions and axioms, proofs and so and so forth.

Taking into account these arguments we might raise some preliminary

conclusions. Spinoza, I argue, adopts the geomtrical method purposely in order to

organise the spontaneous, however, logical (Substance is necessity) becoming of

events in nature. As in the Euclidean Elements from one and simplest point a

combinations of lines, rhombus etc. emerge, in the Ethics from the general

definitions of God, nature, attributes and modes, a variety of thoughts, movements

and bodies, intersecting each other, come to light.

25 In his Elements, Euclid begins with the definition of a point through which he constructs progressively, lines, surfaces, semicircles, circles and all possible geometrical figures, such as rhombus and trapezia. (Euclid, 1956: 153-156)

123

As the Ethics follows this logical progression, therefore, the attention to the position

of every claim is crucial; whether these are definitions or propositions. There is a

considerable difference, in fact, in stating something by definition or by proposition.

The former is assumed, whereas the latter is deduced. Bearing in mind the logic of

the treatise of geometry, we can pass now to examine Spinoza’s question of

immanence, considering what might be its constitutive elements, and the ways in

which this plane of immanence unveils a system of production.

3. Process of production: God, nature and power

The question of the ontological production of reality lies at the very heart of every

philosophical system. The problems mainly concern, firstly, how Being produces

reality and secondly what is the relation between the producer and the products. For

example Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Saint Thomas Aquinas, offer well-organised

systems, within which reality descends from a transcendental Being or archetypes.

These systems solve the ontological problems of Being and nature, positing an a

priori condition, through which every phenomenon is determined. In this sense, the

difficulty of the foundation of an ontological system of production is somewhat

easily explained. The question, however, becomes more complicated when we pass

to analyse materialist philosophies, within which reality is assumed itself to be

productive. The difficulty concerns how nature, through extensive parts, give rise to

thoughts, bodies, imagination, more generally, a variety of heterogeneous events?

This is precisely the case of the foundation of Spinoza’s materialist ontology, which

affirms the absolute and necessary equality between the gesture of producing and the

one of being produced. This equality of Being and nature, we have seen, had led

several philosophers in different historical periods to stress the role of nature as a

divine source of production (pantheism), or instead Substance as the negation of the

world (Schelling and Hegel). In chapter I, I have discussed, Schelling’ and Hegel’s

impasse in fully determining Spinoza’s theory of the all-inclusive Substance, which

is not prior to, or greater than its parts. This difficulty had led both philosophers to

124

consider Spinoza’s system as a static order, within which Being annihilates its parts

instead of producing them.

In contrast with these readings, Deleuze and, more generally, twentieth-century

scholars define Spinoza’s notion of nature-God as a self-productive order, which

generates the world immanently. It is this conception of Substance that grounds

Spinoza’s form of materialism (Balibar, 2002; Negri, 1998). The assumption that

there is no difference in time and space between the action of production and the

objects produced implies necessarily, on the one hand, the refusal of any form of

creationism and transcendentalism, and on the other the re-evaluation of the

dimension of the actual.

However, from these considerations further questions arise. If Spinoza’s arguments

of immanence, the equality between matter and thought and the absolute mean

undoubtedly the reinstatement of nature from mere thinghood to ontological being,

the problem still remain regarding nature movement from the state of pure activity to

a generative source of production. Strictly speaking, how does nature produce

immanently the world? Furthermore, given that Spinoza distinguishes between the

finitude of the mode (particularities as human being) and the eternity of Substance

and attributes, how these two dimensions of reality coexist. In other words, for the

rules of immanence and the theory of parallelism, Spinoza’s notion of Substance

excludes different ontological systems (as thought and matter), and it also avoids any

supremacy between nature and thought (the cause of all the things is immanent).

However, singular modes are finite, whereas Substance and attributes are eternal,

thus, the question is how the order and connection of finite beings is the same as the

order and connection of Infinity.

Twentieth-century philosophers have amply discussed these questions of the

relation between Substance, attributes and modes. As mentioned, Deleuze offers very

persuasive arguments about the theme of the ontological production of the Ethics.

Following the theory of expressionism, Deleuze directly related the function of

expressing the power of God to that of producing beings (Deleuze, 1988: 41-82, 201-

125

216). Central to Deleuze’s strategy is the recognition of the modal difference within

the Ethics, which allows him to dismiss the definition of Spinoza’s ontology as a

theory of identity. The refusal of the principle of the identity is crucial for

understanding Spinoza’s formula of the parallelism between nature and thought.

Spinoza affirms, that “The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and

connection of things” (E. II, prop. VII). The problem of this definition concerns,

firstly, how ideas are ordered as bodies. Extension follows the rules of speed and

slowness, quantity and duration, whereas ideas follow the rule of eternity and quality

(E. I, Prop. XXXI; E. II, ax. I, II, Lem. I). Secondly, the question arises how these

two orders are produced immanently. In order to resolve these contradictions,

Deleuze argues that Spinoza’s theory of Substance has the dual aspect of necessity

and possibility (Deleuze, 1992: 122-128). Deleuze affirms that from the viewpoint of

the absolute necessity of Substance the power of thinking and acting are one and the

same, whereas from the viewpoint of nature (natura naturata) the power of thinking

and acting is expressed through a variety of combinations of degrees of reality

(Deleuze, 1992: 123-128). Therefore, the role of the attribute lies at the very heart of

Spinoza’s system of production, through which the function of expressing the unity

of Substance implies an eternal process of differentiation.

However, Deleuze’s reading of the dual aspects of Substance, in my view, is

somewhat ambiguous. Specifically, it is problematic the condition of absolute

necessity, within which the functions of acting, thinking and expressing are identical.

Deleuze considers only Substance in its aspect of nature as the place in which

contingency, difference and potentiality are developed. This distinction between

viewpoints might create a circular or reflective system rather than a dynamic

progression. Concerning these problems, I think that Macherey might offer an

illuminating response, to which I shall draw attention.

In contrast with Deleuze’s arguments, Macherey instead claims that the

problem of understanding the role of Substance, attributes and modes derives from a

genetic approach to the relation between these terms (Macherey, 1997: 74). Like

126

Deleuze, Macherey’s focus is to the role of the attribute as source of differentiation,

differently he considers the attribute entirely equal to Substance. More precisely, for

Macherey Substance is its attributes (Macherey, 1997: 84). In order to understand the

ways in which Substance becomes real and manifest to and within nature, Macherey

suggests that Substance begins with the plurality of its attributes. It means that the

attribute is not derived from Substance or is a proof of the existence of God; rather

for Macherey Substance is exactly no more or less than its attributes. Thus,

Macherey argues that the attributes, instead of expressing, constitute Substance. This

importantly leads to conceive Substance as a “concrete Being”, which power

depends on the plurality of the attributes (E. I, Def. IV, prop. VII, prop. XI, prop.

XX).

Stressing the identity between Substance and attributes, Macherey escapes from

Deleuze’s logic of the different viewpoints and orders, and re-affirms the centrality

of the attributes themselves. In this sense, Macherey resolves the question of the

materialist production of reality in Spinoza through dispersing directly Substance in

every existing and thinking thing (Macherey, 1997: 83). As a result, Spinoza’s

question of the ontological production of reality is drawn directly to the actuality of

nature and all existing determinations. In this sense, for Macherey there is no Being

in the Ethics rather an infinite plurality of existences, which form the realm of

Substance (Macherey, 1979: 107-128). The modal difference between attributes and

modes is, therefore, the condition of the plurality of all singularities in nature.

Although Macherey’s reading liberates Substance from a perpetual condition of

circularity, the question still remains how this pure actuality of Being unveils a form

of production. In other words, how does the condition of the actual and multiplicity

give rise to a system of production? Specifically, the problem is to unveil the

mechanism through which multiplicity and actuality are conditions of production.

127

Nature: A multiphasic process of production

Concerning these arguments, one would not find a clear and definitive answer in the

Ethics. However, we may attempt to read the Ethics from an alternative standpoint,

that is, as a process. In order to determine on the one side the connection between

Substance, attributes and modes, and on the other side the relation between the

concepts of immanence, absolute, difference, power and the parallelism, I think, the

notion of process acquires great cogency.26 To be a process means to be an

organisation as such, which implies to pay a greater attention to the development of

the system, rather than the results of the system itself. Furthermore, the concept of

organisation means that a system is dynamic. More significantly, to intend the order

as process implies an emphasis upon its elements, which contribute to this

dynamism.

In order to investigate the conditions upon which Spinoza’s system of materialist

production is grounded and developed, I propose to study the Ethics as an

organisation. The analysis of the Ethics as a process enables us to overcome the

difficulty between Substance, attributes and modes, notably, without narrowing the

centrality of these terms. Following the logic of the process, the connection between

Substance, attributes and modes can be understood as phases within a more complex

development.

Certainly, from both Deleuze’ and Macherey’s analyses we might suppose that the

differentiation and actualisation of Substance in its attributes discloses a form of

process. As mentioned, the problem still remains how both approaches to Spinoza’s

theory of Substance opens directly onto a materialist production of reality. In order to

look for alternative explanations, I consider every concept of the Ethics as Substance,

attribute, mode, immanence, power and absolute as progressive phases of a process,

26Concerning the meaning of process, I employ Riemann’s notion of process. Riemannian geometry is based on the study of smooth manifolds in an n-dimensional space. The concept of manifold, as Riemann formulated it originally, states that in space every point has a neighbourhood which resembles Euclidean space, but in which the entire structure may be more complicated (Riemann, 1873). On the application of Riemmanian’s conception to ontology, see Deleuze (2004: 532-538) and De Landa (2002: 11-39).

128

which open up to further and new transitions. This might bring to light the

mechanism through which nature produces beings, and how these activate the

process of production. Taking into account these premises, let us flesh out these

phases of production.

In the previous section, I have discussed the implications of posing ontology

through geometry for the establishment of materialist arguments. As mentioned

earlier, the importance of the geometrical method in ontology concerns the

possibility of structuring a logical (deductive) and, at the same time, progressive

(axiomatic) system. Further, this geometrical scheme is the condition through which

Spinoza sets forth his theory of the production of reality. In order to investigate the

question of the ontological system of production as process, I shall pass to consider

the themes of power, immanence, infinity and the theory of parallelism as the leading

hypothesis, through which the plane of immanence becomes a process of production.

Following Macherey’s suggestion of explaining “the Ethics by the Ethics”

(Macherey, 1997: 75), in my view, this requires a re-drawing of attention to the

location of notions such as power, immanence, infinity and the theory of parallelism;

whether these are propositions or definitions or axioms. Furthermore, as in the

Elements, where Euclid constructs from one point a rhomb, equally in the Ethics we

should consider the first definition as crucial as all the others. Taking into account

these arguments, let us analyse, first, where immanence is located.

Spinoza states the immanence of God in proposition XVIII of part I, affirming “God

is the immanent cause of all the things”. This is a proposition, which means that

immanence is supported by other propositions and definitions. Importantly, as a

proposition, this tells us that immanence is not assumed by Spinoza as given, but

rather follows from an expansive movement, which in turn unfolds in a successive

one. However, the proposition itself unveils several problematic aspects. Firstly,

Spinoza describes the immanence of God as the cause of all the things. Spinoza does

not qualify immanence as a condition of the existence of God or the attributes. He

simply describes that the action of God is immanent. The status of cause of all things

129

means that God generates every existing singularity in nature. However, the question

arises how and to what extent this immanent cause of the all things is also reality

itself. Further, the argument of the immanence of God as a cause is also a Scholastic

thesis.27 Scholastic thinkers such as Saint Thomas Aquinas and Saint Anselm had

referred to God as an immanent cause, through which they have explained the

relation between God and his creatures. The question immediately arises on what

basis Spinoza’s notion of Substance should differ from the Scholastic one.

Looking at the proof of the proposition, Spinoza sends us back mainly to

propositions XV, XIV and Def. III. It is precisely in this connection that immanence

begins with constituting a form of plane. Definition III states the univocity of

Substance, which considered in itself might appear a formal Scholastic proof of the

essence of God (Deleuze, 1992: 69-82). However, the definition opens up directly to

propositions XIV and XV, in which proposition XIV re-affirms the necessity and

univocity of Substance. However, I think that proposition XV is crucial, through

which Being passes from an initial condition of univocity, through a plurality of

attributes and importantly actuality, to immanence. The importance of these three

propositions concerns firstly that the univocity of Substance does not produce the

infinity of attributes and modes (finitude); rather this is simply a condition, as the

point is condition of varied figures. Secondly, for definition III Substance is already

differentiated through the finitude of the modes. Thus, there are already conditions of

eternity, reality and univocity, which then cannot be other than immanence itself.

Immanence as univocity, reality and multiplicity, avoids the moment of the

disclosure of Being to reality, which would imply the return to external or prior state.

As mentioned, immanence is a cause, which implies the idea of a certain activity

embodied by Being.

Following the progressive development of the arguments, this idea of cause brings us

to the theme of power, which is explained towards the end of part I of the Ethics.

27 Notably, Scholastic philosophy does not distinguish between imminence and immanence. Imminence refers to reflective conditions, in which creatures reflect the perfection of God, who however remains the creator. Immanence instead implies a form of co-participation between God and his parts. For complete account of the difference between imminence and immanence see Macherey (1997: 73-84) and Deleuze (1992: 69-82).

130

Spinoza affirms in proposition XXXIV “God’s power is his very essence”.28 As with

immanence, the notion of power is a proposition, thus power should be considered as

a new concept, which expands previous arguments. Spinoza, in this case, indicates

that the power of God is a consequence of propositions XI and XVI. These

propositions state that Substance is constituted solely through continuous movements

of infinite and varied number of existent (actual) attributes.

The two propositions are the pivotal elements, which uphold contemporaneously two

phases within the development of the system of production. On the one hand,

proposition XI is a further phase of the initial dimension of Being as absolute

infinity. As we have seen with Deleuze and Macherey, the question of infinity refers

to the conception of modal difference, thus the multiplicity of the attributes gives rise

to both the moment of actualisation (E. I, prop. XI) and differentiation (E. I, prop.

XVI). On the other hand, as phases within a process, the actuality and the variety of

the attributes is a transitional dimension within a more complex process, through

which the multiplicity of attributes and modes become (Substance is its parts) power

themselves.

In this fashion, the analysis of Spinoza’s theory of Substance as a process reveals

that the aspects of difference (the Deleuzian approach), and the other actuality and

multiplicity (Macherey’s explanation) are transitional phases within a more

composite system of production. If Spinoza’s theory of Substance is a process, this

leads, on the one side, to bypass the logic of expressionism, which would create a

sort of circularity between Substance and attributes. On the other, the re-definition of

the multiplicity of existences as expansive phases of the essence of Substance unveils

the conditions in which reality is productive in itself.

Taking into account these arguments, however, there is a further question,

which requires our attention. This refers to the mechanism through which the plane

of immanence is unfolded directly in the order of power described above. In order to

28 On the question of power, Deleuze affirms that there are two orders of power: one goes from Substance to attributes and the other from the attribute to nature, thus singularities (Deleuze, 1992: 83-95, 99-128).

131

address this question, we need to look back to proposition XVI, which affirms the

multiplicity of the modes of being. It is through this proposition and the resulting

corollaries that the plane of immanence is stretched on the ground of production.

This proposition does not only give rise to the differentiation of Being into its modes.

More significantly, it is the basis, through which Being as pure immanence and

power is developed. As analysed previously, immanence and power are both

extensive phases of proposition XVI. Developing Macherey’s arguments, behind this

proposition Spinoza tell us that Substance is the forming multiplicity of existences,

through which the constitution of an n-dimensional plane of immanence produces all

the particulars and events in nature.

Certainly, both Deleuze and Macherey emphasise the role of the multiplicity of

attributes and modes as the founding concepts of Spinoza’s theory of Substance.

However, I think that the condition of multiplicity within Spinoza’s foundation of

ontology has to be understood in both aspects of multiplicity of existences and

phases of the process of production. As attributes and modes are infinite and

different existences, equally the phases of this process are multiple. It means that

multiplicity does not pertain exclusively to the constitution of modes and attributes,

but it is also the condition of the system of production.

The importance of thinking a multi-phasic process of production resides in the

implications this has for the foundation of a materialist ontology. It means that the

actual is not only the place of varied phenomena. Instead, reality itself proceeds

through multiple phases, through which history, societies, political systems and

individuals are grounded and developed. In this way, historical process, human

beings and societies should be understood as an open set, which proceeds through

multiple and transitional combinations of finitude, infinity, materiality and

potentialities.29

Taking into account these arguments, we might draw some preliminary

conclusions. The inquiry has focused upon the notion of immanence, through which

29These themes will be further developed in chapters IV and V.

132

we have discovered its role as cause. This is a further category of the plurality

(infinite attributes and modes) of Being. This has brought about the discovery of

immanence as a knot of finitude, infinity and actuality (attributes and mode are

existences). Following Deleuze’s theory of pure immanence, it means that

immanence is not to something rather reality (infinite modes of beings and finite

existences) is in immanence (Deleuze 2001:26-27). Reality is in immanence for

definition III of the univocity of God, which instead Deleuze considers a formal

term. The implications of this notion of pure immanence concern, on the one hand,

that reality structured through multiple modes of being is itself an ontological

condition, which indicates the denial of every form of creationism, transcendence

and telos. On the other, immanence as a cause unveils a dynamic dimension of these

varied forms of existences. However, if reality is a dynamic place of differentiation

of parts, the question arises how these open up to a system of production. In order to

search for the conditions of the production of reality, then, we have drawn attention

to the definition of power as the essence of God. Surprisingly, power is not

demonstrated from immanence as the cause of all the things, but rather from infinite

modes of Being. This tells us that multiplicity is one of the conditions, through which

reality becomes acknowledged as an order of production.

Taking into account these arguments, nature or reality is precisely shaped by the

multiplicity of the phases of the process of production, which are ordered and

connected within one and unique plane of immanence. It follows that the theory of

parallelism further unfolds these plural phases within one real and cogent order, that

is, nature, within which producing and being produced coincide (E.I, Prop. VII,

Corollary). Based on these elements, Spinoza’s process of production discloses an

innovative materialist conception of reality, which provides, I would argue,

important instruments for comprehending contemporary history, thought, individuals

and societies. Spinoza, ideally, tells us the impossibility of structuring any theory of

history, anthropology, and politics separately. Following Spinoza’s process, these are

ontologically interconnected one with the others and dependent one on the others.

133

Therefore, Spinoza presents the actual as a multi-phasic being which is unfolded and

folded through the plane of immanence.30 Spinoza’s notion of immanence, as we

have seen, does not only imply the denial of external or higher dimension, but also it

opens up to the constitution of reality as a self-productive organisation, through

multiple being (s) and phases. The originality of Spinoza’s paradigm of materialism,

in my view, concerns the description of the material world shaped by unpredictable

dimensions, through which multiple potentialities and actualities, finite and infinite

beings emerge.

Conclusions: towards a Philosophy of the individual

The chapter has analysed the form of materialism offered by Spinoza and considered

how his philosophy can still provide important theoretical sources for contemporary

thought and society. Spinoza constructs his paradigm of materialism on a quite

different understanding ontology, which brings about the retreat of the moment of

the commencement from ontology. Spinoza replaces the phase of the disclosure of an

external or prior Being with the conception of nature as a self-organised system

structured through an eternal becoming of multiple mixtures of phenomena, bodies,

thoughts and forces. The definition of nature as an ontological condition of forming

singularities leads Spinoza to locate the process of production of reality within nature

itself. Therefore, nature becomes acknowledged as a system of production shaped

upon the notions of immanence, absolute, power, finitude and infinity. In order to

understand this system of production, I have proposed to read Spinoza’s main

ontological concepts mentioned above as phases of a process, which is articulated

through expansive phases.

I argued that the originality of Spinoza lies in his conception of reality as a process of

production, through which nature comes to light as a plane of immanence. Spinoza’s

constitution of the plane of immanence is grounded and expanded through a quite

30 The notion of phasic being has been employed by Simondon (2007) in order to explain the constitution of Being. I will develop further this argument in the next chapter, within which I explore Spinoza’s process of individuation through the ontogenetic theory of Simondon.

134

complicated notion of multiplicity. The process of production brings to light not

only the multiplicity of the modes of beings but also the multiplicity of the

conditions of ontological production. The implication of this conception of

materialist ontology as multiplicity is that the horizon of the actual is widened from

mere connections of events to the infinite possibilities of forms that nature can

adopts. In other words, Spinoza’s notion of nature, I think, unfolds in a never-ending

becoming of actualities and potentialities, which precisely are both expressions of

multiplicity. These arguments of nature as a phasic and multiple being bring our

discussion to the question of the next chapter, which investigates what system of

individuation emerges from this conception of Being as multiplicity.

135

Chapter III

Spinoza’s philosophy of individuation: The collective life of the individual

The human body is composed of very many individual parts of different

nature, each of which is very complex.

(E.II, Postulate I)

Introduction

In chapter II, we examined the form of materialism proposed by Spinoza, and argued

that his originality resides in its ontology of the actual. This is not only based on the

denials of transcendence and the disclosure of Being, but more importantly on the re-

assessment of the cogency of the material world. In this Ethics, Spinoza recovers the

meaning of nature from a mere thinghood to a self-organised plane, which is

traversed by movements, thoughts, bodies and potentialities. This account of nature

brings about the discovery the material world as a powerful and extremely

heterogeneous body.

In order to determine the complexity of Spinoza’s ontology of the actual, I have

considered crucial categories of thought such as immanence, power, attributes and

modes as constitutive elements of a non-linear process. The attention to the notion of

process has brought to light the distinctive mechanism, which traverses the Ethics.

This refers to expansive and multiple movements, which actualise and further

complicate the plane of reality. In this way, I have claimed that Spinoza’s ontology

of the actual does not solely involve the constitution of a plane of immanence, but

more importantly the affirmation of a process of production. Spinoza develops an

intricate notion of multiplicity, which indicates the multi-phasic character of the

process of production and also the multiplicity of beings. It is in this context that

Spinoza’s form of materialism lies.

136

The recovery of nature from a mere mechanical order implies the re-definition of the

centrality of the notions of contingency and the singular within a more general

becoming of reality. These acquire cogency not in relation to the achievement of a

higher and ultimate objective of Being and God but in themselves for being

contingent. In Spinoza’s system of nature, contingent beings are constitutive

elements of the process of production, which activate and differentiate the plane of

reality.

Taking into account these arguments, this chapter explores the paradigm of

individuality emerging from Spinoza’s account of nature as multiple process, and

considers the extent to which this might enrich contemporary materialist discourses.

The theme of the individual is a controversial argument in the Ethics, which still

divides scholars. Common to the readers of the Ethics is the problem of the relation

between Being and its parts, which directly questions the status of humankind within

the plane of reality. This chapter addresses these issues.

Specifically, I examine, firstly, whether there is any theory of individuality in Ethics.

If a notion of individuality might be inferred from Spinoza’s ontology, a second

problem arises immediately. This concerns how Spinoza might develop a conception

of individuality from a plane of multiplicity? Thirdly, how does multiplicity

implicate notions of hecceity and quidditas without at the same time annihilating

these aspects? Fourthly, given Spinoza’s treatment of matter as a source of

production, the difficulty is how matter individualises thought, action, passion and

imagination? If matter is the principle of individuation, the question here concerns

whether Spinoza’s move supports a certain spiritualisation of matter or a

materialisation of thought. Ultimately, what ethics and politics might we draw from

Spinoza’s theory of the individual?

In order to address these questions, I think that the philosophy of Gilbert

Simondon may shed light on the complexity of Spinoza’s conception of the

individual. Developing further a suggestion of Balibar (2002: 103-147), Simondon’s

philosophy of individuation, I believe, offers thoughtful ontological categories for

137

our re-reading of Spinoza’s theme of individuality. Simondon’s notions of pre-

individuality, transindividuality, collective realm, metastability and disparation might

translate into contemporary language Spinoza’s concepts of conatus, multiplicity,

body, mind and affectivity.31

Without postulating tempting similarities, parallelism or influences between the two

philosophers, however, Spinoza and Simondon base their ontological system on

common categories. These focus on a strict monism, a form of materialism, and the

significance of imagination and the emotions to the relational nature of human

being.32 This shared ontological ground creates, in my view, the conditions through

which an investigation of Spinoza’s theory in the light of Simondon acquires great

cogency.

Although the chapter is primarily an inquiry upon Spinoza’s process of

individuation, the use of Simondonian categories requires the analysis of Simondon’s

theory of individuation itself. In the first section, thus, I will give an account of

Simondon’s thesis of individuation, pointing out the main differences between his

ontology of individuation, antecedent and contemporary philosophies of

individuality.

Proceeding from the analysis of Simondon to Spinoza, in the second section, the

discussion will draw particular attention to the role given by Spinoza to nature,

relations, conatus and affectivity. The arguments, I will develop through the chapter,

concern that the reading of the Ethics through Simondon’s theory of individuation

brings about the discovery of an alternative materialist account of the individual and,

more generally, the theme of individuation. I refer precisely to the question of the

twofold status of nature in the Ethics as pre-individual mass and collective plane of

31 I use the term “translate” in both literal and metaphorical meanings. By its literal meaning, I refer to the usage, I will make in the thesis, of Simondon’s ontological notions as decoding the Scholastic expressions of the Ethics into contemporary language. By its metaphorical sense, I mean the discovery of the modernity of Spinoza’s process of individuation via Simondon. 32 As Simondon opposes monist philosophies, by a form of monism in Simondon’s philosophy I mean literally his refusal of different substances such as matter and form.

138

heterogeneity, upon which the process of individuation is grounded and developed.

Furthermore, reading Spinoza through the lenses of Simondon’s thought, the themes

of conatus, the theory of knowledge, the geometry of affects and the physics of

bodies will disclose a unique tendency towards a form of transindividualism. This

transindividual force is the basis upon which every model of community (psychic,

political and social) is developed. It is in this context that Spinoza’s materialist

conception of the individual resides, through which the hecceity of the human being

is located precisely in the middle between universality and particularity, collective

being (nature) and individuated individual.

1. Re-positioning the question of individuation in contemporary thought:

Simondon and the ontology of individuation

The theme of individuality has been a central concern in the history of philosophy,

politics and science. Generally, the focus of an inquiry upon the notion of

individuality is addressed to the discovery of the conditions or archetypes, upon

which individuals are generated. Related particularly to the human context, the

concept of individuality involves the analysis of a variety of interlocked arguments,

which greatly exceeds metaphysical disputes. These refer to definitions of life, more

precisely the different forms of life such as ethical, biological and political and which

between these is proper to the human being, and also the distinctive elements of

knowledge, whether this derives from the nature of the individual being or rather

social and historical junctures. Moreover, the study of the individual investigates the

meaning of the body and how this operates, whether or not this is guided by the

mind, the origins and aims of moral principles, and whether these should regulate,

follow or restrain the affective disposition of individuals. Ultimately, it considers the

extent to which crucial political categories such as the state, civil society and the

social class are expressions of individuality, and if this is the case, whether these are

artificially or naturally constructed upon the characteristics of the singular human

subject; and more importantly, whether or not the creation of these institutions is

necessary for the improvement of human conditions.

139

Given the indeterminacy of these questions, the problem of the genesis and the

principles of individuality has taken myriad of forms and theoretical positions. Thus,

the problem of defining the domain of the individual runs from Plato, Aristotle,

passing through Saint Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Spinoza, Descartes, Hegel,

Marx, to Simondon, Freud and Deleuze more recently.

Before discussing further the significance of individuation in contemporary

thought, we need to distinguish between a philosophy of individuality and an

ontology of individuation. The importance of underlining this distinction resides in

the different strategies adopted for determining the fundamental aspects of human

beings, each of which delineates a completely different political, ethical and social

scenario (Toscano, 2006: 4-16; Combes, 1999: 10-25). Put differently, the ways in

which we qualify human nature impact directly upon our awareness of politics,

ethics and the material world.

Broadly understood, a philosophy of individuality posits individuality prior to its

constitutive process. More accurately, it considers the human being as the principle

of the process of individuation, from which thought, affectivity, relations, ethical and

political gestures follow. This assumes the genesis and development of the individual

isolated from its milieu, focusing exclusively upon the study of the structure of the

formed human being. Nature is viewed as irrelevant to the formation of individuality,

which acquires, instead, a certain importance within the life of an individual already

individualised. This plays the role of the object of human knowledge, which might

be investigated and modelled in relation to human needs.

Given the exclusion of the material world from the genesis of individual beings, in

order to discover the peculiar features of human beings, the attention is directed to

the analysis of its structure as an independent unit, which already contains in itself

the causes of generation and evolution. Taken in itself, the human being is a

composite of mind, body and affectivity. As a result, arguments have been

characterised by disputes surrounding the question of the priority of one of these

elements among the others. In this light, from Plato and Aristotle onwards, a variety

140

of different theories and terms have been coined such as the soul, the “I”, the self and

the form, each of which, in one way or another, is entangled within this assumption

of the human subject as a self-organised unity. More significantly, this approach has

generated a categorisation of the heterogeneous potentialities of an individual being

into determinate forms of life such as the biological, intellectual and passionate life,

defining only one of these peculiar of humankind. Political and ethical discourses

have been constructed around the privileged function assumed to connote the human

being, such as rationality, selfishness and sociality. In this sense, in the history of

thought many political and ethical conceptions have been erected around the

identification of individuality with notions of rationality, egoism and self-mastery,

through which concepts of state, knowledge and community have been explained.

These aspects are direct consequences of the fundamental limit that characterises a

philosophy of individuality, which entails the impossibility of knowing the

generative system of the individual and thereby the unintelligibility of the principle

of individuation. By contrast, concepts such as rationality and the “I” define the

human being without tracing the mechanism of its generation. In this light, we

simply bound the richness of expressions of individuality within a priori formula as

matter and form, rather than understanding the reality of an individual. For this

impasse of explaining the genesis of the singularities, theories of individuality, on the

one side, commonly end up with postulating a transcendental or teleological order as

principle of individuation. On the other, given that the constitution and development

of beings is detached from its process, the conception of individuality is based on

anthropomorphic or at least zoomorphic models.

Unlike the philosophy of individuality, the ontology of individuation focuses upon

the general process, through which individuals come to light. For an ontology of

individuation, it is crucial to determine the conditions of individuation itself, rather

than the individual. This implies a more extensive account of the relation between

the individual and its generative system. The study of the process of individuation

brings about the discovery of the multiple confluences between individuals and the

material world. This introduces a different awareness of the ways in which

141

phenomena such as of temporality, life, affectivity, movements of speedness and

slowness, impact concretely upon the genesis and becoming of the individual, and

equally the role of the individual for the actualisation and differentiation of these

events.

As an ontology of individuation stresses the notion of process, this re-defines the

relation between the individual and the environment as part of a more complex

system of production. For this, individual follows and inheres with the becoming of

one unique order, which unfolds countless modalities of individuality. To consider

the question of individuation as a process means to theorise the realm of the

individual as a complex reality, which is constantly traversed by transformations and

relational exchanges with the material world.

In order to re-found the paradigm of contemporary materialism shaped by

this dynamic vision of the world and human being, the re-positioning of the theme of

individuation is imperative. This need for an ontology of individuation within

contemporary philosophical and political debate is instrumental in re-shaping our

understanding of the abundance of the material world. The order of the real expresses

itself in very complex and creative ways, re-configuring the boundaries of inert

matter.

Concerning this matter, physics and biology have raised fecund arguments recently,

which are attuned to the assumptions of matter and the body as mixtures of

transformations and relations (Sagan, 1992: 362-385). These novel theories of

physics and biology claim that matter is continuously exposed to transformations,

which reveal a unique source of generation between living and non living beings (De

Landa, 1992: 136-138; Newell, 1985: V- XVI). The awareness of these aspects must

be integrated into future materialist discourses, because the genesis and development

of the individual inheres within this structure of nature. Such arguments suggest that

is by investigating the unseen operations behind matter, that we might discover the

unique features of individuality.

142

The recognition of the complexity of nature, the body and individuality has

nurtured a rich debate within the social sciences, political theory and philosophy

recently. The central concern that occupies contemporary thought is the search for a

more extensive paradigm of the individual, which considers its unavoidable linkage

with the material world, the potentiality of the body, its affective anatomy and also

its relational state. The attention given to these elements has brought into question

the inadequacy of consolidated theories of individuality, which have constructed the

relation between the individual and its context on the schema of subject-object.

Furthermore, contemporary discourse has questioned the validity of certain models,

which have assumed human existence is regulated through distinctive functions such

as rationality, affectivity, biological and social, splitting somewhat the life of the

psyche from those of the body, ethics and politics indicated above.

In order to re-configure the domain of the individual, many important notions have

been formulated recently, which bring to light the impossibility of thinking the

individual as an atomised and rational subject. In this fashion, the focus has been

upon the analysis of language, relations, emotions, imagination and the embodiment

of the mind as fundamental conditions of the genesis and becoming of an individual

subject. The emergence of these conceptions indicates the need for an alternative

grammar of the individual, which might elaborate new categories of thought able to

express its multiform state. In order to formulate a new vocabulary for the individual

of the present, I think, we should re-draw attention to the philosophy of Gilbert

Simondon. A return, perhaps simply a turn, to Simondon’s thesis is crucial for re-

thinking the constitution of the individual. Simondon replaces the notion of

individuality as a rational and independent unit with that of the individual as a

problem. Simondon’s focus is primarily to the analysis of the general process of

individuation, through which beings (human being or not) are generated. The

attention to this process brings about the discovery of the collective as fundamental

sources of individuation, without which the individual would not exist. Taking into

account these arguments, let us flesh out the main aspects of Simondon’s theory of

individuation.

143

1.1 Simondon’s philosophy of individuation: The discovery of the collective

Simondon has occupied a somewhat marginal position within twentieth-century

Continental thought, whose originality has been recognised recently. Simondon’s

philosophical milieu is very extensive and heterogeneous, passing from biology,

psychology, Marxist political theory, science, ontology to phenomenology.

Specifically, his philosophy emerges from a combined study of Pre-Socratic

ontology, quantum mechanics, cybernetics and Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of

perception, with whom he completed his doctorate. The convergence of these

different areas culminates in a complex and extremely rich theory of individuation,

which however did not reach immediately the interest of a vast intellectual audience.

It is Deleuze’s discovery of the great originality of Simondon’s ontology of

individuation that contributed to a renewal of interests in Simondon from a group of

contemporary theorists including Stiegler, Stengers, Combes and Latour.

Simondon’s ideas reflect the intellectual turn initiated in twentieth-century French

academia referred in chapter II, and also the new tendencies maturated in the

philosophy of science and the social sciences. As many of his contemporaries,

Simondon actively participated in the intellectual campaign against Idealist

philosophies, existentialist ontology, Cartesian and empiricist theories of the subject.

Furthermore, given his interest particularly in science and psychology, he fiercely

opposes consolidated scientific and psychological studies such as the theory of

information, cognitivitist models, Gestalt psychology and the psychoanalyst tradition

of thought. Central in his critique is the mode in which the genesis and development

of the individual has been explained in philosophy, science and psychology, each of

which has assumed the individual prior to its generative process. Despite the

different perspectives, Simondon envisages a common problem at the outset of many

paradigms, which entails the consideration of the individual as the principle of the

process of individuation. The focus has been directed to the analysis of the individual

as a given reality, upon which the process of individuation depends.

144

In Simondon’s account, this has inverted the terms of the problem, which should not

question what is an human being; but rather how he is formed, and what mechanism

and forces are involved in his becoming singular. The former hypothesis implies the

detachment of the individual from its context, that is, nature. The latter, instead,

brings about the discovery of the individual as a part of a more general process of

production, within which he is not the founding principle but a constitutive and vital

element. Whilst the conception of the individual as incontrovertible truth has

generated zoomorphic and anthropomorphic doctrines of individuation, the attention

to the generative mechanism of individuation delineates the multiple and unpredicted

ways, in which the material world impacts upon the evolution of every being.

Importantly, this means the assumption of a unique process of individuation for all

singularities, which discloses the common elements and potentials between living

beings and also, as we will discuss, the many convergences between these and non-

organic forms of life.

In other words, the attention to the process brings to light, on the one side, the

powerful role played by nature within the becoming of the individual, which exceeds

the biological phases of its constitution. On the other, the centrality of the process re-

shapes entirely our understanding of the status of the singular being, which becomes

recognised as a result of various interactive levels. This account of the genesis and

anatomy of the individual has further implications. As the individual is a mixture of

heterogeneous elements inherent within nature, the definition of its peculiar character

cannot be based on a hylomorphic schema. This reduces the complexity of the

individual to the dualism between matter and form, which also considers the world as

an inanimate object. For Simondon, many contemporary and past models of

individuation heavily rely on the paradigm of hylomorphism, running from the

Aristotelian-Scholastic philosophy (Saint Thomas Aquinas among other), through

Descartes, to Gestalt theory and the Freudian school of thought recently.33 These, in

Simondon’s view, support the division of the individual into substances such as the

33 The hylemorphic definition of beings, derives from Aristotle’s philosophy. For Aristotle, Substance is the union of matter and form, and beings are a composite of soul and body, Aristotle (1985; 1986). For an accurate account of the question of the principium individuationis in Scholastic philosophy, see Spade (1994).

145

mind and the body, the ego and the super ego, vital and psychic forms of life,

ascribing to one of these a privileged status. Simondon does not only refute this

division, but more significantly, the validity of these categories as a such.

In order to re-formulate the paradigm of the individual, Simondon’s move is

radical. He does not propose the re-theorisation of a specific theory or concept,

remaining anchored within a particular philosophical tradition. By contrast, he

constructs an alternative ontology, which introduces novel conceptions of

materiality, subjectivity, life, ethics and politics. The novelty of Simondon’s

philosophical project, first of all, is the different questions that guide his inquiry; and

also the new categories of thought, around which he constructs his philosophy. In his

ontology of individuation, Simondon uniquely adapts cybernetic theories,

particularly influential in his time, Pre-Socratic physics and Merleau-Ponty’s notions

of the body and perceptions.

As anticipated, the fundamental concern of Simondon is the unveiling the process of

individuation, which is the only possibility for knowing the individual. More

importantly, Simondon relocates the genesis and development of the singular human

being within the more complex process of production of nature, that is, reality. This

has two essential implications. Firstly, the assumption of the inheritance of all

singularities within the structure of nature delineates a primordial common mass of

undifferentiated energies and movements at the basis of the process of individuation,

from which individual thought, body, flowings of time, space, affectivity, humankind

and community emerge. Simondon calls this primordial mass “the pre-individual”.

Secondly, this brings about the discovery of the collective realm as the constitutive

element of the process of individuation. More accurately, the collective is the

exclusive condition of actualisation and further differentiation of beings, which

signifies and re-signifies the potentials and degrees of energy embodied by the pre-

individual mass of power. The collective is concrete, plural and extremely powerful,

through and within which the individual emerges and lives. The significance of the

collective concerns the recognition of the relational tendency of every form of life,

and more importantly the way in which this is generative element of individuation.

146

Relation is the cornerstone of an individual, and also the force that drives the entire

process of individuation from the biological, psychic and social phases. The

centrality given to the notion of relation by Simondon delineates how his ontology

contains in itself political and ethical nuances. Although he does not address

explicitly political theses, his inquiry indicates the strategy, upon which political

theory and praxis might be constructed.

As aforementioned, further characteristics of Simondon’s ontology of

individuation are the distinct categories of thought adopted for investigating the

process of individuation. Simondon finds untenable traditional formulae of the “I”,

the self, the mind, matter and the body for describing the becoming of nature and

thereby the individual. Simondon recovers the notions of allagmatic movements,

transduction and information from the domains of cybernetics, the theory of

information, biophysics and ontology.

In order to re-found the paradigm of relation and thereby its pivotal role within the

process of individuation, Simondon employs the allagmatic theory of information

and the concept of transduction. These enable Simondon to highlight the process

through which exchanges of energies between states of beings gives rise to relational

conditions, upon which the collective is formed. In turn, these structure more

complex phases of individuation (Combes, 1999: 28-32). In Simondon’s

appropriation, transduction means exchanges and creations of new quantities of

energies between beings and states of beings (Mackenzie, 2002). In each of these

transductive movements, the quantity of energy exchanged and formed is defined as

a disparate degree. The disparate is precisely an excess of heterogeneity and

potentials, which emerges from the composition between phases of being and

individuals. More accurately, the disparate delineates a certain quantity of power,

which exceeds a preceding phase of individuation. In turn, this excess of

heterogeneity sets in motion a new moment of individuation.34 The notion of the

34 “There is disparation when two twin sets that cannot be entirely superimposed, such as the left retinal image and the right retinal image, which are grasped together as system, allowing for the formation of a single set of a higher degree which integrates their elements thanks to a new dimension” (Simondon 2007, quoted in Toscano, 2006: 139).

147

disparate is the fundamental category within Simondon’s ontology, through which he

characterises the vital, psychic and social aspects of an individual. The disparate

explains the status and role of the individual within the process of individuation

(Toscano, 2006: 136-147). 35

These themes of transductive movements and the disparate structure of beings are

directed related with Simondon’s more general re-theorisation of the concept of

information. In Simondon’s theory of individuation, information replaces notions of

form, language and communication as sources of meaning, action and, more

generally, relations. In his application, information becomes recognised not as

transmission of coded messages but as a passage from one state to another. The

exchanges of potentials between disparate beings imply a transmission of

information, which is productive of a more complex state of individuation. In this

sense, information allows a transmission of grades of intensity (Toscano, 2006: 142-

147; Garelli, 1994: 50-62). These exchanges and excesses of power and

heterogeneity maintain the equilibrium of the system constantly in tension.

Specifically, Simondon defines the collective field shaped by a metastable

equilibrium. Metastability connotes a regime of pure potentiality (a false

equilibrium), which calls for the creation of more articulated structures able to

actualise the potential energies created in the already constituted order (Simondon,

2007: 31-33). These are the main categories of thought, which guide Simondon’s

ontology of individuation. Furthermore, an understanding of these notions is

essential for our inquiry into Spinoza’s theory of the individual. Taking into account

these new elements introduced by Simondon, let us investigate how these effectively

operate within the development of an individual.

35 Simondon’s concept of the disparate will play an important role in Deleuze’s theory of individuation (see for example Deleuze, 2004a: 307-329).

148

1.2 Ontology and ontogenesis of relation: Vital and psychic processes of

collective individuation

Simondon’s ontology of individuation is espoused in his book L’individuation

psychique et collective à la lumiére des notion de Forme, Potentiel et Métastabilité

(1989) (The psychic and collective individuation in the light of the notions of Form,

Potentiality and Metastability), which constitutes the culmination of his doctoral

studies. The inquiry is constructed around the fundamental claim of knowing the

individual through individuation rather than individuation through the individual

(Simondon, 2007: 12). It is for this reason that Simondon’s ontology commences

with presenting a thesis upon Being. This delineates the path through which Being

passes from an undifferentiated position (Simondon will say aphasic, 2007: 13)

towards an actualised and heterogeneous dimension. For Simondon, the phases of

actualisation and differentiation correspond to moments of individuation, which

derive from the excess of heterogeneous potentiality embodied within the metastable

equilibrium. Simondon’s recognition of the phases of individuation as expression of

unresolved power delineates his different approach to the question of the

commencement of reality. This is not conceived as the disclosure of Being into the

world; either the move of the “I” that reflecting upon itself, discovers nature. It is

instead a process of individuation inherent within the material world, through which

contingency, heterogeneity and potentials populate the speechless territory of Being.

Central to the analysis of the becoming of Being-reality is the theory of ontogenesis.

Ontogenesis is a branch of biology, which studies the development of an organism

from its earliest stages (its genesis) to maturity.36 Simondon brings the meaning of

ontogenesis back to its original Greek signification, that is, literally the birth

(genesis) of being (ontos) (Combes, 1999: 10-25; Ansell Pearson, 1999: 90-96). The

return of ontogenesis to the domain of ontology discloses the alternative strategy

followed by Simondon. This refers to Simondon’s treatment of every expression of

life as an important part of a more complex and common process of individuation.

For Simondon, the analysis of the germinal life of beings (to use Asell Pearson’s

36 For an accurate account of ontogenesis and phylogeny, see Gould (1977).

149

phrase) is crucial within an inquiry upon the dynamics of individuation. This

delineates the modes through which the development of any individual enriches the

becoming of reality, which introduces unpredicted elements of heterogeneity and

contingency. Ontogenesis also brings to light the shared ground from which

singularities emerge. It implies the recognition of the relational structure of beings at

every stage of individuation. Therefore, Simondon’s recovery of ontogenesis from

biology reveals his intention to study the anatomy of relationality, and the multiple

ways in which this is productive of transformations.

In this fashion, Simondon distinguishes two fundamental phases of

individuation: vital and psychic. These stages do not proceed through a causal

progression, dialectical play and evolution towards the better. Each moment is

characterised by levels of heterogeneity and potentials, through which transductive

movements generate a complex state that in turn exceeds in a new more problematic

structure. Importantly, the novel equilibrium formed is not more perfect than the

previous one but simply more complicated, which means more heterogeneous and

powerful. In this sense, differences between vital and psychic forms of life, organic

and non organic beings reside in the degree of potentials remained to be released,

which sets forth further problems, movements and transformations (Simondon, 2007:

22-30).

In both phases, the process of individuation unfolds through and within a collective

field, within which potentials are actualised into novel beings. This collective is both

the individual and the environment and at the same time it is more than the

individual and the environment. As mentioned above, the collective is a relational

condition, which is powerful source of biological, psychic and social meanings,

tensions and becoming. Furthermore, the collective delineates the role of an

individual within the general process of individuation. This refers to the complication

of the collective structure through new problems and solutions. The presence of the

individual within the collective means the actualisation of unexpressed degrees of

power contained within the metastable equilibrium, and also the emergence of

further levels of heterogeneity derived from the disparate status of beings. This

150

moves both the individual and the collective toward more complex phases of

individuation. For this, the individual, Simondon claims, is an open domain, which is

nuanced intensively by a variety of heterogeneous potentiality.

Vital process of individuation: The refusal of the inert matter and rehabilitation of

the organic

We have discussed previously that the role of relation is the cornerstone of

Simondon’s ontology of individuation, which organises the equilibrium of both the

individual and collective field. Simondon traces the origins of this spontaneous

relational disposition of beings from a non individuated matter, which is common to

all individuals and ground of individuation. Simondon defines this undifferentiated

mass the “pre-individual”. This is an unlimited source of heterogeneous potentiality,

which accompanies the individual in all his phases of individuation (Barthélémy,

2005: 37-48).37

In order to explain the pre-individual, Simondon sends us back to the Ancient Greek

notion of Apeiron (Simondon, 2007: 196-197). The notion of Apeiron was

formulated originally by Anaximander in the 6th century BC. He uses the term in his

physics, in order to describe the genesis of the world (cosmos). By Apeiron

Anaximander means an endless and undetermined natural mass, through which

every element (water, air, fire) comes to light. In this sense, the Apeiron is a

generating source of production, which inheres within nature.

Simondon’s reference to Anaximander acquires great importance in our search for

contemporary model of materialism, within which the re-positioning of the meaning

of the individual might be predicated. Firstly, the citation of the Apeiron denotes

Simondon’s fidelity to the conception of nature as productivity itself. Secondly, as

the Apeiron is an indeterminate and never-ending quantity of mass, this means, in

contemporary language, that nature-matter is becoming, production, and,

37 Concerning Simondon’s notion of pre-individuality, Massumi defines this as the emergent dimension, which is out of phase (Massumi, 2002a: 208-256). Similarly, Ansell Pearson refers to the pre-individual realm as the ground of potential forms of life, see Ansell Pearson (1999: 90-96).

151

consequently, power. Unlike Aristotle and more generally the hylomorphic tradition

of thought, considered in itself, the power of matter is entirely intelligible. It is a

source of production, through which space, time, history and humankind come to

light. The meaning of the Apeiron is crucial for our understanding of Simondon’s

notion of the pre-individual.

If the pre-individual reality resembles Anaximander’s Apeiron, this leads one to

think of the status of the pre-individual as pure intensity and power, which is

importantly matter itself. In this light, matter discloses an unconditional force, which

traverses even individuated beings. Further, this pre-individual force shapes both the

collective and the singular, which means the impossibility of theorising the

development of an individual without the becoming of the collective (Simondon,

2007: 196-197).

As a main consequence, the notion of the pre-individual involves the re-signification

of the world of the organic and the importance of the vital process of individuation.

If matter is surrounded by a form of entropy, the organic is structured by this form of

potentiality as well. This implies the renewal interest in the organic world not as a

place of mechanical and biological functions, instead as a system of transductive

exchanges of disparate degrees of energy and metastability. Furthermore,

Simondon’s rehabilitation of the organic and materiality brings to light his dismissal

of the definition of inert matter, which directly involves a more extensive account of

the relation between living and non living forms of life. The study of organic

structure is cogent not because it expresses human characters potentially; rather, for

the potentiality and relational transformations that connote its domain. It is for this

reason that Simondon’s ontology of individuation begins with an inquiry into the

vital process of individuation. The importance of his arguments, for the purpose of

this work, concerns the application of the notions of intensity, exchanges of energy

and collective to the vital individual.

In order to define the individual, Simondon adopts the physical notion of quantum.

In this sense, there is an individual insofar as there is a variation and successive

152

propagation of energy between and within quanta. For Simondon, for example, the

crystal might be rightly identified as an individual, because it satisfies the instances

of intensity, pre-individual mass and collective field in tension (metastable)

(Simondon, 2007: 83-84). In this light, the crystal does not connote a mere

geometrical form, but instead a dynamic organization, which is open to further

individuation. Further, the structure of the crystal as a knot of intensity, disparation,

pre-individuality and collective organisation brings into light its relational status

(Hottois, 1996: 7-24). This is a very crucial move within the general theory of

individuation, which indicates the distinctive paradigm of materialism presented by

Simondon. This refers to the reinstatement of the value of biological life. Given its

dynamic and powerful structure, a biological reality is not less important than ethical,

theoretical and social life; either this acquires meaningful position as expression of

political and psychic gestures potentially. Simondon re-focuses attention to

biological life as it is. This is powerful, relational and fundamentally plural, which,

given its relational level, is somewhat already political.

In this way, Simondon rejects not only the mere divide between organic and non-

organic forms of life, but more significantly the uncontested Aristotelian

classification of the genres of life into political and biological, for which only the

former deserves to be lived and defended.38 Simondon certainly does not explicitly

claim that the biological life is political, nevertheless he tell us that it is relational,

problematic and thus productive of forces, and new possibilities. It is through these

confluences of different movements that the cogency of biological existence lies. Our

awareness of the great relevance of every expression of life, I think, has to be

included within contemporary materialist discourses concerning the search for a

different grammar of the individual.

38 Concerning the Aristotelian categorisation of human life, I follow Agamben’s critique. He envisages in the Aristotelian model the origin of the division of the unity of life in political and non political, within which solely the latter occupies a privileged status (Agamben, 1998: 15-30). I will return to the political implication derived from this distinction between forms of life in chapter V.

153

Psychic and collective process of individuation: The Power of Affects and Emotions

Similar to the vital process of individuation, the process of psychic individuation is,

first of all, collective articulated through intensity, transduction, the disparate and the

pre-individual matter. It is in this context that Simondon gives a very complex

account of the status of emotions and affectivity within the psychic process of

collective individuation, and also the ways in which these activate novel relational

movements, meanings and individuals. In the analysis of the psychic process of

individuation, Simondon inaugurates (a not always explicit) dialogue with Freud and

Marx. Related particularly to Freud and his heirs, Simondon fiercely rejects the

notions of unconscious, within which a knot of unknown conflicting forces and

desires orient the individual into the world. More accurately, he accuses the

psychoanalytic approach of splitting psychic life into an interiority and exteriority,

locating the power of an individual within an obscure and self-organised unit

(Simondon, 2007: 97-100).

By contrast, Simondon re-situates psychic life in the publicity of the collective. As

we have analysed above, in the collective field transductive movements of

differentiation and complication give rise to unsuspected individual realities. For

Simondon, the psychic process of individuation is equally traversed by these

transformations (Simondon, 2007: 98-104). A psychic being emerges and lives

within relational conditions, which expose its pre-individual reserve of being to the

multiplicity and commonalities of the collective.39 For Simondon, then, there is a

process of psychic individuation insofar as an individual perceives, acts or makes

other beings.40

39 By “reserve of being”, Simondon means a quantity of undifferentiated power, which persists within the individuated individual (Simondon, 2007: 106-135). 40 In his Du monde d’existence des objets techniques (1958), Simondon defines as phases of psychic individuation the interaction between the technical objects and the individual. The re-evaluation of the technical objects undeniably indicates, in different ways, the influences of Marx’s notion of the General Intellect, and also Heidegger’s account of Dasein and technique. For a complete analysis of the differences and similarities between Simondon, Marx and Heidegger, see particularly Virno (2004: 34-47, 78-81).

154

Simondon claims that the core of psychic life is positioned in the dynamics of

emotions and affectivity. As psychic individuation is always in relation, both

emotions and affectivity establish practises of participation within the collective

domain. To participate involves to share and exchange information. These exchange

and alterations of information transform the psychic individual (Massumi, 2002a: 1-

21, 229-230; Manning, 2007: 90-109). Affectivity and emotions, Simondon argues,

are precisely transformations, which model the psychic life of the individual within

the collective.41 The significance of this claim concerns, that the affective-emotive

unit becomes acknowledged as a source of psychic beings as concepts, imagination,

memory and spirituality. If emotion and affect structure the psychic realm, it follows

that the notions of emotion and affectivity bring into the collective field more

complex meanings, which re-organise the metastable structure of psychic beings. It

is through affectivity and emotion that being comes to experience the world and

others. In this sense, affectivity and emotion do not inhere within an already

constituted individual, these are not internal parts of an individual being; rather these

are located in the interstices between an individual, the collective context and the

pre-individual.

Simondon distinguishes between the role of affectivity, emotion and

perception within psychic individuation. Furthermore, it is in context that Simondon

raises the question of the body. For Simondon, the vision of the body as organised

unit is a pure conjecture (Simondon, 2007: 137-149). The body is a mixture of

different and relational grades of intensity. Strictly speaking, the body is a plurality

of complex relations (perceptive, affective and emotional), which shape the actions

and passions of the psychic individuals (Simondon, 2007: 138-143).42

41“Affectivity-emotion [affectivo-émotivité] is not solely the repercussion of the result of the action in the internal structure of the individual being; it is a transformation, it plays an active role: it expresses the relation between the two domains of the same subject. Affectivity-emotion modifies the action according to this relation, harmonizing it, making the effort also to harmonize the collective” [translation mine] (Simondon, 2007: 106). 42Simondon’s description of the body and its inheritance with cognitive activities reflects the influence of the Phenomenology of Perception (1945) of Merleau-Ponty. Exemplary is Simondon’s reference to the case of the eye, which involves the functions of seeing/observing, (Simondon, 2007: 138).

155

The theme of affectivity, in Simondon, is manifold. He replaces the meaning of

affectivity as expression of desire (Eros) and fear of death (Thanatos), heritage of

certain psychoanalytic discourses, with those of relation and tension. Affects

delineate the tension between two forms of heterogeneity the one of the pre-

individual and the other of the individual. For Simondon, this tension founds

spirituality. The treatment of affectivity as source of spirituality casts doubt on an

entire tradition of thought, which explains desires and affects as a defence of the

individual from the innate fear of death. In Simondon’s reformulation, spirituality

emerges from the domain of affectivity and connotes the problematic relation

between the individual and the pre-individual. This refers to the two-fold condition

of the singular being, within which he perceives himself perceptibly smaller and

contemporaneously inherent within the pre-individual matter. It is in this problematic

relation that the desire for eternity, and not of death, comes to light (Simondon 2007:

104-111).

If the individual is frightened by the pre-individuated mass, at the same time, this

pre-individual mass exists within the individual as a part of his reserve of being. This

fluctuating phase brings about a form of recognition between the individual and its

pre-individual realm, which gives rise to the emergence of eternity. In the history of

philosophy, Simondon observes, many notions have been proposed. The Scholastic

and, in different ways, the Cartesian arguments of the immortality of the mind, soul

and intellect greatly exemplify the attempt to explain the encounter between the pre-

individual and the individual (Simondon, 2007: 104-105). It is solely Spinoza,

Simondon affirms, who fully understood before his contemporaries the dynamics of

the psychic state of eternity (Simondon, 2007: 104). In the proposition “sentimus

experimurque nos aeternos esse” (“Nevertheless, we feel and experience that we are

eternal”, E.V, prop. XXIII, Scholium.), Simondon recognises, Spinoza has given

voice to the reality of a crucial phase within the psychic life of beings.

Beside the arguments of eternity and what is eternal, Simondon’s focus is upon the

unveiling of the mechanisms, which lie at the very heart of spirituality. Spirituality

expresses the problematic status of the individual, which is constantly in the middle

156

between the universal and the particular, between the pre-individual and the

collective. It is in this context that the process of collective psychic individuation

takes place. The collective is crucial for the complete development of psychic

individuation.

If affectivity defines the relation between the pre-individual mass and the forming

individual, it is the power of emotion that moves the individual towards acting,

thinking and orienting himself within the world. This process occurs only within and

through the collective, which functions as mediator between the pre-individual and

the individuated reality. Thus, emotion is a more complex relation, which

complicates the order of the real. It is in this moment that Simondon introduces his

notion of transindividuality as the founding condition of psychic individuation.

The transindividual anatomy of the individual

The theme of the transindividual occupies a pivotal role within Simondon’s inquiry

upon the conditions of psychic and collective individuation. The transductive

dimension of emotion unveils its tendency towards transindividuality, which

encompasses knowledge, affectivity, emotions and the spiritual life of the collective.

The fundaments of the transindividual are emotion and affectivity, which operate

within the collective, bringing the individual towards further moments of

individuation (Simondon, 2007: 106-111). In this sense, the role of the

transindividual runs from the pre-individual, through the individual, to the collective

and vice versa, without however coinciding with these categories. It structures

precisely the relation between the pre-individual and the individual moving the

individual from an initial disorienting state between individuality and pre-

individuality to an encounter with the collective.

For Simondon the transindividual force corresponds to phases of psychic

individuation, structured through the role of the couple emotions-affectivity.

Furthermore, the transindividual operates within the collective itself. As discussed,

the structure of individuals is disparate: they are essentially asymmetric. In the

157

collective, the action of the transindividual is focused on the integration of these

disparate degrees of intensity into more problematic structure, which incorporates

potentials and metastabilities that in turn articulate more problematic phase of

collective individuation. Simondon distinguishes between interindividuality and

transindividuality. Whilst the interindividual relation goes from one individual to

another, the transindividual action penetrates individuals.43 It makes individuals

resemble a system, and enriches the structure with new potentials and metastabilities.

We must emphasise that for Simondon the transindividividual is prior to any ethical

or social individual tendency towards the group. It is the action of the transindividual

that resolves the excess of potentialities and metabilities of previous phases of

individuation. Therefore, in Simondon’s analysis, the relation between individuals is

not explained through the linkage between already formed individuals. Rather, it is

the process of individuation via the transindividual that brings forward unexpected

assemblages of intensity, pre-individual mass and metastabilities.

In other words, during the process of individuation from the vital to the psychic one,

pre-individual potentials still greatly exceed the individual being. These pre-

individual masses of intensity maintain a constant order of asymmetry, which

articulates-literally problematises- further moments of individuation. It is in this

asymmetry, thus, with its excess of potentialities that the notion of relations lies. The

transindividual action structured through the emotive context actualises the relational

status (the disparation between emotive states) of emotion throughout the psychic

individuation. For this relational nature of emotion, the process of psychic

individuation cannot be conceived other than collective, which places the quasi-

individual being permanently in the middle of pre-individuality and collective

individual. For this account of the individual as constantly exposed, the process of

individuation brings about the discovery of the amphibian character of individuality

43“The interindividual relation goes from individual to individual; it does not permeate individuals; the transindividual action is that which makes it, so that individuals exist together as the elements of a system that carries potentials and metastability, […], then the discovery of a structure and a functional organization that integrates and resolves the problematic of incorporated immanence. […]. The transindividual does not localise individuals; it makes them coincide; it makes individuals communicate through significations”[translation mine] (2007: 191-192).

158

(Virno, 2004: 78-80). Individuality is permanently in the middle between generality

and particularities, pre-individual force and collective plane. The hecceity of an

individual (human being or not) lies precisely on this being permanently in the

middle. This leads one to think the quidditas of an individual being as series of

complex relations between disparate grades of intensity, which operate in the

interstices between vital and the psychic levels.

New possibilities for the individual of the present

Taking into account Simondon’s complex theory of individuation, we might raise

some conclusions. The importance of Simondon’s theory concerns his gesture of re-

founding the paradigm of relation itself. Simondon does not address the question of

why individuals enter into relation, either whether or not human nature is relational.

Simondon’s philosophical gesture is the analysis of the ontological status of relation

itself. Simondon raises important questions concerning relationality itself, and

consequently how it is possible to signify the reality of relation.

These guiding questions bring Simondon to reject the anthropomorphic and

zoomorphic definitions of relation. The essence of relation brings about the

discovery that behind the transformations within the material world there are

relational states and movements. In this fashion, the theme of individuation as a

process of transformations is a becoming of disparate forms of relation. There is

individuation insofar as there are relational events. As the place of transformations,

nature is therefore a system of complex and dynamic relations, which individualise

and problematise individuals. Our awareness of the material world as a relational

framework might improve the contemporary vocabulary of materialist philosophy. In

this sense, the arguments, I will develop in this chapter and the following ones, aim

to offer a contribution to this grammar.

The theme of relation becomes crucial, when Simondon passes to analyse psychic

individuation. Since relation is the generative source of psychic life, emotion and

affectivity found the psychic life of beings. Simondon’s arguments of emotion and

159

affectivity is based the assumption that these are prior to individuated being.

Emotional and affective activities pass through the individual without inhering

within them. This means that different emotional states are in truth moments of

individuation, without which the process of individuation would not take place.

Simondon’s theory of emotion and affectivity imply a quite different understanding

of the relational and emotive constitution of the individual, upon which novel ethical

and political theories should be predicated. Theorising the relational and

individuating role of emotion sheds light on the vital function of the emotional and

affective realm for the genesis and development of the individual being in its

political and ethical aspects. Furthermore, Simondon’s view brings to light the

collective dimension of emotion, which pervades every social and political

organisation. The consequence of Simondon’s arguments calls to question theories of

the social contract as the basis of civil society; and those ethical and anthropological

conjectures, which rely on the definition of the human nature as social and

egotistical.

Taking into account the main arguments and implications of Simondon’s philosophy

of individuation, the questions, I will now pass to analyse, concern how and to what

extent his ontological categories might clarify Spinoza’s theories of knowledge,

conatus, bodies and affects. The question specifically arises as to whether a reading

of Ethics through Simondon might enable us to discover important arguments for

materialist conceptions of the individual, politics, ethics and history. In the following

section, I will examine how an interpretation of Spinoza via Simondon’s philosophy

will raise important theses upon the richness of the expressions of Spinoza’s

geometry of affects, to which contemporary thought should pay greater attention. In

order to looking for an adequate language of affectivity able to express its materiality

and cogency, the claim I will develop in the section below, is that Spinoza’s thought

through Simondonian lenses offers crucial theoretical resources.

160

2. The Ethics: An ontology of individuation

Spinoza’s theory of the individual is developed from part II to part V of the

Ethics. In part II, he delineates the path of mind, through which it acquires

progressively the self-knowledge and the knowledge of the world. Spinoza here

gives an account of the constitution of both adequate and inadequate ideas, and

the role of the body for the attainment of knowledge. The main problem of this

second part concerns the status of the body in Spinoza’s thought. Spinoza

describes the body as a complex mixture of multiple parts (literally individuals)

(E. II, postulate I), which are transformed continuously. If the body is the ground

of self-awareness and knowledge of the world, the question arises what form of

knowledge derives from this constitution of the body as plural and complex

assemblage.

In parts III, Spinoza analyses the constitution of affects and passions and how

these might affect the achievement of rationality. It is also in this section that

Spinoza explains the theory of imagination and how this affects our self-

awareness and the perception of others. In part IV, Spinoza describes the

importance of rationality and positive affects as joy and love for the complete

development of human nature, within which freedom lies. In order to gain

freedom, common values and practises must be exercised, which constitute the

ground of the rational faculties. It is in this context that Spinoza affirms “Man is

God to man”(E. IV, prop. XXXV, schol.). Furthermore, in part IV Spinoza’s

denials of the ascetic life and suicide are fiercely predicated (E. IV, prop. XIX,

XX, XXI, XXII). The problems of both part III and IV concern the status of

affects and role of imagination. The definitions of imagination and affects in the

Ethics are somewhat ambivalent. On the one hand, Spinoza affirms that

imagination and affects produce confuse and partial knowledge. On the other

hand, imagination and affects sets forth actions, and mechanisms of recognition

of the other, memory or perception. What truly lies at the very basis of

imagination?

161

The focus of part V of the Ethics addresses the conditions, through which men

might attain the Amor Dei Intellectualis (the intellectual love of God). This final

section of the Ethics is crucial for the understanding of Spinoza’s conception of

humankind. The complexity of this part does not concern obscure arguments,

rather the difficulty concerns what Spinoza means by intellectual love of God.

Should the intellectual love of God be understood as knowledge of nature, or

rather an uprising of human mind towards Being. One might argue that this love

of God expresses the reconciliation of man with Substance without passing

through the material world. It is in this part that Spinoza affirms the eternity of

human mind (E. V, prop. XXII, XXIII). The difficulty is what Spinoza means by

his “Nevertheless we feel and experience that we are eternal [italics mine]” (E.,

V, prop. XXIII, schol.).

Central for determining the problematics involved within Spinoza’s theory of the

individual indicated above is the theme of affectivity, which functions as a bridge

between the parts of the Ethics. Furthermore, Spinoza’s thesis of affectivity

constitutes the basis, upon which his politics and ethics are developed. Thus, the

understanding of the role of affects and passions within the Ethics is crucial for

examining his political stakes and philosophy of praxis. Taking into account the

importance of affectivity, let us flesh out the dynamics of affects and passions

and the ways in which these have interpreted.

Geometry of Affects and its problems

Following the Ethics parts III and IV, Spinoza gives a detailed description of the

origins and role of affects and passions, and some of the ways in which these

may affect rational life. Moreover, in part III Spinoza explains the theory of

conatus, which characterises every creature in the world (E. III, prop. V, VI, VII,

VIII). Spinoza distinguishes between passion and action and how these produce a

varied typology of affects such as joy, hate, love, sadness, hope and fear (E. III,

Def. I, II, III). The difference between passions and affects concerns the quality

162

of the action, which derives from the prevalence between passions and affects

(E., III prop. I).

Accordingly, we are passive when our actions are hetero-directed, and we

confuse cause and effect. It means that our actions are not oriented into the world

consciously, diminishing the power of acting and increasing the power of

suffering. In this case the kind of emotions originated is called passions (E. III,

postulate I). Conversely, we are active when we are the adequate cause of our

action. In this case, we distinguish causes and effects and our actions within the

world are self-determined. The kind of emotions originated is affects, which

increase our power of action (E, III, Def. I, II, III). These are the bases, upon

which Spinoza’s conception of affectivity is constructed.

Concerning these arguments, many interpretations have been proposed, each of

which has attributed to affectivity a different role within the general theory of

humankind elaborated by Spinoza. These might be divided into rationalist-

analytic reading, which has been challenged recently by a ‘cognitive’ approach

and a political interpretation of the ‘geometry of affects’. These contemporary

modes of examining claim the centrality of the body, imagination, passions and

affects within Spinoza’s theory of knowledge and politics, envisaging a certain

affinity between his philosophy and current theories of the embodiment of the

mind and political emancipation.

For a rationalist approach, Spinoza provides a rigorous study of the power of the

mind and the ways in which this founds and further enriches human nature

(Smith, 1997 and 2003; Israel, 2002 and 2006; Curley, 1998). In this way,

Spinoza’s geometry of affects indicates a method for governing passions and

increasing the attainment of rationality (James, 1997: 131-150). If the analysis of

passions might lead one to read Spinoza’s tendency towards the suppression or at

least the dominance of these, nevertheless the relation of causality between

positive affects such as joy and love and rationality remains obscure. If passions

of fear, hope and hate prevent the development of human nature, the question

163

arises as to how affects of joy and love instead give rise to rationality. Following

the rationalist view, both passions and affects restrain the enrichment of the

rational faculties, which contrasts with the assumptions of the Ethics.

Furthermore, in stressing the importance of reason, the problem is that Spinoza

does not offer a clear definition of rationality. He instead describes the effects,

which derives from a life under reason. In this sense, parts IV and V offer several

examples concerning rational practices, which eventually lead to a responsible

form of living in common with others. In this description of rational life,

however, Spinoza does not mention the suppression of imagination, or the

passage from imagination to rationality. Importantly, the body in both

imagination and rationality remains the constant instrument of fruition of ideas

and imaginations (E. III, prop. X, XI, XII).

The rationalist approach does not further address the question of the body, which

cuts through ideas and imaginations. The body is important not only as the

linkage between imaginative and rational practices, rather the value of body lies

in its structure and potentialities. The body is, for Spinoza, pure multiplicity of

actions, thoughts, passions and affects (E. II, prop. XXII, XXIII, XXIV, XXV),

and to this role the rationalist portrait of Spinoza cannot offer adequate

explanations.

In contrast to this rationalist reading, recent studies have re-situated the

relevance of the notions of the body and imagination within Spinoza’s

psychology, ethics and politics. These themes have been assimilated to a certain

aspects of cognitive psychology or psychoanalytic thought (Damasio, 2004),

Lacanian analysis (Zizek, 2004a: 33-40), Althusserian political theory (Balibar,

1985 and 2002; Montag, 1999; Matheron, 1988; Negri 1998) and even a certain

feminist theory (Irigaray 1997, Gatens and Lloyds 1999). Despite the several

differences, these explanations of the Ethics share the convictions of the

fundamental role the body as the realm of the self-knowledge, the importance of

imaginative practises and emotions for the understanding of human social and

164

political behaviour. The rediscovery of the importance of these notions

contributes to the understanding of the complexity of Spinoza’s materialist

account of the individual.

In this fashion, Spinoza’s propositions of the relation between body and mind

and the dependence of the mind’s faculties on body’s actions and passions have

been considered as precursory arguments of certain contemporary theories of the

embodiment of thought (Loyds and Gatens, 1999:11-28). Following this view,

the body plays the fundamental role of creating, modelling and orienting human

actions and thoughts. Further, the body becomes the place, upon which

individuals enter into relations with the world. Stressing the importance of the

body, passions and affects, the imaginative life acquires great significance for the

development of human faculties. Thus, Spinoza’s notion of human being is a

mixture of thought and emotions, which are moulded upon body’s capacities of

acting and entering into relations with others.

The main implication of this approach concern the reinstatement of the role of

the body for the enrichment of knowledge, and the rediscovery of emotions as

founding elements of ethical, psychological and political practises. The first kind

of knowledge, imagination, is the place, within which these mixtures of thoughts,

bodies, actions and passions emerge. In contrast with the rationalist portrait of

Spinoza, the theory of imagination encompasses to some extent both rationality

and affectivity. In this sense, imagination is not negative or positive per se, rather

it has neutral value. This is the realm of forming conditions such as ideas,

emotions and relations (Deleuze, 1993: 217-272).

Although the stimulating analysis of this cognitive approach has led to the

recovery of Spinoza’ s dynamics of imagination and body, however, I think that

two problems still remain unsolved. Firstly, the difficulty arises on the political

implications emerging from Spinoza’s theory of imagination as the ground of

psychological habits. Secondly, if Spinoza’s attention to the dynamics of

imagination and the body certainly delineates psychological and cognitive states,

165

however these are not based on the definition of the individual as an already

constituted unit, but rather as a more complex and multisided structure. If the

psychological reading of Spinoza’s geometry of affects does not further articulate

these questions, a post-Althusserian reading offers a more extensive account of

the potentiality of the body and also the role of affects and imagination within the

formation of political behaviours.

A political Reading of the theme of affectivity

As discussed in chapter II, the discovery of the political status of Spinoza’s

theory of imagination is largely indebted to the reflections of Althusser (1976),

which open the way to the understanding of Spinoza’s first kind of knowledge as

a condition of different forms of political and social interaction. In Spinoza,

Althusser sustains, the domain of imagination is two-sided. This is the source of

both ideology and social cohesion, to which contemporary Marxist discourses

should pay great attention (Althusser, 1976: 137-142).

Following Althusser’s suggestions, thinkers as Balibar, Matheron, Moreau,

Macherey, Negri and to some extent Deleuze, view, on the one side, Spinoza’s

descriptions of the imaginative life as generative of common beliefs, knowledge

and forms of resistance. On the other, through the analysis of affectivity and

imagination Spinoza denounces the dark side of any form of power (political or

religious). In order to maintain and gain power, the existing authority sets forth a

system surreptitiously, which enhances certain affects within a community such

as hope, gratitude and fear (Balibar, 1998: 11-69; 2002: 13-40). In this light,

parts III and IV of the Ethics prepare the terrain for the political analysis of the

two treatises, bringing to light the connection between ontological and political

arguments within a materialist perspective.

These approaches to Spinoza’s theory of imagination fully explore the political

implications behind the Ethics, delineating the ontological ground of his political

thought and the political relevance of ontological principles. If the imaginative

166

practises in the Ethics describe the founding elements of a community in both

aspects of manipulation and social cohesion, however the question still remains

how human beings can pass from a passive condition (sadness or hate) to an

active one. Strictly speaking, the problem arises on what conditions (if any)

human beings become joyful and rational beings.

Following both readings (cognitive and political) of Spinoza’s theory of

imagination, it seems that the dynamics of affectivity illustrates social, political

and psychological behaviours, through which human life is moulded. The affect

of joy and love, for example, move the individual towards the recognition of

other beings as a fundamental part for the development of individuality. The

passions of sadness or fear, instead, separate the individual from others,

diminishing its physical and psychological structure (Deleuze, 1992: 217-270).

These contemporary readings of Spinoza bring into light the relational nature of

affectivity. Affectivity plays the fundamental role of orienting and relating the

individual to and within others and the environment (Deleuze, 1992: 201-270).

However, affectivity involves at same time passivity, which decreases the power

of the individual. Therefore, the question arises as whether there is any causal

relation, or passage in the Ethics, between the condition of passivity and activity,

and between these two with rationality. Furthermore, assuming the relational

status of Spinoza’s notion of affectivity in both psychological and socio-political

aspects, many problems arise. What are the origins of emotions, precisely what

truly lies at the very heart of passions, affects and imagination? Following these

readings, what definitions of the individual come out form Spinoza’s parts III and

IV of the Ethics? To put this in Simondonian language, through this analysis of

imagination, rationality, passions and affects, what can we know of the

individual?

Considering emotions, imagination and rationality as actions between already

formed individuals leads one to read in the Ethics ethical or psychological

figures. In this sense, we might encounter the religious individual (fear and

167

hope), the lover, the friend, the Hobbesian wolf, and the philosopher. Reading the

Ethics, however, no one would find a definitive description of the ways in which

affects, passions and imagination impact upon the ethical and psychological life

of individuals. Rather, we might discover a variety of affective tones, each of

which intensively pervades human life. More accurately, in the Ethics, to a

specific affect such as fear or hope does not correspond a distinct psychic and

ethical individuality, instead, a multitude of unsuspected affective actions and

meanings.44

Concerning these questions, we need to take a fresh approach. I think that on the

one side, the relational status of both affectivity and rationality, and on the other

the multiple modes of actualisation and differentiation of Being lay on a more

complex system, which undeniably impacts on psychological, ethical and

political practises. This complex process, which encompasses the multiplicity of

Substance, the geometry of affects and rationality, discloses Spinoza’s process of

individuation. It is in this context that the originality of Spinoza lies.

As his system of production is developed through multiple phases and modes of

Being, Spinoza’s focus on the individual is fundamentally, I would argue, an

inquiry upon the conditions, through which individual beings come to light. It

means that Spinoza’s theory of the individual has to be thought as a process of

individuation rather than a philosophy of individuality. Reading Spinoza’s

thought as process of individuation implies a quite different understanding of the

relation between Being, the infinite attributes, modes, body, thought and

imagination. Moreover, in the Ethics and importantly in the political treatises no

one would find an explicit description of individuality or what ought to be a

human being (Balibar, 1994: 3-37).45

Assuming Spinoza’s philosophy, particularly parts III and IV of the Ethics, as a

theory of individuality leads one to consider the system of the Ethics fragmented

into various, although connected, fields and subfields. As a main consequence, 44In chapter IV, I will give a detailed account of these affective tones. 45 The theme of individuality in Spinoza’s political thought will be discussed in chapters IV and V.

168

we would recognise in the Ethics a doctrine of Substance and attributes, a theory

of knowledge, physics, a psychology, an ethics and even a form of religion (part

V). The implications of attuning the Ethics to certain individualistic and

hylomorphic positions acquire particularly importance concerning Spinoza’s

conceptions of imagination, body, thought and emotions. These have led to

explain Spinoza’s question of affectivity, as we have seen, grounded and

developed through already constituted individuals, and also affects and passions

themselves have been viewed as varied forms of individuality. Although these

elements undeniably occur in the Ethics, these might be conceived as parts of a

more complex process of individuation, which is moulded through the

actualisation and differentiation of Being into multiplicity, nature, body, and the

relational essence of emotions and rationality.

In order to delineate Spinoza’s theme of individuation, I propose to read

the Ethics in the light of Simondon, applying to the Ethics the Simondonian

concepts of the collective, transindividuality, pre-individual force, metastability

and disparation. Simondon’s philosophy of individuation, I argue, might enable

us to follow the advancement of the propositions of the Ethics from the phases of

actualisation and differentiation of Being to the individuation and

individualisation of Substance-nature through the multiplicity of the real. This

might bring about the discovery of certain themes of the Ethics, which otherwise

would remain dormant. Thinking Spinoza’s system of production in this way will

shed light on the question of relation, becoming and collective ground, upon

which the realm of the individual lies. Taking into account these elements, let us

flesh out the phases of Spinoza’s process of individuation in depth.

169

2.1 A detour of Spinoza via Simondon

Proceeding with Simondon’s position, in the Ethics part II the individuation of

Substance begins precisely with the multiplicity of the attributes. The attributes,

as we have seen in chapter II, play the pivotal role of actualising and

differentiating Being, which give rise to a re-positioning of Substance, attributes

and modes within a more complex process. It is in this context that Being passes

from a condition a pure force of production (E. I, prop. XXXIV), towards endless

phases of individuation. The role of the attribute in the Ethics, I think, introduce

to Substance various and different levels of complexity, which corresponds to the

pathways of Being towards its individuations into mixtures of thoughts, bodies,

movements and intensity. It is precisely the excess of production that gives rise to

the process of individuation.

The attributes of thought and extension (E. II, prop. I-II) problematize Substance,

bringing in multiplicity, actuality and difference. The complexity, which is

introduced through the multiplicity of the attributes, is structured through the

emergence of elements of duration (history, past, present, future), thoughts,

bodies, singularities, emotions and imagination. These elements are the various

modes, which affect Substance (E. I, def. V, E. II, def. I, III, IV, V). Strictly

speaking, multiplicity poses a problem to and within Substance, that is, the

question of heterogeneity. By definition, modes are actual and different

existences (E. I Def. V).

In order to resolve the problem of the heterogeneous abundance of beings within

Substance, Being is drawn to the encounter with nature (E. II, prop. VII). As

Substance is immanent and absolute, however, nature cannot be conceived as

product of Being. For this, Spinoza claims the parallelism between nature and

God, which does not mean that nature is Substance. Concerning this argument,

Spinoza in many places of the Ethics points out the difference between God and

nature, for example throughout the divide between natura naturans and natura

naturata or the distinction between nature’s quality of duration and God’s

170

eternity, finitude and infinity (E. I, prop. XXIX, schol.). Nevertheless, Spinoza’s

plane of immanence implies at the same time the denial of any form of

transcendence, thus nature cannot be thought as an object of Substance.

Therefore, the question immediately arises as what are the implications for

thinking nature as parallel to God?

In order to avoid the return to certain pantheist, naturalist and even

acosmist explanations of Spinoza’s formula of parallelism, I think that

Simondon’s philosophy provides fecund arguments for our understanding of

Spinoza’s question of nature as collective individual. Applying Simondon’s

definitions of the collective, in my view, Spinoza’s theory of parallelism would

acquire greater importance.

The encounter between God and nature might be conceived as a phase of the

process of individuation. Nature emerges from the indeterminate force of

Substance as a problem of heterogeneity (the theory of modes) and

contemporaneously individuating condition of Being. Nature, thus, is the ground

of heterogeneous elements as mixtures of ideas and bodies, events, human specie

and societies, which acts as a collective individual that is espoused to further

individuation in turn.

As nature is parallel to God (E. II, prop. VII), its role is twofold. As Substance,

nature expresses on the one side necessity, power, becoming, self-causation,

multiplicity and absolute immanence; and on the other side, as the actualisation

of Substance, nature displays the characteristics of an individual being as

duration, singular bodies and ideas. In other words, Spinoza’s conception of

nature is both source of individuation and individuated being, which is a process

of individuation and elements of individuation.

The question of relations and otherness are mainly founded and developed, first

of all, within nature and these are prior to the constitution of any form of

individual being. This implies a quite different understanding of the material

171

world. If nature is shaped through relations, then these are a source of

transformations within the world itself and correspond to phases of individuation.

Spinoza delineates in part II the constitution of different and actual forms of

existences, which he calls broadly singularities (res singulares) (E. II, Def. VII).

Assuming nature as a knot of relations prior to the individual, two fundamental

questions immediately arise. Firstly, what is the essence of these relations? And

what are the implications of posing relations prior to the individual for the

process of individuation?

In order to fully understand and locate the status of relations within Ethics,

Simondonian notions of transduction, intensity, metastability and disparation are

crucial. Spinoza tells us that every individual being converges upon speed and

rest (E. II, ax. I, II, III, lem. I) and it is ordered through a mixture of fluid and

hard masses (E. II, postulates I, II). These elements lead one to conceive nature

as an organism organised through different grades of movement. Depending on

the amount of fluid or solid elements follows different types of movement from

speed to slowness and vice versa. The state of rest, in the Ethics, refers to a

seeming condition of absence of movement, which veils in truth a tendency

towards motion. These movements give rise to relations between different states

of being, and these with the forming individuals within nature (E. II, postulates

III, IV, V, VI). It is for this reason that Simondon’s notion of the collective being

provides fundamental theoretical instruments for re-configuring the boundaries of

Spinoza’s notion of nature.

Nature is a complex system, which encompasses the genesis of the organic world

and at the same time the individuation of thought and matter into ideas, bodies,

human beings, imaginations and actions. Moreover, nature is power of acting and

thinking, an eternal becoming, in one word, a process of individuation. As

mentioned, this process of individuation is collective, and lies at the very basis of

his philosophy of nature. The relevance of the notion of collective field is

founded on its force of individuation, which takes place precisely within the

confluences of movements. Movements of speed and slowness permeate the

172

collective realm, structuring relations between beings and states of beings. As

movements are the ground of relations, it follows that these are not caused by the

encounter between two or more bodies. Relations transform the equilibrium of

beings, increasing the level of complexity of the system (E. II, Postulate I). These

movements reveal the anomalous status of the Spinozian mode. The status of the

mode is, my view, disparate, which means in a continuous state of excess of

heterogeneity. It is one and more than one. The movements of speed and

slowness bring into light the asymmetric structure of the mode, which tends

towards the other modes for actualisation.46

Speed and slowness cause relations between disparate beings (Massumi, 2002a:

1-21, 46-52; Deleuze, 1992: 217-238). In the Ethics, Spinoza claims that the

more grades of reality a thing has the more perfect it is (E. II, prop. XIV). It is

here that the Simondonian categories of the disparate and transduction are

crucial. Spinoza’s proposition has several important consequences. Firstly, the

proposition indicates that the grade of perfection means essentially complexity,

which derives from the quantity of heterogeneity introduced by beings within the

system. Secondly, the reality of an individual thing, its degree of complexity,

relies on disparate states of speed, slowness and rest (for example fluid, hard

bodies) or as Simondon would say, different quantities of energy unexpressed (E.

II, lem. I, II,). These disparate states move the system towards further

individuation, which corresponds to more problematic grades of reality. For this,

there are exchanges of energy and alteration of the original structure of the

individual (transduction) every time movements of speed and slowness traverse

beings and states of Being (E. II, ax. II, III).

Thirdly, the question of the disparate grades of reality of an individual implies

the refusal of any form of hylomorphism within the Ethics. In the Ethics Spinoza

does not refer to an individual as a union of matter and form. From his physics to

the geometry of affects there is no form that binds matter. There is, instead, an

individual as juncture of different levels of relations within the collective. 46Similarly, Deleuze in his “theory of the encounters” emphasizes the relational component of Spinoza’s theory of the individual (Deleuze, 1992: 201-234).

173

Looking at Spinoza’s theory of mind and the physics of bodies, we might be able

to understand how the theme of relations through disparate beings lies at the very

heart of psychic and vital individuation.

The illusion of the body and the exposure of thought

In part II of the Ethics, before analysing the physics of the bodies, Spinoza

delineates the genesis of ideas. Spinoza affirms that the first idea of mind is the

body (E. II, prop. XI). This proposition has led to various interpretations, which

have been generally rested on the view of Spinoza’s theory of knowledge as the

embodiment of thought. As discussed previously, Spinoza’s proposition of the

inseparability between mind and body implies the impossibility of developing

knowledge, ideas without passing through the body. Spinoza’s claim of the

dependence between mind and body, on the one side, leads to the reinstatement

of the importance of the body as source of knowledge, and on the other side to

the renewal of attention to the analysis of body’s faculties. It follows that the

body’s capacities are not narrowed to the living functions. For Spinoza, instead,

the body encapsulates the action of thinking, imagining and orienting oneself into

the world. Through the body, individuals come to experience the world, gaining

self-consciousness and a conception of otherness (Balibar, 2002: 149-168).

The theme of the central role of the body for the development of

knowledge raises very important arguments. Beside the problem of Spinoza’s

supposed theory of the embodiment of thought, which will be discussed soon, his

theory of knowledge brings into question, on the one side, Descartes’s model of

the “I”, and on the other the meaning of matter and form. Spinoza’s proposition

of the body as first object of the mind casts doubt on the Cartesian theory of the

“cogito”, which is the founding principle of knowledge and self-consciousness.

For Descartes, it is the action of thinking that establishes self-knowledge and

orients individuals within the world. The thinking “I” is the primary condition of

existing, which sets forth the idea of God, science and ethics. The action of the

174

thinking “I” thus orders and orients the encounters between individuals and the

world (Descartes, 1996: 68-76, 107-116).

In contrast with Descartes’s notion of the cogito, Spinoza’s move dismisses the

supremacy of the “I” as source of knowledge, postulating the inseparability of

thinking and acting, subject and object. However, Spinoza’s claim does not imply

the materialisation of the category of thought or the spiritualisation of the object.

It means, instead, that the enrichment of self-consciousness and knowledge of the

world cannot be separated from the body’s actions. In other words, there is no

“thinking I” that founds “the existing I”, as well as, there is no the object that

shapes the “I”. In Spinoza, there is no form of ontological or epistemic priority

between thinking, acting and existing. Self-awareness and knowledge of the

world proceed through the co-participation of acting, thinking and existing,

which are conceived as functioning within individuals simultaneously.

This linkage of thinking, acting and existing moves our discussion to a further

question raised by Spinoza’s propositions, the denial of the Aristotelian and

Scholastic theory of the mind or soul as principle of the body. As the mind

cannot be assumed as a generative principle of knowledge, it cannot be

conceived as the hecceity of an individual, or the form that shapes a body.

Defining the body as source of knowledge leads one to re-think the status of the

body not as mere matter but rather as the ground of thoughts and actions. It

follows that the body, and generally matter, is not the Aristotelian undefined

brass, which requires a form. Spinoza’s view of the body and matter brings about

the discovery of the body’s capacities to impact upon the faculties of the mind.

For this, Spinoza affirms the priority of knowing the body in order to know the

mind.

Given this view, one might argue that Spinoza’s thought anticipates

contemporary theories of the embodiment of thought. Spinoza’s gesture of re-

positioning the centrality of the body within the theory of knowledge certainly

may be understood as the strict dependence of mind, ideas and concept upon the

175

individual body. Spinoza appears to portray this conception in several

propositions of the Ethics. If Spinoza is a precursor of certain forms of

cognitivism or psychoanalysis, however the problem concerns how we should

define the body in Spinoza’s philosophy. Although Spinoza stresses the role of

the body for the attainment of knowledge, at the same time, it is very difficult to

find a precise definition of the body itself.47 Therefore, the question arises as to

whether the argument of Spinoza’s theory of mind as a form of the embodiment

of thought is defensible. Theories of embodiment of thought lie on a certain

vision of the body as an already constituted unit, whereas in the Ethics the body

as a stable organism is absent.

In contrast with these contemporary readings of the notions of Ethics, I

think that Spinoza’s philosophy of knowledge, self-consciousness, the body and

emotions unveils a quite different strategy, which goes far beyond the tempting

argument of the embodiment of thought. The body is, I argue, above all

complexity, which is the ground of the development of ideas, imagination,

emotions and actions. It is this complexity that gives rise to the individuation of

thought into different and individual ideas, actions, imagination etc. This

complexity is constituted through a never-ending condition of movement,

through which states of being enter into relation. Therefore, Spinoza’s view of

the body is a knot of relations, movements and potentialities, which implies the

dismissal of body as an already formed unit. As formed individual, the body is, I

would argue, a pure illusion (E. II, prop. XXI). Spinoza is quite clear in this

regard, as he says, “The idea of any affections of the human body does not

involve adequate knowledge of the human body” (E. II, prop. XXVII), and

previously “The human mind does not involve an adequate knowledge of the

component parts of the human body” (E. II, prop. XXIV).

If the body is more than a ground of relations, then the question arises how can

we think the genesis and development of ideas? Strictly speaking, if the body as

constituted unit does not exist in the Ethics, what kind of object can the body 47 Notably, there are definitions of the body in the Ethics, however these do not give a full account of what is the body (E. II, Def. I, ax IV, XIII, postulates I, II, III).

176

becomes for the mind? In order to address these important questions, we need to

return to Simondon’s arguments of psychic and collective individuation. It is in

this context that Simondon’s philosophy of individuation becomes decisive for

our re-reading of Spinoza.

At the very beginning of the part II of the Ethics Spinoza introduces to the theme

of the body as primary object of the mind. It is precisely in this context that

Spinoza’s process of psychic individuation reveals its collective ground.

Proposition XV of part II of the Ethics says that, ‘”The idea which constitutes the

formal being of the human mind is not simple, but composed of very many

ideas”. In order to explain this proposition, Spinoza sends us back to the body as

the primary idea of the mind. The body, Spinoza soon clarifies, is composed of a

great number of individuals, which are in a constant condition of altering and

exchanging parts with other individuals.

Given this open structure of the body, the genesis of ideas does not pass from an

already formed mind to a constituted body or from a readymade body to another

(Massumi, 2002a: 1-21). The individuation of thought into adequate and

inadequate ideas, instead, emerges from a disparate condition, which is

constructed through different combinations of speed, rest and slowness.

Furthermore, this open structure of the body, through which ideas are shaped,

discloses the becoming of ideas in the middle of disparate grades of intensity.48

To locate ideas in the middle of movements means to ground the becoming of

thought directly on a collective realm.

Furthermore, locating the psychic process of individuation in the middle of states

of being moves our argument beyond the dualism between the individual and the

world. There is no divide between individuals and the environment. This brings

about the affirmation of a complex collective being, which moulds thoughts,

ideas and bodies. In Spinoza, the theme of the collective realm is manifold.

Spinoza’s notion of the collective, in my view, is endorsed by nature. As 48 By intensity, here, I mean the distinction of bodies in fluid or hard substances, and the different grade of movements that emerge from these.

177

discussed previously, nature upholds the role of individuated being and the place

of individuation. The genesis and development of ideas unfold within nature,

which is the ground of varied modes of Being as events, thought, matter,

duration, movement and space. Moreover, nature is a system of non individuated

beings thus pure potentialities, through which the vital and psychic process of

individuation comes to light. In order to delineate the emergence of the psychic

individual from the collective field, Simondon’s concepts of pre-individuality

and transindividuality have to be fully adopted.

As already discussed, Simondon defines pre-individuality as pure power,

which resembles Anaximander’s Apeiron. I will argue below that Simondon’s

definition of the pre-individual might shed light on Spinoza’s theory of the

common notions. By common notions, Spinoza refers to universal categories of

thought (for example Man, Horse, Dog), which are common to all men (E. II,

Prop. XXXVIII and corollary). Following Deleuze, the levels of commonality

between beings proceed from the physics of bodies to universal concepts

(Deleuze, 1992: 217-288). The originality of Spinoza’s thesis of the universal

concerns the transposition of the problem of universal categories of thought from

the Aristotelian-Scholastic view of the transcendental Intellect to the order of the

real or nature.49 Unlike Aristotle and his heirs, who take the concept out of the

actual, for Spinoza instead the common notions inhere with nature. This implies

the exposure of thought to the order of contingency par excellence. It means that

there are no static ideas of Truth, Humankind, Justice etc, rather an endless

becoming of meanings. In other words, these are pure potentialities attached to

nature, which signify and re-signify both the collective and the individual in

infinite ways as eternal is Substance.

49For a detailed genealogy of the problem of the universalis in the history of philosophy from Aristotle, passing through Averroes, Avicenna, Spinoza, to nowadays, see Illuminati (2002: 78-80; 1998; chapters 85-98). Illuminati argues that differently from the Aristotelian-Scholastic tradition of thought and Cartesian philosophy, Spinoza considers the common notions as inhering within the order of the real. This gives rise to the independence of human mind for the acquisition and the creation of concepts.

178

In this sense, the common notions do not solely affirm that individuals agree each

other. These are, in truth, an indefinite power, which gives rise to the vital (the

common laws of physics) and psychic beings. Spinoza states that the common

notions are the basis of the process of reasoning, through which science, art and

politics emerge (E. II, prop. XL, schol. I). Spinoza’s theory of the common

notions, I think, might be understood as an endless pre-individual condition,

which remains constantly attached to both the collective and the forming

individual without inhering within either. Furthermore, as the collective and the

individuals never acquire a definitive structure, these would not be differentiated

completely and permanently.50 This implies, on the one hand, the re-shaping of

the individual realm as an increasingly problematic structure, which is a mixture

of individuated and non-individuated parts (common notions and particular

ideas).

The implications of theorising the question of the individuation of thought in

terms of a collective process concern that ideas, actions, bodies and beings

becomes individualised entities insofar as they maintain a level of relations. In

this light, for example, the individuation of adequate ideas is structured through a

non-individuated mass and an individuated being, which is folded within a

collective nature. As ideas are grounded within a collective being, the relational

condition calls for novel transformations continuously. As modes of thought

ideas are essentially asymmetric, this implies a constant tendency towards

movements, thus transformation.

The collective aspect of nature, we have seen, veils an endless and

indefinite force, which is the ground of further and more complex phases of

collective individuation. This pre-individual mass founds the collective realm,

upon which the mixtures of non-individuated and individuated thoughts come to

light. The role of common notions, in both aspects as laws of physics and

universal categories of thought, I argue, operates as an individualising and

collective power, which espouses the original structure of the individual to a 50 “That which is common to all things […] and is equally in the part as in the whole does not constitute the essence of any one particular thing” (E. II, prop. XXXVII).

179

further moment of individuation. In other words, common notions in the Ethics

might be understood as a mass of potentialities, which maintain the system

constantly in tension. The Simondonian definition of metastability, I think, fully

exemplifies the characteristics of both the collective and individual that comes

out from the second part of the Ethics. For this, the potentialities attached to both

nature and beings form a false equilibrium (beyond stability and instability),

which causes an eternal condition of excess of multiplicity.

The psychic individual emerges from the excess of multiplicity within vital being

(the complex compositions of fluid and hard substances), and discloses an excess

of heterogeneous and disparate elements in turn (false, adequate or inadequate

ideas). In order to individuate this new heterogeneous excess of being, the role of

nature as collective being becomes crucial. In this phase of individuation, nature

configures the psychic forms of life as problematic mould of relations,

potentialities and metastability. Embracing the undifferentiated mass of potential

psychic individuals (the common notions), nature becomes generative of

meanings, which are articulated through relational movements and disparate

substances (fluid and hard).

As discussed, the relational essence of the collective ground is

omnipresent in the Ethics. In the phase of the psychic individuation, however, the

relational aspect of the collective acquire a further function. As movements imply

relations, relations involve exchanges and alterations of various degrees of

information.51 The body’s movements structure ideas (images), which develop

relational psychic beings in turn. The individuation of common notions into

different ideas underlines a form of transmission of information between

emerging ideas and bodies. In Spinoza, the origin of false and true ideas,

symbols, as well as science and imagination is based on the continuous

exchanges of meanings, which come from the pre-individual mass (E. II, prop.

XL, schol. II). It is in these exchanges of information that the psychic individual

lies. 51 Spinoza does mention the theory of information. I deduce this from Spinoza’s distinction between first, second and third kind of knowledge, and the formation of adequate and inadequate ideas.

180

The collective process of psychic individuation in the Ethics folds and unfolds

contemporaneously into communicative phases, which enrich the level of

complexity and heterogeneity of both the individual and the collective (the three

kinds of knowledge). It means that the role of communication in the Ethics does

not operate, or not only, through already individuated individual. The function of

the communicative practises, instead, structure and traverse the genesis of the

individuals. Strictly speaking, psychic life is ordered and developed through

exchanges and alterations of information (Balibar, 1998: 76-98).

Spinoza discusses these themes of psychic individuation particularly from

part III to the part V of the Ethics. In part III of the Ethics, Spinoza’s inquiry is

focused upon the role of affectivity within human beings. In my interpretation,

this discloses the crucial role of communication for the development psychic and

collective individuation. Affectivity is the core of the communicative activity of

individuals; its relational role traverses and exceeds singularities, revealing a

tendency towards transindividuality (Balibar, 2002: 119-147). Taking into

account these arguments, let us flesh out the dynamics of Spinoza’s theory of

affects as a collective process of psychic individuation.

181

2.2 The Autonomy of the affects: From relationality towards

transindividuality52

In part III of the Ethics, Spinoza’s dictum concerns the necessity of knowing the

reality of the human individual and not his representation (E. III, Preface).

Spinoza’s inquiry aims to analyse the material and psychic conditions upon

which individual beings are shaped. In this light, Spinoza investigates affects,

passions, emotions and actions and how these operate between individuals. The

novelty of Spinoza’s thought of affectivity lies in the central role given to affects

and passions for the understanding of human nature. Spinoza investigates actions

and passions rather than offer a thesis on what human beings ought to be.

Spinoza’s geometry of affects is very a complex theory, which has led to many

different and even opposing interpretations. As discussed previously, these

different readings have stressed the political implications of the role affectivity,

whereas for other traditions of thought Spinoza’s theory of affectivity gives an

account of the anthropological and ethical aspects of human beings. Moving

forwards these arguments, I propose to analyse the geometry of affects as further

phases of the process of individuation, through which psychic life is founded and

developed. This implies the retreat of emotions from the political or ethical

domain, thus its return to the ontological dimension.

The re-positioning of the theme of affectivity within ontology reveals the

richness of the arguments of Spinoza. In doing so, we might be able to identify

the modernity of the materialist paradigm of humankind proposed by Spinoza.

Spinoza’s materialist account of the individual realm does not imply the

reduction of the human being to a mere set of mechanical rules. Spinoza’s claim,

as we will see, of human being as part of nature does not involve the loss of the

distinguishing characteristics of human nature such as spontaneity, affectivity,

spirituality, creativity and a certain form of rationality. For Spinoza, instead, 52A detailed analysis of affects such as joy, fear and hope will be given in chapter IV, which focuses to the emotive tones of the multitude. For the purpose of this chapter, I will stress the power of individuation expressed by affects and passions.

182

these elements lie at the very heart of human individuals. In order to determine

this materialist model of the human nature, Simondon’s reading of emotions, the

collective and transindividuality become essential.

As discussed above, there is a constant excess of being within the system of the

Ethics, which moves metastable individuals towards more problematic phases of

individuation. This excess of being is developed from disparate and

heterogeneous states of beings, which generate and complicate the system of

production. Relations, movements and exchanges of information within the

collective plane measure and expand the degree of complexity of Spinoza’s

system of the real. In this fashion, the individuation of the vital individual is

articulated through these elements, which determine further states of complexity

in turn. The process of psychic individuation proceeds from this complexity,

resolving problems of heterogeneity. More accurately, the process of psychic

individuation emerges from the creation of an excess of heterogeneity within the

vital condition.

Before investigating the dynamics of affects and passions, Spinoza begins

by defining what are the effects of living under the affects and passions,

developing his theory of conatus. Spinoza tells us that affects may increase or

decrease the power of acting (E. III, Def. III). If we are an adequate cause of

these affections, thus the affect is an action. If we are an inadequate cause of the

effects, then affect is defined passion. By adequate cause Spinoza refers to a

cause, in which its effects are understood clearly and distinctively. Individuals

are active, when they distinguish causes from effects, and importantly they are

the causes of the effects. On the contrary, individuals are passive, when they are

partial effects of an external cause (E. III, Def. I-II). In the postulates I and II,

Spinoza explains that the human body can be affected in many ways, from which

its power of acting can be increased or decreased. These varied affections alter

the structure of the body however without erasing or decomposing the knots of

tensions developed through the phases of individuation of the vital being. In

183

postulate II, Spinoza literally refers to a vestige, which has been impressed on the

vital being during the encounter of the mind with the body.

Proceeding from the definitions of affects, passions and actions, Spinoza then

passes to analyse the theory of conatus. By conatus Spinoza defines the striving

to exist and persevere into life. This striving to exist and persevere into life is

held by every creature in nature. Related particularly to humankind, conatus

plays the pivotal the role of orienting and connecting one self to the world (E. III,

prop. VI,VII, VIII). To put this in a more Simondonian way, the conatus is a

spontaneous force, which structures and transcends the individuation of the vital

and the psychic beings. These are the bases, upon which Spinoza’s geometry of

affects is grounded and developed.

Spinoza connotes the sphere of affectivity as a mutable condition, in

which psychic individuals frequently pass from the state of passivity to activity

alternatively. As the domain of affectivity is characterised by an increasing

variability, the first kind of knowledge, imagination, primarily encompasses the

dynamics of affects. Therefore, imagination is the condition, which activates

affects and passions.

Concerning affects and passions, Spinoza offers an articulated and exhaustive

analysis. The focus of Spinoza’s inquiry is to the unveiling of the mechanisms in

which affects such as joy, love, hate or sorrow impact on the psychic life of

individuals. Affects such as joy or love increase our power of acting, whilst

passions as fear, hope, sorrow and hate enhance our power of suffering (E. III,

prop. XXV, proof). Affects are, thus, positive insofar as they give rise to the

development of relations between individuals (Deleuze, 1992: 217-270). The

power of acting is greatly intensified by relational practises; conversely, for

example, the fear of others brings about the withdrawal of the being from a

collective context (E. III, prop. XXIX, XL). Beside the divide between active and

passive affects, Spinoza’s main concern is addressed to the necessity of

preserving and improving the relational condition within psychic life. The theme

184

of collective being as the source of psychic beings is omnipresent, and in this

context becomes more decisive. Taking into account these descriptions of

passions and actions, then the question immediately arises as to what is at the

stake in Spinoza’s arguments of passions, affects, power of acting and suffering

and otherness?

The fundaments of relation: Affects and passions

Spinoza’s thesis of affects and passions unveils the gesture of theorising psychic

life in its collective aspect. The inquiry upon the dynamics of affectivity and

passions, power of acting and suffering points to the collective status of both

affects and passions, and how this collective nature of affectivity lies at the very

basis of psychic individuation. In this light, the significance of Spinoza’s thesis

of the role of affectivity does not rely solely on its social role. Spinoza’s focus to

the dynamics of affects and passions is not only addressed to the discussion of

which affects (for example fear or joy) structure social behaviour.

Although these arguments rightly occur in Spinoza’s discourse, the claim, I

would forward through Simondon’s philosophy, is that these affects in the Ethics

determine psychic moments (joy, love, hate, sorrow, hope etc.) of individuation,

which importantly unfold a collective realm. Put differently, joy and sorrow do

not pass from one already formed individual to another (for example from the

object of pleasure to subject and vice versa), or these do not gather together

individuated beings. As Spinoza defines joy or love as actions, thus these are,

literally, disparate movements, which unveil grades of intensity.53 Positive affects

cause movements (actions), which further activate the disparate status of the

mode, which is twofold. The mode, Spinoza tells us, endeavours to affirm and

increase its existence.54 Endeavouring connotes on the one side a state of power,

53 “He who imagines that what he loves is affected with pleasure or pain will likewise be affected with pleasure or pain, the intensity will vary with intensity of the emotion in the object loved” (E. III, prop. XXI). 54 “The mind, as far as it can, endeavors to think of those things that increase or assist the body’s power of activity” (E. III, prop. XII), and “We endeavor to bring about whatever we imagine to be

185

which sets forth movements and actions. On the other, endeavouring re-organises

the grade of intensity of the original structure of the mode. The asymmetric

condition of mode causes a tension towards movements, which re-shape the

grade of intensity within the system. It is in this context that love and joy acquire

a central position. These operate, through orienting the psychic individual toward

the discovery of the collective. The collective being is reinforced of new

movements respectively. To consider affectivity as collective phases of

individuation means that affects intensify the complexity of the whole as well as

of the parts.

Affects are precisely in the middle between the singular and the collective

dimension. These are movements structured through exchanges and consequent

alterations of intensity. The image, Spinoza says, of a loved thing re-organises

the psychic equilibrium of the individual (E. III, prop. XXIII). Importantly,

Spinoza refers to the affects of joy and love as images and not as objects. These

affects re-signify the relation between individual and the world, giving raise to

new codes of communication. In each psychic phase of individuation there are

exchanges and alterations of information, which are carried out by joy, sorrow,

love, hate, hope and fear respectively.

As joy and love increase the power of acting and thinking, these affects expand

the level of information within the collective ground that becomes more complex

in turn. In other words, the power of acting and thinking is the power of

communicating, which structures and problematizes the psychic beings. As we

have seen, to communicate means to enter in relation with the others and vice

versa, which leads to further phases of individuation. In each psychic moment of

joy or love, the pre-individual mass (the common notions) enriches different and

more complex meanings.55

conductive to pleasure; but we endeavor to remove or destroy whatever we imagine to be opposed to pleasure and conductive to pain” [italics mine] (E. III, prop. XXVIII). 55 These different meanings assumed by the pre-individual force will be the core of chapter IV and V.

186

However, in part III of the Ethics equally Spinoza gives a full account of

passions such as fear, hope, sorrow and hate, which gives rise to the power of

suffering. The question immediately arises as to whether we should consider the

role of these passions as less individuating or not individuating at all. The

problem specifically concerns whether there are in Spinoza’s thought psychic

events that suspend the process of individuation. If we assume the process of

individuation under certain circumstances as discontinuous, many contradictions

would arise.

As mentioned in chapter I, Spinoza defines Substance as absolute necessity,

which forms Spinoza’s paradigm of determinism. If there is a strict determinism

within Substance and the process of individuation delineates the modes through

which Being becomes individualised, then the question arises how can the

process of individuation be suspended? Further, if fear, hope and hate interrupt

the development of the process of individuation, further questions emerge.

Firstly, in order to maintain the process of individuation, does Spinoza state the

necessity of suppressing passions? Secondly, as passions inhere within the

necessity of nature (E. III, Preface), equally conatus is an innate force of self-

affirmation within the order of nature as well. Therefore, the conatus (striving to

exist) and passions (power of suffering) would eventually contradict each other.

Thirdly, if fear, hope and hate preclude the complete advancement of the process

of individuation, how do these coincide with Spinoza’s claim of desire as the

very essence human being (E. III, Def. I)?

In order to address these questions, I think that passions have to be understood as

phases of individuation, as joy and love are. These delineate, in my analysis,

different forms of the relation between pre-individuality (common notions),

collective (nature) and forming psychic individuals (modes). Depending on the

predominance between these three categories of individuation, the equilibrium of

psychic beings might be more or less complex. Complexity here refers to the

grade of intensity, which traverses the relation between nature and the modes.

Spinoza explains that passions of pain or hate are “transitions” from a state of

187

greater perfection (the tendency towards and within the collective) to a condition

of less perfection (E. III, Def. III). This means that passions are not considered as

privation. Passions are not viewed as a rupture within the process of

individuation, rather these are simply different actualisations of the relation

between the pre-individual, nature and modes (E. III, prop. XI, schol.).56

Following Spinoza, therefore, we might argue that movements of

relations are omnipresent in both psychic conditions (actions and passions). This

might suggest that there are tensions (transitions), which are fundamentally, to

say with Simondon, transversal to any given psychic individuals without

remaining attached to the individual entirely. It means that there is a force,

intense and mild alternatively, which re-signifies the psychic life of beings

continuously, now joyful beings now painful beings.

This force works through the life of individuals. It is what Spinoza calls conatus.

The conatus is striving to exist and persevere into life. To exist is power of acting

itself. Power of acting, as we have seen, is to enter in relations exchanging and

altering quantity of information. The conatus, thus, is a force located precisely

through the collective ground and forming individuals, which traverses the triad

of pre-individuality, collective realm and the psychic being. From these

arguments, a question immediately arises as what does it mean to strive to exist

and persevere into life?

Conatus and transindividuality

As striving to exist and persevere into life, conatus greatly exceeds the singular

individuals, moving them towards more complex grades of individuation with

and within the collective domain of nature. As striving, conatus cannot merely

reside on the singular being or nature. Striving brings to light a state of

56 “Nor can we say that pain consists in the privation of greater perfection, for a privation is nothing, whereas the emotion of pain is an actuality, which therefore can be nothing other than the actuality of the transition to a state of less perfection; that is, the actuality whereby a man’s power of activity is diminished or checked” (E. III, Def. III, Explication).

188

potentiality, which calls for further transformations. These transformations re-

organise the structure of the psychic being (joy, love or sorrow) in an infinite

way as infinite is the power of the existing. More precisely, conatus is a

unlimited force between nature and beings, which however inheres within

these.57 This delineates an actual and potential reality, which might be better

expressed through the Simondonian category of the transindividual (Balibar,

2002: 119-147).

This form of transindividual reality, which pervades the Ethics, re-configures the

grade of relations involved in a process of individuation, enriching different

models of psychic existence. This transindividual and innate power is the ground

of desire. As mentioned, for Spinoza desire is the very essence of man, which

individualises eternal and unresolved states of heterogeneous power to new

problematic psychic beings (E. III, Def. I). In this sense, Spinoza, I argue,

fiercely rejects the distinction between desire and appetite. It is not in the divide

between desire of mind and body that Spinoza locates the quidditas of human

species; rather, it is in its openness that the essence of the human being lies.58

Desire expresses a constant exposure towards more complex transformations and

incorporations leading to novel structures, which found psycho-social unions (E.

III, prop. IX, schol.; see also chapter IV).

This transindividual reality moulded through conatus and desire, I think, opens

up to the understanding of the emotive tones of past and existing social struggles

and communities. Put differently, as desire brings into question the problematic

and abundant state of the individual in both its collective and singular aspects,

every novel psycho-social community emerges in order to resolve a problem, that

creates a further incompatibility in turn. The consciousness of this would

contribute to the development of contemporary materialist conceptions of

politics, ethics and history.

57 “The conatus with which each single thing endeavors to persists in its own being does not involve finite, but indefinite time” (E. III, prop. VIII). 58 “[…] I mean by the word “desire” any of man’s endeavors, urges, appetites, volitions, which vary with man’s various states, and they are not infrequently so opposed to one another that man may be drawn in different directions and know not where to turn” (E. III, Def. I, Explication).

189

Taking into account these arguments, we are in the position to advance

some more general reflections. The importance of Spinoza’s philosophical

gesture, I argue, concerns the re-characterisation of affects and passions for the

development of psychic life. Spinoza, as we have discussed, raises significant

questions concerning the definition of the individual, the collective and relational

status of the affects, and importantly how these emerge.

Through Simondon’s philosophy of individuation, the genesis and development

of vital and psychic individual in the Ethics come to light as a very complex

process; where each phase is an expression of an excess of power that sets forth

novel transitions. It is in this context that the richness of Spinoza’s notion of the

individual emerges. This asymmetric condition of the modes and nature calls for

movements of speed and slowness, through which vital and psychic relations are

grounded and developed. Further, the heterogeneous condition of the modes and

nature unveils potentialities, which surround and give rise to the becoming of the

system. From the physics of the bodies to the geometry of affects, there is a form

of pre-individual mass (the common notions), which re-signifies constantly the

structure of Being and beings. This pre-individual mass, we have seen, inheres

within the order of the real, contingency. This implies, on the one hand, the

understanding of the concept as creative and essentially plural. On the other

hand, this actualisation of thought leads to a thinking of the actual as generative

mass of meanings (ideas, actions, imaginations, passions).59

Therefore, Spinoza’s arguments concerning affectivity and the individual

realm open the way to understand the reality of humankind as problematic,

relational, and fundamentally plural. It follows that every social and psychic

community is moulded through these transindividual conditions. In order to look

for novel materialist conceptions of politics and ethics, I think that we should

incorporate Spinoza’s thesis into our political and ethical discourse; or at least we

may question what are the implications of thinking society and individuals in the 59 I follows in my re-reading of Spinoza’s notions of the actual and thought, Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of the materiality and productive of concepts (Deleuze and Guattari, 1994: 15-34).

190

light of Spinoza. The remaining chapters of my thesis explore the following

questions. Firstly, what are the implications of thinking a collective and affective

process of individuation for political and social practises? Secondly, what are the

historical, social and ethical expressions of this transindividual reality. Let us

now turn to a political analysis of these questions.

191

Chapter IV

Tractatus Theologicus-Politicus: The affective tones of the political

Introduction

In chapter III, I examined the materialist paradigm of the individual proposed by

Spinoza, and re-considered the principal and more critical theses of parts II and III of

the Ethics through Simondon’s categories of thought. The detour of Spinoza via

Simondon’s ontology has brought about the discovery of a distinct model of

individuation, which commences in the Ethics and, we will see below, continues in

the political Treatises. Spinoza’s account of the individual is based on the unity of

the process of individuation, within which the individual is not an unknown principle

but rather the constitutive element of a more general system of production. This

implies the consideration of historical and social transformations, psychic and

biological processes as parts of a unique and complex process of individuation,

which inheres within nature.

Spinoza’s process of individuation is centred on the concepts of relationality, the

collective and affectivity. For Spinoza, phases of individuation are relational

movements, which activate exchanges and alteration of heterogeneous levels of

power and degrees of reality. These structure and further develop the biological and

psychic anatomy of individual beings as well as nature. More accurately, nature is

the collective ground, which is traversed by confluences of undifferentiated and

differentiated quantities of matter and thought. It is the ground of relational phases,

which is place of individuation and, at the same time, individual.

Related particularly to psychic individuation, relationality operates within the

domain of affectivity. This individuates and further complicates individuals towards

192

more problematic forms of relational life. From the analysis of the general process of

individuation, Spinoza defines the peculiarity of the individual as a desire, which

denotes a state of excess of heterogeneity and more significantly a transindividual

force towards the others. Spinoza’s theory of affects and, more generally, the process

of collective individuation constitute the bases, upon which his political analysis is

grounded and developed.

Taking into account the arguments developed in chapter III, this chapter

explores the relation between affectivity and politics in Spinoza’s thought. The focus

is addressed to the manifold and somewhat ambivalent status of passions and affects

in the theological section of the Tractatus Theologicus Politicus (hereafter TTP), and

the various ways in which these form complex political communities, meanings and

transformations. In the theological part of the Treatise, particularly, passions and the

power of imagination occupy a central position within the political life of the

individuals, shaping entirely the action and thought of the mass. Spinoza’s treatment

of the affective condition of the mass developed through the exegesis of the Old and

New Testaments brings about the discovery of the problematic status of passions and

imagination within the political context. These are, on the one hand, the origin of

human misconceptions about God, the state and the Church, and thereby the

exploitation of people’s desires and needs; on the other, passions, grounded in the

domain of imagination, are powerful source of relations, common values, practises of

participation and mutual support, which undeniably reinforce the entire political

body.

The analysis of the multisided power of passions over a community constitutes the

basis, upon which the multitude as a political individual emerges progressively

within Spinoza’s political arguments, becoming the principal protagonist of the

political section of the Treatise and the Tractaus Politicus (hereafter TP). More

accurately, in the theological section of the Treatise affects and passions pose the

problem of the existence of a collective and powerful body, which exceeds the

categories of people, mob, and subjects. This collective individual is nuanced by a

variety of affective tones, each of which produces critical political act and thought

193

that shape the realm of the political in turn. It is precisely through the dynamics of

affects and passions that Spinoza’s notion of the multitude comes to light. Therefore,

the understanding of the ways in which affectivity produces political individuals,

meanings and forces is crucial for determining the genealogy of the multitude within

Spinoza’s thought.

It follows that in this chapter, I will not draw attention to the multitude itself; rather, I

examine the political and ontological role of affectivity within the production of the

political. As passions and imagination represent the most ambivalent notions within

Spinoza’s theory of affects, the discussion focuses upon the passive and imaginative

tones of the body politic of certain political communities examined in the theological

section of the Treatise. An inquiry into Spinoza’s conception of the political

dimension of affectivity might contribute to the re-founding of a proper political

vocabulary for passions and affects, affirming their autonomy from the spheres of

ethics and psychology. These have fragmented the expansive power of affectivity

into social and cultural codes, an obscure unconscious and an inexplicable natural

drive.

By contrast, Spinoza’s treatment of affectivity as a psychic and collective process of

individuation opens up to the vision of affects and passions as powerful and

collective source of actions, thoughts and relations, through which the constitution

and development of the multitude as a political individual and, more generally, a

community reside. Concerning these arguments many questions guide this chapter.

Firstly, how and to what extent does Spinoza’s ontology of individuation re-shape

effectively the mode of theorising the commencement of political society?

Assuming that Spinoza’s ontology of individuation developed through affects,

passions and bodily movements in the Ethics is already political, then the difficulty

entails how his philosophy of individuation re-founds traditional paradigms of the

origins of civil society, going far beyond theories of social contract, rational choice,

and self-interest. If this is the case, then the main problem arises as whether this

collective and affective process of individuation implies a return to teleological

arguments or a transcendent agency behind human association. Secondly, how does

194

Spinoza’s account of affectivity as relational, complex, and powerful concretely

produce and transform political individual and communities? Thirdly, related

specifically to the definitions of passions and imagination as causes of partial

knowledge and decrease of power, what different form of political praxis and

problems do these introduce within society?

In order to address these questions, I propose to proceed further with the

detour of Spinoza via Simondon. Simondon’s ontological categories, I think, might

shed light on the originality of certain themes of the Treatise, which otherwise would

remain obscure. I refer to the question of society as a becoming rather than a contract

between rational and self-interested men. The view of society as a becoming, better a

process, implies the understanding of actual and past human associations as

complexity, which are traversed by problems, solutions and potentialities.

Furthermore, by reading the treatise in the light of Simondon the theme of the

political role of affectivity, significantly passions, in politics acquires a cogent and

multisided status. This concerns the definition of affectivity not only as a central

element characterising the ethical and psychological life of a specific community.

Rather, affectivity, even in its aspect of passion, involves a more complex process,

which grounds alternative modes of thinking temporality, history, politics and

society.

The claim, I will make through this chapter, is that in Spinoza’s analysis affectivity

becomes recognised as the generative source of the production of the political. It is

precisely in this context that great modernity of Spinoza’s political gesture lies.

Spinoza forwards the idea of the status of affectivity not only as the mediator of

social relations, but also as powerful and endless process of the production of the

‘common’, which signifies entirely the political scene. As full expression of affects

and passions, the multitude, although not explicitly named in the theological section

of the Treatise, is the actor and, at the same time, theatre of the production of the

‘common’.

195

In order to explore the affective production of the ‘common’ and how affectivity

configures the body politic, in this chapter I will give a reading of the theological

section of the Theological Political Treatise structured through conceptual, better

affective, personae. More accurately, the facts and the personages analysed by

Spinoza in the first part of the Treatise will form the constitutive elements of more

complex conceptual personae. In this light, we will encounter the personae of the

Devotees of the prophet, Subjects of Moses and the Apostles, each of which brings

into the realm of the political problems, potentials and relational beings. The

importance of analysing the themes of the Treatise through conceptual personae

concerns, on the one side, the possibility of stressing the notion of affectivity as a

process, through which movements of actualisation, differentiation and

transformation take place. On the other, the usage of conceptual personae will

disclose alternative trajectories towards the conceptualisation of the role of

affectivity within the foundation of the theory of the multitude.

Although the chapter is a study of the political significance of affectivity within

Spinoza’s thought, the intrinsic relation between affects and the multitude requires,

primarily, the analysis of the affective characters given by Spinoza to the multitude

in the theological section of the Treatise, and the ways in which these structure

specific political behaviours and problems. In the following section, I shall pass to

examine the structure and main purpose of the theological section the Treatise,

drawing particular attention to the controversial passive conditions of the mass

within the thread of the Treatise. The analysis of these problematic aspects will

frame our reading of the TTP through conceptual personae.

196

1. The Plan of the Theological Political Treatise: Situating the question of

affectivity in Spinoza’s political theory

In the Theological Political Treatise, Spinoza’s engagement with the multitude is an

intricate issue, which still generates an intense debate. The main problem entails the

understanding of who truly is the multitude and, consequently what is its role within

a political body. The difficulty of locating the multitude within a specific category of

people, mob and citizens concerns the variety of contrasting affective tones, with

which Spinoza defines its action and thought. In the thread of the Treatise, the

multitude is nuanced by fear, hope, ambition, anger and indignation. These different

affective denotations bring to light the manifold status of the multitude, which thus

makes a definite conceptualisation in a determinate social class quite problematic.

In order to examine the multifaceted character of the multitude and the role of

affectivity within its constitution as mob, people and mass, we need, firstly, to look

at the structure and the main arguments of the Theological Political Treatise. These

offer a preliminary, however not exhaustive in itself, account of the function of

affectivity within a political context and the mechanisms in which this shapes the

body of the multitude. As indicated above, the attention will be given to the analysis

of the theological section of the Treatise, whereas Spinoza’s political thesis

developed in the Treatise and in the TP will be discussed in chapter V.

The Theological Political Treatise consists of a pars destruens (chapters I-X)

and a pars contruens (chapters XVI-XX). 60 As the title suggests, the Treatise is

grouped into two main sections, the theological and political parts. In the theological

section, corresponding to the pars destruens, we are immediately projected into the

affective status of the multitude, through which Spinoza introduces the causes of

superstition, a vehement critique of the ideological apparatus of faith, and thereby the

ability of the clergy to exploit religion for the control and manipulation of needs and 60 For an historical background of the TTP, see Nadler (1999), and Pollock (2005).

197

acts of the people. In this part, Spinoza’s inquiry is concerned with undermining the

entire metaphysical nucleus of theology, through which the Church has

surreptitiously constructed its influence over the mass, political affairs and

philosophical issues. For this, Spinoza’s move concerns a new method of

examination of the holy texts, which has to consider the historical, cultural, linguistic

context within which the stories of the Scriptures occurred (Strauss, 1997: 111-144;

Balibar, 1998: 25-48).

Spinoza employs a very accurate exegesis of the New and Old Testaments, through

which the extraordinary origins of certain unusual natural phenomena (miracles,

signs and revelations), the alleged divinity of the prophets, the impenetrable object of

faith are brought back to the realm of imagination. The knowledge of the prophets,

prophecies and speeches, on the one side, are simply based on the understanding of

the laws of nature through the first kind of knowledge, imagination, which is the

ground of the passions of fear, hope, devotion and hate. On the other, the messages

of the prophecies are adapted on the ignorant condition of the mass, which are easily

inclined to believe in myths and extramundane forces. It is through the power of

imagination, Spinoza explains, that people are persuaded of the esoteric meanings of

the Scriptures and the belief in an ultimate end beyond the order of nature. This

causes the emergence of superstition and ignorance amongst a community, through

which human beings are now moved by the fear for misfortune now by the hope for

fortune.

The hegemony of the Church over society, Spinoza warns us, is erected on this

superstitious apparatus, which plays deceitfully with the fear, hope and ignorance of

the people.61 Therefore, Spinoza’s attack on religion is directed to invalidate not

religion itself but rather the causes of human misconceptions about God, the

authority of the clergy and nature, by which, as he announces in the preface,

individuals “fight for their servitude as if for salvation” (TTP: 389-390). Spinoza,

instead, affirms that the very object of the faith resides on moral precepts, which aim

at the development of obedience and piety between individuals (credo minimum). 61 Concerning political authority of the Church and conflicts between the different faiths in seventeenth-century Holland, see Balibar (1998: 1-20), and Nadler (1999:116-244).

198

From these first stages of the Treatise, many problems arise. These refer to the

ambivalent position of Spinoza concerning the role of the multitude and affectivity

within a political context.

On the one side, Spinoza gives a somewhat negative account of the multitude, which

becomes recognised with the categories of plebs, mob and mass. For this, he refers to

the multitude as ignorant, superstitious and unreliable, which can be easily mobilised

against this or that authority. On the other, Spinoza includes within these categories

the exponents of the Church too, which encourage and increase the passions of the

mass through the expedients of miracles, prophecies, and also the notions of evil, sin,

and grace. Furthermore, for Spinoza, as we will further discuss, the passions of fear

and hope are experienced by both the clergy and the masses.62 For Spinoza, the

clergy and the mass are reciprocally afraid one of the other. Additionally, if Spinoza

conceives the domain of imagination as the ground of the human misconceptions,

through which superstition is founded and developed; it is through imagination too

that the growth of ethical values and cohesive practises such as love, piety and

mutual support derives.

Proceeding from these first chapters of the theological part towards the political

ones, Spinoza’s notion of the multitude and affectivity becomes even more

ambiguous. If the affective status of the multitude can be accounted easily for plebs

in the theological section, which requires praxis of emancipation from the authority

of the Church, it is in the arguments articulated from the chapter XI to the XVI that

Spinoza’s theory of the multitude becomes increasingly more ambivalent (Balibar,

1994: 3-38).

Before entering the political section, there are a series of chapters (chapters XI-XV),

which prepare the terrain to the themes of the political part. As mentioned, the

religious argument still persists, however, in this part these acquire a different

meaning. The transitional part considers, on the one side, the ethical function of

62 The twofold status of fear within the Treatise has been acutely analysed by Balibar (1994). I will discuss his approach in chapter V.

199

religion, precisely the one of the New Testament; and on the other, attention is

addressed to the separation between philosophy, religion and politics.

In these chapters, Spinoza passes to analyse the very object of faith, drawing a line

firmly between philosophy and religion. For Spinoza the focus of any faith should be

solely addressed to the encouragement of the positive affects and actions such as

love, joy, devotion, through which practises of mutual support are developed. As

anticipated in the pars destruens, Spinoza consequently re-draws the domain of

religion by narrowing its importance to ethical habits: Pietas. This form of faith

(credum minum) does not affect negatively the development of political institutions

as for example democracy; rather, it favours social relations, contributing to the

growth of the sentiment of community (the common good). Spinoza refers here to the

doctrine of the apostles.

However, in the same part, Spinoza states further that the advantage of this

conception of religion resides on the increase of the obedience between people. It is

precisely in this context that Spinoza’s arguments of the multitude become

ambivalent. The main difficulty concerns how Spinoza combines the two aspects of

religion as reciprocal love and obedience. More accurately, if the apostolic message

of universal (Catholic) love leads to cooperative practices, why and to what extent

this has to be formulated in terms of obligation? In this light, it might seem as the

affective constitution of the many is predominantly shaped by negative passions of

fear, rivalry and egoism, which are not naturally disposed towards cooperation and,

more generally, a life in common. This would suggest that the object of the faith of

the apostles serves to educate the mass how to love each other. Nevertheless,

Spinoza repeatedly points out that the knowledge of the apostles as well as the

certainty of the prophets of the Old Testament are based on natural understanding,

which is owned by every human being. This would indicate that there are no

ontological and ethical differences between the apostles and the mass, thus everyone

should, spontaneously, follow the Catholic teachings of love without concurring to

external devices of obedience (Deleuze, 1992: 255-288).

200

Concerning the question of the ambiguous status of passions and imagination,

the anatomy of the mass and the role of obedience in the theological section of the

Treatise a number of diverse interpretations have been proposed. Two strategies of

reading these themes are particularly important for the purpose of this work. These

refer, on the one side, to a specific political analysis of Spinoza’s critique of theology

and the condition of the mass, and on the other a study of the psychological and

social dimension of imagination and affects contained within Spinoza’s descriptions

of prophecy, miracles, rituals and the message of the apostles.

Moving from a post-Marxist theoretical position, Althusser, Giancotti, Balibar,

Negri, Matheron and Tosel, among others, have raised fecund arguments on the

political implications of Spinoza’s critique of theology, configuring his thesis

alongside Marxist notions of alienation, emancipation and the exploitation.63

Spinoza’s critique of religion, they have commonly argued, offers a theory of the

genealogy of ideology, and the various and hidden ways in which mass’s tendency

toward a form of ‘spontaneous’ servitude has been created. In this light, the passive

state of the mass have been considered as the direct consequences of a politics of

enslavement persevered by any form of sovereign power, whose central purpose is

the maintenance of ignorance and illusions amongst individuals. Spinoza’s attack on

the metaphysical nucleus of theology, they have claimed, reveals a precise strategy

of “disalienation” of the mass, which proceeds from the apostolic formula of

universal love to the advocacy for freedom of the political section of the Treatise

(Matheron, 1988; Negri, 1998; Giancotti, 1969).

Although this first mode of reading the pars destruens of the Treatise have reinstated

the political significance of Spinoza’s critique of religion as a praxis of

emancipation, within which the mass are a central element of the political context,

nevertheless the effective impacts of passions and imagination upon a community

still remained not entirely explored. More accurately, beside the aspect of alienation

63In contrast with post-Marxist position, there is a Liberal-individualist approach to the political section of the TTP, which places Spinoza’s notions of freedom, the social contract and democracy alongside Hobbes, Smith, Toqueville and Voltaire, see for example Israel (2002), Smith (1997), Feurer (1987). I will discuss this interpretation in chapter V.

201

and servitude, as we have seen, imagination and passions are the ground of common

habits, beliefs and actions, which are located within the political order. Spinoza’s

account of the passive tones of the mass under the condition of ignorance and

servitude reveals a more multisided understanding of the affective dynamics which

characterise a community. The second way of reading Spinoza’s question of religion

investigates precisely this further role of passions.

From a different perspective, there have been important attempts to extrapolate a

socio-psychology from Spinoza’s description of the passive condition of the mass.

Although they have reached diverse conclusions, Curley, Rice, Gatens and Llyod

have offered fruitful insights on the social and psychological elements derived from

Spinoza’s description of the role of passions and imaginations within civil society.

Significantly, the works of Gatens and Lloyd (1999) have stressed the social function

of imagination and passions in the theological section of the Treatise. The power of

imagination, they argue, does not only allow for the growth of superstition,

ignorance and alienation. Rather, this refers to a more complex mechanism, which

brings to light the centrality of the notions of the body, actions, relations and identity.

Spinoza’s thesis of the origins of prophecy, rituals and sacrifices, for example,

discloses the ways in which imagination and passions give rise to collective

identities, common rules and ethical practise, upon which a community is founded

and developed. Furthermore, given Spinoza’s definition of imagination as the

domain of the fluctuation of actions and thoughts, this crucially introduces within the

constitution of the social and political body a certain contingency, which enriches the

system with dynamic elements (Williams, 2007).

Certainly this second way of reading the theological part of the Treatise has given

full attention to the powerful role of imagination within the community, bringing

about the complexity of Spinoza’s theory of imagination and passions. Although this

analysis has rightly affirmed the social dimension of passions and imagination,

nevertheless important questions are not entirely answered. These refer to a more

political definition of passion and imagination, which should consider both the

relational and passive aspects of imagination described in the TTP. In other words, if

202

imagination is source of social relations, this is, at the same time, cause of human

misconceptions and servitude. Therefore, the problems still remain the understanding

of the political and social role of passions and imagination within the thread of the

Treatise.64

Taking into great consideration both readings, however, I think that the

political meaning of imagination and passions in the theological section of the

Treatise might be further explored through a different path. I refer to a more

extensive definition of affectivity, which involves notions of time, relations,

becoming and actualisation. The different affective tones of the mass emerged from

Spinoza’s discourse, in my analysis, come out from a process of political and

ontological individuation, which transforms and further problematises the realm of

the political. It is precisely this process of individuation that signifies the anatomy

and power of the multitude, explaining its centrality within the political part of the

Treatise and the successive TP.

In order to re-consider the political meaning of affectivity, specifically passions, and

imagination and thereby their importance for understanding Spinoza’s notion of the

multitude, a further strategy of reading the TTP has to be adopted. I propose to insist

further on the detour of Spinoza’s thought through the philosophy of Simondon,

which we have commenced in chapter III.

An inquiry of the role of affectivity within Spinoza’s political discourse, I suggest, in

the light of Simondon’s philosophy of individuation becomes crucial. Simondon’s

ontological categories might shed light on what processes and relations affectivity

brings to question, and how these impact effectively and intensively on the political.

Through Simondonian notions of the collective being, emotions, transindividuality,

pre-individual force and disparateness, Spinoza’s ambivalent treatment of passions

and imagination acquires great cogency, introducing a new awareness of the reality

64 The relation between imagination, affectivity and politics in Spinoza’s thought has nurtured an intense literature, which pushes much forward the importance of his notion of imagination within contemporary political theory, see Manning (2007) and Massumi (2002). Significantly, Williams (2007) has further developed the significance of Spinoza’s notions of imagination and affectivity within democratic theory.

203

and potentialities embodied by the community. In this light, the arguments, I will

make through this chapter, concern the understanding of passions, affects and

imagination as natural and unavoidable conditions of the becoming of society as

whole, which enrich the domain of the political with unpredictable orders of

problems, solutions, relations, meanings and time.

2. The conceptual personae of the Theological Political Treatise: The

affective and collective production of the political

In chapter III, we have seen how Simondon’s theory of the psychic and collective

individuation sheds light on the relational and collective ground of Spinoza’s

geometry of the affects and bodies, which characterise Spinoza’s ontology of

individuation. This has opened the way to the possibility of analysing the domain of

the individual as a system of continuous transformations, within which the action of

entering into relations with others literally is a movement of individuation. The

importance of Spinoza’s notion of relation, as argued in the previous chapter,

concerns the re-founding the paradigm of relation itself, which becomes the

cornerstone of the becoming of both the individual and reality. In this sense, notions

of movements as speed and slowness, qualities of bodies as hard and fluid, power,

conatus, desire and, over all, affects and passions create equally relational phases,

without which the process of vital and psychic individuation could not take place.

Related particularly to human beings, the reading of the Ethics through Simondon’s

philosophy had many significant implications. Affects and passions play the pivotal

role in order to develop further the process of psychic individuation. These have led

to re-shaping our awareness of the richness of affectivity and its central role for the

individuation of psychic individuals. For this, affects and passions such as hate, love,

fear, hope and sorrow do not pass from one already individuated being to the other,

neither are these located in an obscure interiority of the individual. Rather, these are

collective and importantly are irreplaceable phases of individuation.

204

In the Ethics, we have seen, Spinoza describes emotions not or not solely as auxiliary

functions of human beings, which appear subsequent to the constitution of physical

and psychical beings. Emotions, specifically affectivity, activate relational

movements, upon which the individual lies. Thus, Spinoza’s conception of the

psychic being, more generally, the humankind brings about the need for re-

positioning the constitutive role of affectivity at the centre of the human theatre. The

reinstatement of the significance of affectivity has immediately political

implications, which can still offer thoughtful theoretical insights for contemporary

thought and society.

In order to examine the affective process of the constitution of political

individuals through Simondon’s ontology, a different strategy, perhaps unorthodox,

of reading the TTP has to be introduced. Despite their differences, we have seen, the

ways of reading the TTP, commonly, begin with the analysis of the theological

section, the pars destruens, proceeding through the transitional chapters on the

separation of religion and philosophy, to the political part (par construens) on

democracy and freedom. Without contrasting and denying the importance of these

methods, the inquiry on the theological section of the TTP draws particular attention

to the affective events occurring through the thread of the Treatise, constructing

around these conceptual personae, better affective personae. These will show us an

unexplored path of thinking and making the anatomy of community, which goes

through the emergence of an excess of incompatibilities, complexity, relational

movements, power and potentials. Affectivity lies at the heart of this process,

through which problematic and collective individual populate and re-populate

constantly the political.

In this chapter, the understanding of the notion of the conceptual personae proceeds

from Deleuze and Guattari’s formulation (1994: 61-83). For Deleuze and Guattari,

conceptual personae are movements, which describe the philosopher’s plane of

immanence, within which concepts are founded and developed. Importantly,

conceptual personae are not aesthetic figures of novels and arts. Conceptual personae

are the power of concepts, whereas aesthetic figures are the power of affects. The

205

former functions on the plane of the immanence, the latter takes effect on the plane

of composition (for example the image of universe). Certainly the plane of arts and

that of philosophy, conceptual personae and aesthetic figures, may meet each other,

however they would never coincide entirely.

In the history of philosophy, conceptual personae have always played a pivotal role

within the production of the philosopher’s thought, engaging with him eventually an

ideal dialogue throughout the entire journey of his philosophy. In this sense,

conceptual personae have accompanied the development of the works of Plato,

Descartes, Kierkegaard, Hegel, Nietzsche, Marx and so and so forth. In some cases,

they are sympathetic to the philosopher as in Nietzsche’s Dionysus, in others

antipathetic such as the Idiot, which leads Descartes to discover the cogito (Deleuze

and Guattari, 1994: 61-62). The importance of conceptual personae within the

development of the philosopher’s theoretical production concerns the possibility of

activating multiple potentialities of a concept, positing a problem and glimpsing a

solution. In this light, we may see Marx playing with a varied range of conceptual

personae from the bourgeois, the proletariat, the Jewish people and Hegel, each of

which does not express an ideal model rather a different actualisation of a principal

problem and the possibility of its solution.

In Spinoza, then, the question of the conceptual personae becomes more complex

and manifold. This refers to the presence of affectivity within Spinoza’s thought. In

contrast with Deleuze and Guattari’s exclusion of affects from the conceptual

personae, I have found a variety of powerful personae in the TTP, which are

moulded through the mixture of thoughts, affects and bodies. These activate and

problematise the becoming of Spinoza’s philosophy. In this light, we will see that

beside the historical figures of the prophet, Moses and the apostles there is a more

complex process, which is grounded in the domain of affectivity. The conceptual-

affective personae of the Treatise signify this process, actualising specific Spinoza’s

concepts and concerns.

206

As anticipated previously, the conceptual personae of the theological section of the

TTP are the Devotees of the prophet, Subjects of Moses and the Apostles, each of

which brings into the political order problems and solutions, novel times and

territories, movements and intensities, incompatibilities and compositions. As the

names I have given to these personae suggest, these conceptual personae are

essentially plural, which means relational, disparate and fundamentally complex.

Taking into account these arguments, the first conceptual persona we encounter is

the Devotees of the prophet. This conceptual persona expresses a crucial phase

within thread of the TTP, that is, the constitution of the political from the abundance

of nature. The Devotees of the prophet are precisely the emergence of the political

incorporated within the dynamics of imagination and passions.

3. The Devotees Of the Prophet

In chapter II “Of the prophets”, Spinoza tells us that the prophets “were not endowed

with a more perfect mind, but with a more vivid power of imagination”(TTP, chapter

II: 404). The certainty of the prophets is based not on an extraordinary faculty or an

intimate relation with God. The knowledge of the prophets, Spinoza asserts, is based

simply on signs, revelations, lumen naturalis, memories of past events and stories

and, more importantly, their own physical and psychic attitude. As he summarises,

Therefore the certainty of the prophets was based entirely on these three considerations:

1. That things revealed were most vividly imagined, just as we wont to

be affected by objects in our waking hours. 2. The occurrence of a sign. 3. Lastly and most important, that the minds of the prophets were

directed exclusively towards what was right and good. (TTP, Chapter II: 406)

Spinoza, then, proceeds with analysing the historical figures of Isaiah, Moses,

Abraham, Joshua, Amos, Nahum and Christ, and how these have experienced and

divulged the idea of God. As Christ understood God without the use of images, signs

207

and revelations, Spinoza sets aside his doctrine from the circle of the other prophets

of the tradition of the Old Testament (TTP, Chapter IV: 431).

Excluding Christ from the tradition of the prophets, Spinoza addresses the

demystification of the divine status of the prophets, through which their actions and

beliefs have been considered as indisputable. In order to clarify the mundane origins

of prophets, Spinoza gives a detailed account of their respective historical,

emotional, social and linguistic milieu, upon which the alleged divinity of their

authority has been grounded. Spinoza contextualises actions, beliefs and writings of

the prophets, through a very accurate exegesis of the holy texts. This replaces the

sacred reputation of the prophets with ordinary imaginative abilities, affectivity,

bodily movements and, importantly, the environment (TTP, Chapters I-II).

Each of these personages, examined in the TTP, reveals a particular use of

imagination, which denotes an immature mode of intending the order and connection

of natural phenomena (TTP, Chapter II: 409). The prophet, Spinoza explains, situates

and orients himself within nature through picturing images of fire or flood, and also

emotional states such as joy, hope, astonishment and prostration. Moreover, the

impact of the excess of nature on the body of the prophet produces the perception of

unpredicted events as a gift, miracle and punishment for his devotion or impiety

(TTP, chapters I, II, III, VI). These are the causes of the growth of the

anthropomorphic idea of God and nature within the prophet and his followers.

Spinoza’s arguments concerning the false divinity of prophets constitute a

decisive move against the ideological apparatus of the Church, through which

people’s needs and desires have been manipulated. As analysed in the preceding part,

Spinoza’s critique of the sacred status of the prophets has been commonly viewed as

his political commitment to the emancipation of society from the enslavement of

theology. These aspects undeniably occur in Spinoza’s refusal of the divine authority

of the prophets, re-positioning their knowledge within the domain of humankind.

Related particularly to the prophet, however, Spinoza’s description unveils more

diversified tones. Spinoza does not only portray the image of the prophet as negative,

208

but also as joyful, ingenuous and compassionate. For this, the prophecies of

Abraham, Moses or Joshua are characterised by important ethical messages, which

reveal different forms of commonalities between individuals.

Alongside these aspects of emancipation of society from theology, we should also

draw attention to the domain of imagination, which grounds the stories of the

prophets. Spinoza’s portraits of the prophets and their devotees, in my view, reveal

more complex arguments, which go far beyond the critique of theology and the

liberation of society from the conditions of ignorance and servitude. These refer to

value of imagination and affectivity as powerful source of relations, meanings and

practises.

Concerning these arguments, from different perspectives, Williams (2007),

Lloyd and Gatens (1999) and Althusser (1976), among others, have pointed out how

Spinoza’s analysis of imagination and affectivity brings to light cooperative and

ethical practises within a community. Although these themes rightly emerge from

Spinoza’s inquiry of theology, I believe, that the domain of imagination structured

through affects and passions discloses a more problematic process, which exceeds

the production of social habits, ethical and political norms. Spinoza’s account of the

imaginative status of the prophets and devotees brings to question the anatomy of a

group within a forming political context, the production of the ‘common’ through

relational movements of bodies and affects and the experience of nature as pure

excess. The claim, I will forward through this section, concerns the understanding of

imagination and affects as fundamental elements of a process of individuation,

through which political realities and individual emerge. In other words, we must

consider the multifaceted realm of the prophet as a process of individuation, which

embraces contemporaneously the political, the social and the psychic.

In order to discover these aspects, a different path has to be followed. I propose to re-

conceptualise Spinoza’s conceptions of prophecies, prophets, rituals and miracles

(chapters I, II, V, VI) within a more complex conceptual persona, that is, the

Devotees of the prophet. The analysis of the theological arguments of the Treatise

209

through a conceptual persona might enable us to determine what lies at the very basis

of the production of the political and how affectivity brings into the system

meanings, tensions, individuals and flowings of time.

For the complexity and heterogeneity of the themes involved within this persona,

Simondon’s philosophy of collective and psychic individuation might shed light on

the manifold status of the prophets and their devotees. Simondon’s theory of the

collective individuation might translate into contemporary language the personages

of the Treatise, through which the originality of the political stakes of Spinoza’s

notions of imagination and affectivity might come to light.65

Prophecy: the threshold of the political

In chapters I-II (“of prophecy” and “of the prophets” respectively), Spinoza describes

the genesis and meaning of prophecy. As with the knowledge of the prophet,

imagination grounds the prophetic messages too. This implies the interpretation of

prophecy as a direct consequence of particular affective circumstances as the

prophet’s emotive disposition, linguist expressions and the ignorance of certain

natural laws.

Spinoza defines prophecy or revelation as the understanding and communication of

God’s power and existence through images and words (TTP, Chapter I: 396). The

prophet is the interpreter (in Hebraic nabi) of God’s messages, and he also plays the

fundamental role of divulging God’s will to the members of a group (TTP, Chapter I:

394). The images and words of God mediated through the prophet’s imagination are

instrumental in the developing human beings’ awareness of the richness of nature.

The message of prophecies, Spinoza explains, concerns an immature mode, however

not false, of understanding the laws of nature. For Spinoza, thus, the focuses of the

revelation are, on the one hand, addressed to the unveiling the structure and

becoming of the order of the real throughout the employment of affective discourses

and figures. On the other, the aim of revelation is directed to the establishment of

65 For Simondon, the group is always a mixture of psychic and social realities. For him, there are not groups exclusively psychic or social, instead groups are a confluence of these two poles of Being (Simondon, 2007: 175-214).

210

moral behaviours within a group.66 This leads to the creation of common beliefs,

opinions and actions, through which new forms of relations between individuals

come to light. The prophet’s gestures of revealing God’s will to others sets in motion

a mechanism of production of a series of commonalities, which differentiates the

entire equilibrium of the system.

Therefore, prophecy here expresses not or not only an ingenuous way of thinking

God, rather, a more complex process, which transforms and expands the domain of

the individual on the realm of the ‘common’. In other words, behind the vague and

mutilated opinions generated through the prophet’s speeches, there is the re-

organisation and re-signification of the equilibrium of a collective body. Following

Spinoza’s arguments, the prophetic message gives rise to a sense of closeness and

participation between ignorant (disparate) individuals, through which they recognise

their role within the world. They become devotees, importantly, not of God but of

the prophet collectively.67 As the occurrence of the collective ground is moulded

though the prophet’s speeches and images, it is through his body, stories, dreams and

memories that common actions, ideas and tendencies are individualised.

In order to prophesise and narrate stories, the prophet requires a group to

whom he can address his messages. Without the group the prophet is directly

confronted with the undifferentiated nature, which reveals his impasse in thinking

God. The encounter of the prophet with the pre-individual mass of nature is nuanced

by the passive tones of fear, hope, sorrow and astonishment, which structure two

fluctuating movements. The prophet, on the one side, is frightened by the boundless

force of nature, which is greater than the singular individual.68 On the other, a form

of recognition occurs between the prophet and the multiplicity of nature, which

derives from the composition of the individual as a mixture of individuated reality 66 “[…], God’s testimony to Abraham implies only that he was obedient and commanded his household to the ways of justice and goodness” (TTP, Chapter II: 411). 67 “For Moses commanded them [Israelites] to love God and keep his Law, to regard to their past blessings […] as bestowed by God; and he further made terrifying threats if they should transgress these commandments, while promising many blessings if they observed them” (TTP, Chapter II: 413). 68“Adam, to whom God was first revealed, did not know that God is omnipresent and omniscient, for he hid from God and attempted to excuse his sin before God as if he had to do with a man. […]. For Adam heard God walking in the Garden, calling him and seeking him out, and then seeing his guilty bearing, asking him whether he had eaten of the forbidden tree” (TTP, Chapter II: 410).

211

and pre-individual mass.69 For this, the prophet considers himself as a constitutive

element of the order of the real.70 It follows that the prophet experiences the power of

nature as Otherness and, at the same time, Sameness, which structures his incapacity

to signify himself through God. It is precisely at this moment that passions of fear,

sorrow and hope activate a process, through which the individual enters into the

realm of the collective ground. In order to solve prophet’s impasse of orienting

himself within the world, passions bring about the re-discovery of the group of the

devotees. 71

However, this group is not a mere assemblage of listeners, rather they are followers

characterised by devotion (faith). This moulds, on the one side, the message of the

prophecy through collective meanings, upon which a group of listeners becomes

devotees of the prophet. On the other, the devotees attune their actions and thoughts

to the stories narrated through the prophet’s voice.

Given the central role of the action of communicating images for the creation of

collective habits and opinions, one certainly might argue that Spinoza’s analysis of

prophecy, and more generally imagination, delineates a theory of communication and

the ways in which this grounds and develops commonalities within a society.72

Spinoza, undeniably, gives full account of the language, speech and writings of

prophets and how these have been used to influence people’s actions and thoughts.

However, the significance of the prophecy in the Treatise, I think, does not only rely

on the unveiling the mechanisms of language. It is not communication that lies at the

69 For a more detailed explanation of the theme of the composition of the individual in Spinoza’s ontology, see chapter III of this work. 70 “Therefore, if Moses spoke with God face to face as a man may do with his fellow (that is, through the medium of the two bodies), then Christ communed with God mind to mind” [italics mine] (TTP, Chapter I: 399). 71Concerning the figure of the prophet, Deleuze and Guattari strive towards the dramatic relation between the prophet and God. Referring to Spinoza’s description of the prophet, they view the condition of the prophet as mere instrument of God’s will, whose role is signified and dependent on the power of God. The prophet, they conclude, is only a messenger of the Lord, insignificant in himself (Deleuze and Guattari (2004b; 135-141), 72See on the question of Spinoza’s theory of imagination as a form of communication, Balibar (2002), Giancotti (1969), Gatens and Llyod (1999), Visentin (2001), Williams (2007).

212

basis of prophetic discourses, which would organise a community of devotees.

Simondon’s theory of information, analysed in chapter III, might better explain the

imaginative process, which founds the art of prophesy, and how this effectively alters

the equilibrium of the collective body. For Simondon, to inform, better to exchange

information, means literally to transform. This leads directly to consider the forces,

through which actions and thoughts signify and, at the same time, are re-signified

within a collective body. To be more precise, information calls for productive

changes and movements, to which immediately correspond alterations of the entire

equilibrium.

In the Devotees of the prophet, the art of prophesy goes far beyond the method of

communication, bringing to light a process structured through a knot of bodily

motion, forces, thoughts, images and potentialities. As mentioned, prophecy means

the act of interpreting and communicating God’s gestures; and also it involves the art

of predicting future events, which, however real or illusory, influence actions and

thoughts of the devotees in their actuality. Although the prediction concerns coming

events, however, this guides and transforms the present actions and thoughts of the

devotees (TTP, Chapters II and V).

Spinoza tells his readers that the prophet communicates through images and words,

which implies a very extensive understanding of the status of revelation. Bodily

intensive movements here play the pivotal role of divulging God’s stories. It is

through a combination of prophet’s voice, eyes, memories and dreams that the

common sense of devotion is developed (see particularly chapter V). Additionally,

from the Ethics we know that thinking and acting are developed contemporaneously.

These elements indicate that the gestures of prophesy and devotion refer to moments

of actualisation, differentiation and transformation of a general system. The power of

prophecy entails a re-shaping of the common understanding of time, bodies and

thoughts. It is precisely in the middle of these movements that passions and affects

become crucial. In this phase, passions actualise and further individualise relational

forces, re-configuring entirely the realm of the collective. Fear, hope and devotion

213

are mainly the conditions, which re-form and complicate the domains of the prophet

and the devotees.

In the Ethics, part III, Spinoza defines fear as “inconstant pain arising from the idea

of a thing future or past, of whose outcome we are in some doubt” (E. III, Def. XIII).

Similarly hope is “inconstant pleasure arising from the idea of a thing future or past,

of whose outcome we are in some doubt” (E. III, Def. XII). Lastly, by devotion

Spinoza means “love toward one at whom we wonder” (E. III, Def. X).

In our affective-conceptual persona of the Devotees of the prophet, it is the devotion

toward the prophet that lies at the very heart of the ‘common’. In this state, devotion

constitutes the fundaments and the purpose, through which desires and conatus are

actualised into the political ground. The relational movements generated through the

devotional force re-signify and expand intensively the realm of the common to the

political. Although devotion is a passion, this structures collective actions, thoughts,

forces, which notably do not pass from one individual to the other as from the

prophet to his devotees; rather, devotion re-organises the equilibrium of the

collective being into a political individual. Given Spinoza’s claim of the

correspondence between acting and thinking, devotion expresses already an action,

which might be founded and developed only within a relational context. To act,

however moved by fear or hope, within a collective structure directly means to

behave politically.

In his critique of theology, Spinoza gives full rights to the political meaning of

passion without narrowing its role to ethical habits and alienating practises. The

creation of rituals, laws and ceremonies within religious communities of the past

exemplifies the political consistency of passions such as devotion and piety (TTP,

Chapter V: 439).

In this fashion, the novel political individual emerging from the devotional relations

between devotees and the prophet brings to light multiple levels of heterogeneity

such as time, ethics, humankind and history, each of which is nuanced by the

214

passionate tones of the Devotees of the prophet. As expressions of devotion,

miracles, for example, do not only describe the misinterpretation of the causes

behind the natural phenomena, rather how the collective individual of the Devotees

moulds time, life and the becoming of nature. In the case of the miracles, the

Devotees conceptualise (“understand”) the past (history) and organise their future

through wonder, which includes political actions as the exodus of the Israelites from

Egypt. As “admiration toward” wonder gives rise to novel political practises, which

transform the community as a whole. For this, the miracle is always described as a

relational event, which is experienced collectively. Although with a negative

meaning, Spinoza clearly states that the miracles are essentially created for the

“common people” (TTP, Chapter VI: 444-447).

Taking into account the political and relational status of devotion, piety and

wonder, however, we cannot ignore that Spinoza defines these as passions and, in the

Treatise, the devotees are described as vulgus (plebs). For the Ethics, passions

delineate a passive state, within which individuals are dependent on external forces

and events. To put this in political terms, fear, hope and devotion are the causes of

the manipulation of devotees’ needs and desires, through which ideological

apparatuses are erected.

If devotion, fear, piety and hope reduce progressively actions and thoughts of

individuals, in our case of the Devotees, no one can deny that these, nevertheless,

constitute relational states, which transform the parts as well as the whole.

Furthermore, by definition devotion is “love toward”, which forwards the idea of

certain active movements, forces and desires. Therefore, the questions immediately

arise, first, as what Spinoza truly means by passivity. Secondly, who or what is

passive in the relation between devotees and the prophet?

Reading the chapters of rituals and miracles, for example, Spinoza seems to attribute

a quite passive role to the devotees. Therefore, the devotees, at first sight, appear as

the place, within which passions are grounded and developed. Proceeding further

with the reading, however, we discover that the state of passivity pervades the entire

215

conceptual-affective persona of the Devotees of the prophet not only parts of it. For

this, both the prophets and the devotees are ignorant of the laws of nature and God. It

means that devotion and wonder, for example, affect equally Moses’s actions, the

pharaoh and the devotees.73 Both prophets and their followers institute sacrifices

moved by fear of misfortune and hope of fortune. Strictly speaking, the wondering

(devotion) toward someone or something shapes the entire persona of the Devotees

of the prophet. It means that ceremonies and sacrifices are the results of a more

complex process, which passes and exceeds both prophets and devotees, re-

signifying the realm of the ‘common’.

In order to better situate the political meaning of passions within the TTP, we need to

return briefly the analysis of affectivity developed in chapter III. I have argued

through the adoption of Simondon’s categories that passions do not express a

fracture within the process of individuation. By the necessity of nature, this would be

absurd. These instead refer to different combinations of relational movements

between the collective, the pre-individual and the disparate structure of beings. In the

case of passions, the pre-individual reality is experienced more vehemently than the

collective, which delays the series of transformations within the collective individual.

Similarly in the Devotees of the prophet, I think, the tendency towards passivity

reveals the predominance of the pre-individual over the actions and thoughts of the

devotees, which is exemplified by the conception of God as otherness. This leads to

stabilising progressively the entire equilibrium of the collective body, within which

relational movements are not the ground of novel meanings, individuals and

tensions. Rather, these become simply a motionless and repetitive system of rules

and regulations.

As a consequences the temporal life the Devotees is constantly structured through

moments of expectation and forgiveness, for a gift, a miracle and punishment. The

73 See for example, the anger of Moses toward the pharaoh (TTP, Chapter II: 407), and how from this generates political gestures.

216

time of the devotees expresses an enduring state of expectation. 74 Expectation

means that the present does not actualise the infinite possibilities of the collective

ground embodied by a group (in a Simondonian fashion “the reserve of Being”),

rather potentialities, actions and thoughts remain enclosed within a time in between

past and future.75

Taking into account these arguments, we might raise some reflections. The

impasse (the passivity), I would argue, of the Devotees of the prophet is not caused

by passions in themselves, which would generate misconceptions and servitude. The

status of the devotees is not lacking. Instead, it folds and unfolds a variety of emotive

tones such as fear, hope, anger and piety, each of which signifies different relational

phenomena. The drama of the entire conceptual persona of the Devotees concerns,

instead, the condition of being passive in relation to the pre-individual, which shapes

relational conditions such as ceremonies, laws and sacrifices ordered through

expectation and otherness. These situate political individuals (human beings, laws,

institutions, ethical norms), however collective, within stable organisations, where

relations are not productive of possible transformations and individuations. From

Simondon, we know that a stable equilibrium (political, ontological and ethical)

means the effacement of any possibility for transformations and movements, through

which the advancement of the process of individuation is avoided entirely.

The importance of this conceptual persona, on the one side, concerns that its emotive

status brings about the discovery of a quite complex process, which forms not only

social and psychological behaviours between individuated beings. Rather, this

involves the re-actualisation of reality itself, which becomes differentiated and

signified through intensive relational movements nuanced by devotions, wonder and

piety. On the other, the Devotees bring into light a problem within the system, which

refers to the possibility of being excluded from the more general process of the

becoming of the real.

74 Concerning the notion of time derived from passions and imagination, differently Gatens and Lloyd have pointed out that imagination introduces a time of contingency within the social context, which gives special priority to the present (Gatens and Lloyd, 1999: 29-51). 75 Concerning a more general account of theme of the time of prophecy, by contrast, Agamben affirms that the time of the prophet takes the only form of the future (Agamben, 2005:59-60).

217

However, this conceptual persona certainly leave unresolved many important

questions regarding the political meanings and the role of passions within the

production of specific political behaviours such as struggle, resistance and pact of

fidelity. In order to determine what other form of politics and society passions might

produce, we need to look at the story of Jewish people, which plays a pivotal role

within the thread of the Treatise. The theme of the formation and development of the

Hebrew state discloses how passions and affects give rise to important political

events, movements and even the collapse of the state of Israel. It is to the question of

Jewish people that I now turn. This conceptual persona occupies a crucial role within

the thread of the TTP. It indicates the ways in which passions are productive of

powerful political behaviours such as struggle, resistance and pact of fidelity. It is to

the history of the Jewish people that I now turn.

218

4. The Subject of Moses

The theme of the Jewish state is a critical issue in Spinoza’s political thought, which

raises many fecund arguments, running from specific questions about Judaism such

as the messianic vision of the world and the role of Moses for the development of

Jewish nation, to more general political analyses such as the limits of the

confessional foundation of political states, the origin of the pact, the necessity of the

separation of religion, politics and philosophy and the nature of power within a civil

society.

Spinoza gives a very accurate and radical account of the Jewish question, which

plays a strategic role both in the theological and political sections of the Treatise.

Spinoza’s focus is to question the belief in the divine vocation of the Jewish people,

upon which the alleged conviction of being the nation chosen by God before all

others has been based (TTP, Chapter III). For Spinoza the distinctive status of the

Jewish state resides on a well-organised system of laws, political institutions and

social cohesion, which overshadowed the other political governments of the time.

This implies the recognition of the value of the Jewish nation independently from the

faith professed. This is a decisive move within the thread of the Treatise, which has

political and religious implications.

Concerning the theme of Judaism, Spinoza forwards the idea of developing a laic

vision of the Jewish society, opening the way toward the secularisation of Jewish

culture and history (Yovel, 1992a: 15-126; Smith, 1998: 1-24, 166-205). For this,

Spinoza does not deny the great achievements of the Jewish community obtained in

history, which becomes an exemplary administration of society. Through his

exegesis of the holy texts, Spinoza, instead, questions the sacred origins of the state

and the idea of the divine election of the Jewish people. For Spinoza, there is a

stipulation of a pact at the very basis of the Jewish nation, through which people

have transferred part of their power to Moses. Spinoza’s critique of the divine

219

vocation of the Hebrews opens up directly to the refusal of the paradigm of

messianism, around which the entire apparatus of Judaism has been constructed.

Concerning the political implications of Spinoza’s claim, the refusal of the messianic

vision of the world, the replacement of the divine foundation of the state with the

social pact have an impact on a more general mode of conceptualising the foundation

and the objectives of the state, the status of people in relation to the political

authority. Spinoza’s denial of any form of messianism within politics brings to light

his philosophy of praxis, which has been situated along a certain Marxist notions

such as the alienation of the proletariat, false consciousness and historical

materialism (Tosel, 1984; Matheron, 1988; Balibar, 1998; Negri, 1998).

Although Spinoza’s thesis of the Jewish question and its political

implications have been largely analysed, and all possible alliances with other

traditions of thought exhausted, I think, that there are still dormant themes, which

might come to light through a different strategy. These brings to question the

relational process involved within the formation of the political community, the

implications of the passionate relation with God for the constitution of the political

individual; and more importantly, the theme of the affective tones of Moses’

subjects, and how these have played a crucial part within the becoming of society.

The arguments I investigate, point to the ontological and political status of

affectivity, and how this gives rise to the nation of Israel.

In order to examine these themes, Spinoza’s analysis of the Jewish nation will form

our conceptual-affective persona following the Devotees of the prophet. In this light,

the historical figures of Moses and the Israelite community will be incorporated

within a more complex personage, that is, the Subjects of Moses. The importance of

this conceptual-affective persona concerns the unveiling some of the ways in which

affectivity structures relational movements within a process of collective

individuation. The inquiry into the conceptual persona of the Subject of Moses brings

about the discovery of the notions of obedience, sacrifices, laws, and messianic

tendency as results of a process of individuation, which signifies and re-signifies

220

constantly the realm of the political. It is precisely in this context that Spinoza’s

conception of the anatomy and becoming of a community as a complex political

individual comes to light.

The claim, I will make through the thread of this conceptual persona, concerns the

relocating of passions, desires and affects at the centre of a process, which brings to

light the structure of individuals as an excess of heterogeneity. This excess of

heterogeneous forces and meanings is crucial for signifying the realm of the

‘common’. In case of the Subjects of Moses, desire, anger, hope and wonder generate

powerful collective individuals, which give rise to the production of new political

realities. It is through the dynamics of the Subjects of Moses that Spinoza’s

conception of society as a mixture of incompatibilities, tensions and potentials

emerges. Taking into account these arguments, let us map the affective and relational

dynamics of the conceptual persona of the Subject of Moses.

4.1 Anguish and gift: Time and becoming of the Jewish people

In chapter III “of the vocation of the Hebrew”, Spinoza makes a fundamental claim,

that is,

Everyone’s true happiness and blessedness consists solely in the enjoyment of the good, not in priding himself that he alone is enjoying that good to the exclusion of others. He who counts himself more blessed because he alone enjoys wellbeing not shared by the others, or because he is more blessed and fortunate than others, knows not what is true happiness and blessedness, and the joy derives therefrom, if it be not mere childishness, has its only source in spite and malice. [italics mine] (TTP, chapter III: 415-416).

This general statement means, on the one hand, that happiness and wellbeing do not

consist in an individualist and possessive fruition of these conditions. This might

suggest that “true” happiness and blessedness, instead, require a state of sharing and

participation or, at the very least, a non ambitious and immodest enjoyment. On the

other hand, Spinoza’s affirmation might be considered as the recognition of the

221

central limit of the Jewish people, which searches and enjoys happiness and fortunes

for their own advantage, and also with the pretence of being more fortunate or

blessed than other nations.

In our conceptual persona, the twofold meaning of Spinoza’s thesis identifies the

path of the Subjects of Moses towards the political. The practises of sharing,

participation and exclusion signify the ontological and political becoming of the

Subjects of Moses. It is in these moments that the drama and, at the same time,

power of this conceptual persona resides.

Following the thread of Spinoza’s arguments, the supposed divine vocation of

the Jewish people merely concerns a well-organised political and social government

(TTP, Chapter III: 418). This refers to the sharing of fortunes, rules and regulations

collectively and not as independent beings. These factors come to constitute the sole

exceptional character of the Hebrew state. From these initial explanations, however,

many questions soon arise. Firstly, how does Spinoza’s system of necessity allow the

political uprising of the state of Israel? In other words, are there ruptures, messianic

figures or inexplicable events, which brings about the genesis of the Israelites?

Secondly, what conditions or individuals (if any) prepare the terrain for the

affirmation of this political body? Ultimately, who or what lies at the very heart of

the state of Israel? In order to address these questions, we need to take a step back

and draw our attention to the conditions and phases, which have led to the emergence

of the Subjects of Moses.

Following Simondon’s dictum of the priority of knowing the process for the

understanding of the individual, there is a process of collective individuation

moulded by a mixture of passions and affects at the very heart of the becoming of the

Subjects of Moses. As we have seen with the Devotees of the prophet, affectivity

structures various levels of relational conditions within the realm of the political.

This involves the differentiation, actualisation and further complication of individual

beings within a new metastable order, which is the collective ground. This acts as a

complex individual and, at the same time, source of further phases of individuation.

222

The realm of the political plays this role within the development of the Subjects of

Moses, within which they re-situate and re-orient themselves within the world. The

importance of this state concerns the possibility of unveiling some of the ways in

which the Subjects of Moses become the place and elements of the production of the

political. In other words, the path of the Subjects of Moses towards the actualisation

of the state of Israel delineates the affective force employed for the creation of a

political community.

Exodus: Slaves and claimants

Spinoza tells us that the Jewish people after the exodus from the empire of Egypt

find themselves in an unexpected situation resembling closely a state of nature (TTP,

Chapter XVII: 539). The exodus expresses a very crucial moment, within which

they passed from a condition of servitude to one of freedom. In the thread of our

conceptual persona, this connotes a process, within which the passions of fear, anger

and hate expose the realm of slavery towards the problematic phase of refugees.

Given Spinoza’s conception of passion as a dependence of one’s action upon an

external cause, the passions of fear and hate might seem to contradict the definitions

of the Ethics. This might lead one to think that fear and hate, under certain

circumstances, produce forces instead of passions, which would be absurd for the

arguments of the Ethics. Therefore, the question immediately arises as how do the

Jewish people escape from Egypt given the passivity of their relations?

The state of the Subjects of Moses preceding the exodus, I suggest, should be

incorporated within a more complex equilibrium, which is shaped by a mixture of

forces, meanings and potentialities. This is the collective ground, within which the

Israelites under the pharaoh are nuanced by the wonder toward God and the hate for

the empire of Egypt. Although the Jewish people are under the passive relational

movements of hate and fear, they are, over all, a group. They recognise themselves

as one, however multiple, individual claimant of the Promised Land. The

actualisation and development of a collective individual implies an enduring

223

condition of transformations, exchanges of information and relations, without which

the disparate being would cease to exist. In the group of the Israelites, the state of

claimant moves this process of transformations towards more complicated phases. As

claimant, the Israelites express, on the one side a force, a desire toward more

problematic individuals; on the other, the act of claiming brings to light their intrinsic

asymmetric structure (the level of disparation), which causes their the condition of

slavery or passivity.

However, the group of claimant is located in the middle of a political context, the

state of the pharaoh, which brings about a confluence of already individualised

realities (the Egyptian rules, hierarchic equilibrium and customs) with forming

political individuals (the hope of the Promised Land). The wonder of God structures

and reinforces the equilibrium of this emerging individual towards the

individualisation of more productive relations, which should overturn the passivity of

the state of servitude. These elements, in my reading, play equally the pivotal role

within the transition from the phase of servitude to the one of refugees. However,

there is another crucial aspect of this transitional moment, which might shed light on

the dynamics of the exodus. This entails to the image of Moses, precisely his

affective status.76

Spinoza describes the wisdom of Moses as a vivid attitude towards mercy, devotion

and wonder of God (TTP, Chapter II: 412-413). Moses, Spinoza claims,

communicates with God as one friend does with another (TTP, Chapter I: 399).

These emotive tones structure a positive force, which greatly exceeds and re-signifies

the moments of fear and hate. It is in truth the love of Moses towards both God and

the Israelites that surpasses and expands the passive relations of the phase of

servitude. Importantly, this positive tension is located and operates only within a

collective individual, which corresponds, in this case, to the body of the Israelites.

The exchanges and alternations of information between the affective status of Moses

and the Jewish people re-organise the equilibrium of the process towards more 76By the term Moses I mean a specific affective degree of intensity, which resides on a collective individual.

224

problematic individuals. The two degrees of intensity expressed by the Israelites’

hope of the Promised Land and Moses’ friendship with God re-shape intensively the

passive relations of the fear for the pharaoh towards the production of novel forms of

political beings. From the Ethics, we know that hatred, however strong might it be, is

always destroyed by love (E. III, prop. XLIII). This suggests a very different mode of

intending passions and servitude, which discloses new trajectories towards its

possible subversion without deferring to any external force or agency.

It is not Moses that liberates the Israelites, neither God or the Israelites themselves. It

is, instead, through the emergence of a collective individual carrying novel

meanings, incompatibility and tensions that the exodus can be realised. Strictly

speaking, there is always a possibility of overturning hate and servitude insofar as

there are productive tensions, heterogeneity, relations and exchanges of meanings,

which, in our case, are nuanced by the tones of Moses’ love toward his subjects and

the Israelites’ desire of the Promised Land.

These affective tones, crucially, are not merely psychic states or thoughts, which

reside, secretly, within the intimacy of the group or the disparate being; neither do

these precede actions and movements. By the definitions of Ethics, affects and

passions, however self-oriented or hetero-directed, are already actions. The

significance of Spinoza’s philosophical gesture acquires great consistency

particularly in relation to the political event of the exodus. For the Israelites and

Moses, what is at the stake is not only the turn from a polytheistic position to a

monotheistic one, rather it is life itself (the attainment of the Promised Land), which

is at risk. Therefore, devotion, fear, hope, anger and wonder signify collective actions

and forces, which inhere within the realm of the political.

225

The community of God:Productive and messianic times

The arguments of the exodus and servitude move our discussion towards the centre

of our conceptual persona. This refers to the condition of the Jewish people within

the unexpected state of nature. The analysis of the status of the Subjects of Moses

within the state of nature is crucial. This might enable us to discover the genealogy

of a community and the ways in which this signifies more complex political beings

such as theocracy, anarchy and monarchy.

In the natural condition, Spinoza explains, the power of everyone corresponds

exactly to his right to act (TTP, Chapter XVI: 527). This delineates a place of pure

potentiality, a mixture of unpredicted and undetermined events. Furthermore, this

implies the recovering of the conception of the natural condition from its Hobbesian

meaning as the domain of cruelty to a boundless territory shaped by desires, power

and tensions. Related particularly to the Subjects of Moses, the regained condition is

more complex and manifold. This expresses a situation in the middle between

existing political reality (the hierarchic system of the pharaoh) and the one to be

formed (the state of Israel). In this phase, the status of the Israelites is an anomalous

one. They are not yet-subjects of the state of Israel and the followers of Moses’ laws,

at the same time, they are no longer the slaves of the pharaoh.77 They are mixtures of

individuated realities, potentialities, affects, passions, bodily movements and desires

grounded upon the collective being.

Spinoza describes the repossessed state of nature as a boundless territory, where the

Hebrews were “at the liberty to sanction any new laws that they pleased or to

establish new ordinances, to maintain a state wherever they wished and to occupy

any lands they wished” [Italics mine] (TTP, chapter V: 439). Given the complete

absence of external constrictions, the Promised Land connotes an open structure,

which is densely populated by desires, potentialities and various heterogeneous knots

77The theme of the anomalous condition of the Jewish people from the exodus to nowadays have been re-explored by Yovel recently. Referring to the situation of the Marranos, Yovel has coined the expression “split identity”, which refers to a fragmented and partial identity. This psychological state derives from the condition in the middle between two cultures and politics, in which he includes Spinoza too (Yovel, 2009).

226

of bodies and thoughts. This confluence of disparate elements re-exposes and greatly

expands the collective being of the Subjects of Moses towards further and more

problematic stages of political individuation. These involve the re-signification of the

Israelites within an unknown context, which becomes the ground of further relational

movements. Desires play the pivotal role for the re-colonization of the state of

nature, re-organising venture, actions, events, thoughts and incompatibilities.

As we have analysed in chapter III, Spinoza defines desire as the very essence of

humankind. Desire, however, is not a category a priori deduced, which is attached to

an already-made individual (E.III, Def. I). Spinoza considers desire as a transition,

which greatly exceeds the individuated being and continuously exposes him towards

moments of individuation within the collective field (E. III, Def. II). Following

Simondon, we have called this tendency a transindividual force, which is

contemporaneously individual and more than the individual.

In our conceptual persona of the Subject of Moses, desire lies at the very basis of the

state of nature. It is through the gesture of desiring that Israelites pass from being

claimants and refugees to people of a new political body. As collective (better

transindividual) force, desire resolves and further complicates the problematic

condition, in which the Israelites found themselves following the exodus. As

mentioned, they were precisely in the middle between actuality (the status of

claimant and slaves) and potentiality (the people of the state of Israel, the nation of

God).

The abundance of the state of nature, then, reveals a territory of pure excess

of heterogeneity and asymmetric bodies, within which Israelites are purely the

“whatever is” (quodlibet ens), borrowing Agamben’s expression. Agamben’s notion

of the “whatever”, I think, captures the status of potentiality of our conceptual

persona. For Agamben, quodlibet ens means literally “being such that always

matters”, which connotes a singularity such as it is (Agamben, 1990: 1). Being as it

is means the recognition of a singularity without any attached predicates or

categories such as French, Muslim or Jewish. This leads directly to knowing the

227

condition and thus potentialities of singularity in itself. The importance of this notion

for our conceptual persona of the Subjects of Moses resides on Agamben’s re-

signification of the Scholastic expression of quodlibet as desire and love. Assuming

being without predicates, Agamben brings the meaning of the quodlibet back to its

original Latin connotation, which implies a direct relation with desire (libet). This

brings about the re-discovery of the state of singularity emptied of all its predicates

as the “whatever you want”, that is, lovable. In other words, taken as it is, the realm

of the “whatever is” expresses a condition of desiring (Agamben, 1990: 2).78

For our conceptual persona of the Subjects of Moses, however, the state of nature

moulded through desires does not only express a condition in tension, but also

actions, thoughts, relational exchanges of information and degrees of intensity. As

Spinoza says, in the state of nature, natural right corresponds to the power of act

(TTP, Chapter XVI: 527). This means that desires connote already actions,

movements and relations. As mention before, what is at the stake here is the

actualisation and further complication of the state of Israel, within which the Subjects

of Moses become the theatre and actors.

The actualisation of the political body comes to light through a pact between

the Jewish people and God. In this first pact, they decided to transfer their natural

rights collectively to God, electing him the only ruler. The emergence of the pact

raises fundamental themes for the understanding of the anatomy and development of

the Subjects of Moses. First of all, the pact does not delineate a rupture between the

state of nature and the political one. Given the collective alienation of the natural

right to God, the pact expresses a transitional phase, an expansive movements from a

state of lesser perfection to a greater one. Secondly, as transitional phase, the pact

emerges from an act of desire, which expands and complicate the collective being.

For this, Spinoza grounds at the very basis of any community –including the Jewish

one- different degrees of desire. These refer to the knowledge through primary

causes, the acquisition of a habit of virtue and the enjoyment of a secure and good

78 By love and desire Agamben refers to Plato’s conception of the erotic anamnesis. According to Agamben, Plato’s erotic anamnesis concerns the movement that transports the object toward “its own taking place- the Idea”, Agamben (1993: 2).

228

life (TTP, chapter III: 417). Ultimately, the pact with God is structured through

emotive tones. Spinoza stresses the states of fidelity and devotion for the

actualisation of the pact. It is through fidelity and admiration toward Moses and

devotion toward God that the political equilibrium comes to light.79 Unlike the

exodus, the figure of Moses plays a relatively marginal role. In this phase, Moses

simply denotes a degree of affectivity, which enriches the movements of the

Israelites towards the political.

These elements lead Spinoza to consider the creation of the community of God

grounded on a spontaneous and joyful becoming. The re-colonisation of the state of

nature through the occurrence of the pact with God, Spinoza argues, proceeds from a

collective gesture of desire (“Without much hesitation”), which crucially does not

derive from fear and anger either an egotistical attitude (TTP, Chapter XVII: 539).

For this, Spinoza describes the phases of the actualisation of the agreement with God

as not conditioned by “forcible coercion or fear of threats”(TTP, Chapter XVII: 539).

It is in this context that the great modernity of Spinoza’s political thought lie.

Spinoza’s conception of the pact opens the way to re-shaping our awareness of the

meaning and origins of society itself. Given the formation of the pact as transitional

and expansive movement nuanced by desires and affectivity, society simply

becomes. It is not created by obscure forces and rational choice; rather, societies are

processes, carrying various levels of incompatibility, problems and solutions. 80

To consider society as a process, significantly, does not imply the return to any form

of agency, absolute spirit and God, which would guide and determine human history

and practices. In this sense, in Spinoza’s analysis of the different types of society (the

Jewish community, the state of nature, the English commonwealth under Cromwell,

democracy and monarchy) no one would find a linear progression of the civilization

79 “Finding themselves thus placed in this state of nature, they hearkened to Moses, in whom they all placed the greatest confidence, and resolved to transfer the right not to any mortal man, but to God alone”. (TTP, chapter XVII: 539). 80Concerning Spinoza’s notion of the social contract, Negri suggests that Spinoza in the second foundation of his political thought replaces the idea of the pact with that of consensus (Negri, 1998: 235-355). My interpretation of the foundation of society in the Treatise follows Simondon’s theory. For Simondon, the emergence of society corresponds to phases of individuation structured through emotive exchanges, potentials and preliminary tensions (Simondon, 2007:183).

229

of humankind, within which human beings are merely instruments of a higher mind;

neither is there no a dialectical vision of history and society developed through

moments of opposition and reconciliation. Society is instead a non-linear process,

which proceeds through expansive movements, through which the multiplicity of

nature is actualised and individualised.

In this light, the structure of every society is fundamentally problematic, collective

and asymmetric, which unveils novel and unsuspected phases of differentiation,

complication and transformations. However, as the system follows a non-linear

process, this does not mean that the solution of a precedent problem create a

qualitative change toward the better; rather, transformations, as soon we will see,

predominantly tend to expand the asymmetric structure of the individual, increasing

intensively the level of incompatibility. It is for this reason that Spinoza in the Ethics

claims that the more grades of reality a thing has, the more perfect is (E.II, prop.

XIV). The perfectibility of an individual resides solely in the progressive

complication of its asymmetric structure: its being constantly incompatible with.81

This is exactly the case of our conceptual persona of the Subjects of Moses. The

political realm emerging from the pact brings to light its asymmetric equilibrium,

which further complicates its heterogeneous (disparate) structure. The formation of

the community of God expresses a great improvement from the condition of

servitude and the “whatever” of the state of nature. However, the political territory

reveals considerable problematic moments, which disclose somewhat dramatic

aspects of the disparate composition of the Jewish people.

The transfer of the natural rights to God gives rise to the re-signification of

the Subjects of Moses through the realm of the political, and equally the political 81 By the expression “incompatible with”, I do not intend the ontological and political status of the collective individual as lacking, either I refer to the Marxist notions of contradiction and class struggle, which Negri instead employs in his interpretation of Spinoza’s politics and, more generally, his theory of the power of the multitude (Negri, 1988; 2004; 2005: 170-208); and also I do not mean Balibar’s definition of the aporetic meaning of the mass in the Treatise, Balibar (1994: 3-37). Developing Simondon’s claims of the individual as problematic and disparate, I rather understand an ontological, which is however already political, state of constant excess of being, which arises from different levels of heterogeneity and intensity (conatus, desires, power, movements and grades of reality).

230

through the group of the Israelites. This involves, on the one side, the re-positioning

the collective individual within the political context, within which they pass from

being the “whatever” to constitute the community of God. On the other, the realm of

the political becomes re-populated through relational movements, which bring into

the system different modes of thinking time, ethics and language. It is precisely in

this context that the status of Subjects of Moses becomes intensively complex and

dramatic. As mentioned, they are in the middle between pre-existing meanings (the

condition of slavery under the Egyptian state) and a potential one (the Promised

Land). It means that they are not only the ground of desires and forces, but also

already individuated reality.

In the new political body of the community of God, the status of the Jewish people is

twofold. As claimants of the Promised Land, on the one side, they are a mixture of

desires, and devotion towards God and Moses. They are expression of power, tension

(devotion is always towards something or someone) and actions. This implies the re-

characterisation of the collective individual as a productive force, which re-defines

the equilibrium of the system as an enduring theatre of transformations. The Subjects

of Moses, in this stage, constitute a form of invasive and intensive power, which can

be partially predetermined and controlled.

Moses hence invokes God’s help for the obstinacy of his people. The Israelites,

Spinoza observes through Moses’ plea, are essentially an obstinate and passionate

group, which can hardly be dominated and defeated.82 Furthermore, Spinoza himself

(through Seneca’s discourses) points out the impossibility of fully restraining

passions and desires of the mass (TTP, Chapter V: 438, and the same quotation

recurs in chapter XVI: 530). From the Roman Empire onwards, Spinoza comments,

any attempt to restrain and oppose the resistance to the mass has been vain,

damaging the political system itself.

82 “The fact is that when Moses realised the character and obstinate spirit of his nation, he saw clearly that they could not accomplish their undertaking without mighty miracles and the special external help of God, and must assuredly perish without such help; and he besought this special help of God so that it would be evident that God willed them to be saved. For he speaks […]”If now I have found favour in their sight, O Lord, let my Lord, I pray thee, go among us, for it is a stiff-necked people”” (TTP, Chapter III: 422).

231

Given the impossible effacement of passions and desires, thus, the political body can

only accustom itself to the affective dynamics of the group. For this, Moses gives

voice to the collective forces and desires of his community. In order to modulate and

not to dominate, rules, ceremonies and sacrifices are instituted (TTP, Chapters III,

XVII). Obedience and gift come to re-configure the realm of the political, within and

through which the collective individual is the ground of transformations and further

forms of incompatibility.

As anticipated before, desire expresses a productive power, which calls for structural

changes in time, relations and society itself. In this way, the establishment of rituals

and sacrifices goes far beyond moral habits and alienating practises, re-shaping

modes of counting and perceiving time. In the realm of the Subjects of Moses, rituals

invade every singular moment of the life of the community. The affects of devotion,

wonder, piety and hope structure time through gestures of remembrance and

expectation. Rituals and sacrifices come out from the expansive force of the Subjects

of Moses, through which the entire political body re-situates itself within the realm

of the collective individual. Religious festivals, for example, express some of the

way in which the invasive and joyful force of affects exposes and further complicates

the equilibrium of the political society of God. Certainly, Spinoza claims that these

ceremonies are instrumental for reinforcing people’s obedience. However, religious

rules become a common habit of both the ruler and the subjects to the point that the

political body becomes a theocracy (TTP, Chapter V: 439-440; Chapter XVII: 540).

As mentioned, in his plea Moses asks for a gift from God. In order to give voice to

the unavoidable force of his subjects, Moses demands a recompense for the past

servitudes of his peoples. In other words, as claimants, the Israelites are still waiting

for the gift, the Promised Land. In turn, Moses communicates to them that they are,

first amongst other nations, the elected nation of God. The gift brings about a further

mode of conceptualising time. This becomes re-counted through the affective tones

expressed by the gratitude and expectation of God (TTP, Chapter III). Therefore,

these elements bring to light the effective and unpredictable force of desires, passions

232

and affects, disclosing the concrete impact of these over the boundaries of the

political. The desires of the Jewish claimants, I would argue, structure, individualise

and transform the community of God from a form of democracy (the first pact with

God), through theocracy and monarchy (from the second pact with Moses onwards)

to its collapse.

These arguments of the gift and divine vocation of the Hebrew move directly

our inquiry to the second aspect of the Subjects of Moses. As mentioned, they are in

the middle between the status of claimant and that of slaves of pharaoh. In our

conceptual persona this opens up directly to the dramatic phase of the messianic

vision of politics and the return to servitude.

Although the Israelites have left Egypt and founded their own state, nevertheless,

Spinoza observes, they have so long been habituated to the condition of slavery that

the structure of the political body still echoes the hierarchic order of pharaoh (TTP,

Chapter V: 439). For this, they elect collectively Moses the representative of God’s

will on earth, instituting theocracy and then monarchy (TTP, chapter V: 439-440;

Chapter XVII: 540-552). It is in this moment that the Israelites becomes

individualised as Subjects of Moses and his heirs. This phase of the conceptual

persona of the Subject of Moses is crucial. It is through the stipulation of the second

pact with Moses that messianic and anguished modes of structuring time and

relations come to light. Spinoza describes the occurrence of the pact with Moses as

deriving from the astonishment of the Hebrews following the encounter with God.

He observes,

But on this first appearance before God they were so terrified and so thunderstruck at hearing God speak that they thought their last hour had come. So, overwhelmed with fear they went to Moses again, saying, “Behold, we have heard God speaking in the midst of the fire; now therefore why should we die? For this great fire will surely consume us; […]. Go thou near therefore, and hear all that our God shall say. And speak thou (not God) to us.”[Italics mine] (TTP, chapter XVII: 540).

In the first part of the extract quoted above, Spinoza uses very suggestive expressions

to explain the affective state of the Jewish people in relation to God. Expressions as

233

“terrified” and “thunderstruck” connote the impossibility of orienting oneself within

the realm of the pre-individual mass of nature. Furthermore, the impasse of the

Jewish people in understanding the voice of God brings to light their disparate

equilibrium (their ignorance), whereby they recognise God and the pre-individual

reality as the Other.

Similar to the state of the prophet in the persona of the Devotees of the prophet, the

vision of the pre-individual as otherness involves the fear of death (“why should we

die?”) and the search for eternity and forgiveness. Whilst the drama of the prophet

derives from the absence of the collective ground, here the Subject of Moses are

already in a collective condition. They are the political community of God following

the first pact. Therefore, the question arises as to why they are so “overwhelmed” by

the fear of death?

Simondon’s conception of anguish might shed light on this critical moment of the

conceptual persona of the Subjects of Moses. Taking into consideration the different

philosophical ground upon which Simondon focuses his analysis of anguish (psychic

individuation), his reading offers alternative answers for understanding the

problematic status of the Jewish people within the political scene.

For Simondon, the psychic state of anguish arises from the relation between the pre-

individual and the disparate being in the progressive disappearance of the collective

field. The disparate being comes to experience the pre-individual force as greater

than the individual. The individual begins by signifying himself as an ephemeral and

meaningless entity in opposition to the all-inclusive power of the pre-individual

realm. This moves the disparate being towards a progressive withdrawal from the

collective ground, experienced as redundant. In solitude the individual recognises his

fragility, his unavoidable asymmetric equilibrium, which causes his exclusion from

the process of actualisation and differentiation. In other words, the ‘anguished’ being

ceases to actualise himself within and through the dynamics of the collective ground,

giving rise to a process of displacement between meaning and time. Simondon

explains that what appeared before as closer, now is experienced as distant and

234

disconnected from reality; by the same token, what was perceived before as distant

now becomes closer and disorienting (Simondon, 2007: 111-114).

The present becomes spoiled of all its actualising forces and replaced by the thought

of the past and future. As Simondon says, anguish corresponds to the dramatic

moment, in which the individual being is folded in himself. Dissociated from the

collective ground, the disparate individual ceases to constitute the theatre and actor

of the process of individuation, which implies the loss of crucial moments of

transformation, actualisation and complication. Therefore, Simondon concludes,

anguish brings about the gradual disappearance of the individual as such (Simondon,

2007: 113-114).

Certainly this account of anguish greatly exceeds the astonishment of the Israelites in

relation to God. However, Simondon’s arguments might unveil some dormant

themes underneath the overwhelmed Jewish community. Given Spinoza’s attention

to the emotive origins of the second pact, and also the collective context from which

this pact emerges, an analysis of the emotive status of the Israelites in the light of

Simondon acquires great consistency.

Before venturing into the realm of God, the Jewish people were already a

political individual. They collectively stipulated a first pact with God, assuming the

status of the nation of God. Considering themselves alone the people of God, they

believed that his power and not their actions could save and protect them in case of

possible risks (TTP, Chapter XVII: 540). It is precisely in this moment that the state

of anguish emerges gradually within the community of the Jewish people.

In order to understand the mechanisms of anguish and its political implications, we

need to look back at some fundamental propositions of the Ethics. In the Ethics,

Spinoza claims that thinking is on par with acting, and also the perfection of a body

(its grade of reality) is sized upon its degree of complexity. For Spinoza the

complexity of a body depends upon the capacity of being affected and to affect other

individuals in turn. As we have analysed in chapter III, the capacity of being affected

235

refers to a more problematic process of collective and psychic individuation, through

which affective exchanges and alteration of information complicate and transform

the equilibrium of the individual within a collective ground.

In the conceptual persona of the Subjects of Moses, the first pact with God and the

following encounter give rise to a mechanism, through which the individual begins

with regressing towards an unchangeable position. The fidelity of the Jewish people

to the external aid of God involves the suspension of any productive forces and

tensions, which instead have characterised the states of the claimant and refugee.

Therefore, the Jewish people’s abstinence from acting and thinking precludes the

possibility of signifying and being signified within the process of individuation. As a

consequence, the community of God is brought towards the progressive stabilisation,

which involves the fracture with the crucial phases of transformation, actualisation

and differentiation. This involves the re-shaping of the realm of the political being,

which passes from being a place of affective relations and productive forces to a

linear and motionless system.

If desire and affects have exposed and complicated the collective ground of the

claimant to intensive changes and new meanings previously, these are now folded

within the static body of rules, regulations and the moral norms of punishment and

recompense. Devotion and wonder, particularly, pass from constituting relational

movements and tensions to simply denoting a set of laws and commands of God.

Significantly, the affect of piety, Spinoza observes, as source of relations becomes

redefined as justice; incompatibilities and differences as injustice and crime (TTP,

Chapter XVII: 540). In other words, the collective body of the Subjects of Moses

regresses to an inoperative position, implying the estrangement of the individual

from time, becoming and affectivity. As in Simondonian anguish, this causes the

disjuncture between time and meaning, for which the other nations become, on the

one side distant, and viewed as enemies of God. In this light, notions of cruelty,

236

exclusion, invasion, rivalry and jealousy come to re-signify the community of God,

upon which the divine vocation of the Hebrew relies.83

The productive flowings of time moulded through festive rituals and

sacrifices reverts to a linear and repetitive remembering of the past adventures of the

exodus, servitude and the regained state of nature. The all-inclusive power of nature

becomes dramatically closer and recognised as the Other, which oversees

scrupulously actions and thoughts of the Subjects of Moses. The all-embracing

presence of God brings about the emergence of the fear of death and the hope for

salvation. It is in this moment, I would argue that the conceptual persona of the

Subjects of Moses enter the threshold of Simondonian anguish. Spinoza’s description

of the astonishment of the Jewish people in hearing the voice of God, I think, goes

far beyond the passions of fear and anger and the status of ignorance of the Hebrews.

For the sudden feeling of fear and the certainty of death, this encounter between the

Subjects of Moses and God is the result of a more complex process of exclusion from

the collective process of individuation, which gives rise to the emergence of a state

of anguish. It is through this state of anguish that a messianic vision of politics and,

more generally, of the world comes to light.

As we have seen, Simondon explains that the condition of anguish bounds the

individual within two coordinates of time, past and future, which can never be

actualised insofar as the collective ground is excluded. Jewish form of messianism

derives from the regressive movements of exclusion, stabilisation and remembrance.

This folds the realm of the individual within a never actualised present, which casts

the Subjects of Moses in a gap between past and future. In this gap, the past events of

the exodus and the Promised Land become materialised through the repetitive

movements of ceremony and sacrifice, and the potentialities of the future are

narrowed to the time of the expectation of the Messiah to come. Importantly, given

the Israelites’ refraining from actions and thoughts, the productive flowings of time

83“As to their continued existence for many years when scattered and stateless, this is no way surprising, since they have separated themselves from other nations to such a degree as to incur the hatred of all, and this is not only through external rites alien to the rites of other nations but also through the mark of circumcision, which they most religiously observe. That they are preserved largely through the hatred of other nations is demonstrated by historical fact” (TTP, Chapter III: 425).

237

is re-defined as a linear sequence of events. This re-configuration of time has a

strong impact on the political body.84 The messianic vision of the world and time

brings about the return of the Subjects of Moses to the servitude to the Messiah, to

Moses, and his heirs.85

Taking into account these themes, we might raise some conclusions. The

conceptual persona of the Subjects of Moses reveals the centrality of the collective

ground for the complete development of the relational function of affects, passions

and desire, without which the transformations and complications of the political body

is entirely lost. As we have seen with the phases of claimants and anguish, the

collective process of individuation calls into question crucial elements such as time,

humankind, society and ethics, whilst affective and relational movements re-shape

intensively the realm of the political being. Therefore, the Subjects of Moses

introduce a different understanding of affects and passions, disclosing their relational

and productive power.

The themes of the productive force of affects become crucial in the second

part of the Treatise, the pars contruens. In this section, Spinoza forwards the idea of

the conception of religion as expression of love and joy. For Spinoza, these affects

are instrumental in the realisation of democracy. The originality of Spinoza’s

philosophy lies in his politicisation of joy and love, which have been traditionally

restrained within the psychological, ethical and religious domains. In this light, the

apostles and Christ express the productive political meaning of affectivity, through

which the actualisation and transformation of the collective ground of the political

are developed still further. It is to a consideration of these themes that I now pass to

examine.

84Concerning the theme of the messianic structure of time, Agamben proposes a quite alternative reading. Discussing the form of messianianism in the figure of Saint Paul, for Agamben, the constitution of the messianiac time is not time of expectation. By contrast, it is the time of the present, in which he includes the kairotic moment, the ‘right moment’, (Agamben, 2005a: 59-87). 85 “The people [the Jewishs under Moses] could do nothing without being required at the same time to remember the law and to follow its commands, which were dependent solely on ruler’s will. […]; they had to have certain signs on their doorposts, on their hands and between the eyes, to give them constant reminder of the duty of obedience” (TTP, Chapter V: 440).

238

5. The Apostles

In the Theological-Political Treatise the exegesis of the New Testament occupies a

very central role. This constitutes the passage from the pars denstruens to the pars

contruens of the text, which prepares the terrain for the political section on the

fundaments of the democratic society. Proceeding from the deconstruction of the

ideological apparatus of theology, Spinoza passes to examine the real object of

religion throughout the stories of the early Church, which refer to the Acts of the

Apostles.

Given the non divine and non scientific account of the doctrine of the Old Testament,

Spinoza examines the aims and implications of the precepts of the Catholic doctrine.

Assuming that the dogma of faith is not concerned with the attainment of any

extraordinary faculty and reality, and also that it does not imply the improvement of

the philosophical knowledge, Spinoza questions, firstly, what notions remain to be

used from the theoretical nucleus of religion, and secondly what categories (if any)

might be qualified as properly religious?

In order to address these questions, Spinoza looks back at the lives and speeches of

the apostles as fundamental expressions of the authentic doctrine of the faith, to

which both the organised church and state should pay closer attention. He finds in

the doctrine of the apostles, structured through teachings, dialogue, and encounters

with people of different cultures and nations, the expression of the key tenets of

Catholicism. These are based on a pure exercise of love, piety and devotion, which

are the ground of the Catholic paradigm of universalism.

Proceeding with the analysis of the historical figures of the apostles, Spinoza’s

inquiry is focused, on the one hand, to a reinstatement of the independence of

philosophy from religion; on the other, to the re-affirmation of the genuine concepts

of the early Church, such as joy, love, piety and devotion that have been corrupted by

the ambition and ignorance of political and theological authorities. Spinoza does not

reject the value of religion as such. He neither contrasts religious principles with

239

ontological notions, nor replaces religion with philosophy. For him, there is a form of

epistemic rupture between the object of faith and that of philosophy (TTP, Chapter

XV: 523). Instead, Spinoza demonstrates the true of object of faith through religion

itself, showing its original message through the exegesis of the holy texts and the

example of the apostles (Balibar, 1998: 5-9).

As we have analysed previously, Spinoza’s critique aims to invalidate the alleged

philosophical authority of the church, and the mystification of the religious

principles, upon on which superstition, ignorance and servitude have been

constructed. The speeches, writings and the mission of the apostles represent the true

object and aim of the Catholic religion, which disclose a practise of joy and love. For

Spinoza, the authentic message of religion is based on ethical norms, consisting of

affects such as joy, love, devotion and piety (Spinoza’s notion of the credo

minimum). This involves re-positioning religion within society rather than

suppressing it, so it may become as an important instrument of social cohesion.

Whilst Spinoza considers the role of religion as an important element of social

cohesion, importantly this does not attune his position on those of Machiavelli and

Hobbes. For Spinoza religion is a part of a more complex process, which exceeds

Machiavelli’s definition of faith as instrumentum regni;86 and Hobbes’s divide

between the official credo professed by the state and the private beliefs of the

subjects allowed under the “silence of the law”.87 For Spinoza, religion is important

insofar as joy, love, piety and devotion found its messages (TTP, chapter XIV: 515).

The social function of the faith is not simply a device of the state; it is located,

instead, in the body politic, passing from the political authority to the community and

vice versa.

86I am aware of the dispute among scholars concerning the relation between religion and the state in Machiavelli’s thought; and also, the differences between the Prince (1532) and the Discourses (initiated in 1513 and concluded between the 1517-18). My reference to Machiavelli, in this context, has the only purpose to show the diverse approach to the problem of religion between Machiavelli and Spinoza. 87Although Hobbes agrees with Spinoza on the non scientific and philosophical value of religion, in the body of laws of the Leviathan (1651) religion and certain forms of freedom are allowed insofar as these are not formally prohibited by the state. For the stability and unity of the government, it is better that subjects in the public sphere follow the official religion of the state, whereas in their private life they can profess a different faith, Hobbes (1998: 139-160).

240

Given the assumption of the authenticity of religion as an exercise of the

affects of love, joy, piety and devotion, many questions arise. Firstly, what is at stake

in Spinoza’s idea of religion as joy, love and piety? Secondly, assuming the

impossibility of the suppression of faith from society, the problem entails to what is

the place given to religion within the political domain? Thirdly, what paradigm of

society emerges from Spinoza’s idea of religion as joy and love? Ultimately,

assuming the figures of the apostles as the embodiment of true religion, how did their

message impact effectively on the communities, which they visited?

Concerning these questions, many interpretations have been proposed. Developing

further Althusser’s dictum of the “detour Marx via Spinoza”, contemporary readings,

generally, are inclined to view Spinoza’s conception of the “credo minimum” as the

reduction of the ideological apparatus of the Church to simple (minimum) ethical

norms and practices, which further encourage people’s commitment towards the civil

society. Thinkers, for examples, as Matheron (1988), Balibar (1998), Strauss (1997),

Deleuze (1992), Negri (1998) and Giancotti (1995), share the conviction that the

very of role of the figures of the apostles within the Treatise responds to a precise

political strategy. This involves, on the one side, the political emancipation of the

masses from the obscurantist policies of states and churches. Spinoza’s move, in this

respect, concerns the replacement of moral concepts and rules as evil, truth,

punishment and gift with an ethical habit of joy and love.

On the other, Spinoza’s definition of the apostolic mission as the development of the

affects of joy, love and piety within a community expresses his awareness of the

social function of religion purified from its metaphysical edifice. In this light, the

implications of the teachings of the apostles concern the improvement of cooperative

actions and thoughts, through which individuals recognise themselves as constitutive

parts of the body politic. As joy and love are active affects, the development of an

ethical habit through these affects structures social relations, mutual needs and, more

generally, commonalities, upon which the progress of society relies.

241

Taking into consideration these mentioned interpretations, I think, Spinoza’s

engagement with the role of the apostles and the doctrine of love and joy unveils a

more complex process, which founds and greatly exceeds ethical praxis. Certainly,

the aim of Spinoza’s exegesis of the Acts of the Apostles describes how the pursuit of

positive affects within a political context gives rise to practices of sharing,

commitment and participation. Beside these ethical and political implications, there

is a multifaceted notion of the role of the positive affects emerging from Spinoza’s

arguments, which require further consideration. This refers to the status of joy and

love not only as ethical habits but also as productive forces, which bring into

question concepts such as time, society, relations, life and, more generally, the realm

of the political itself. The role of the apostles within the thread of the Treatise unveils

the dynamics of this process, through which heterogeneous individuals emerge.

I argue here that the political meaning of the active affects does not or not only reside

in the formation of an ethics of mutual love and support within a given society.

Rather, these should be thought as generative sources of relational movements,

transformations and actualisation, which espouse and further complicate the entire

equilibrium of the political and not solely an already formed community. It means

that affectivity discloses a process of individuation, which signifies the domain of the

political. Taking into account these prerequisites, I shall pass to discuss these

questions in further details.

242

5.1 “The Good News”: Life

Compared with the analysis of the stories of the Old Testament, Spinoza’s inquiry of

the Acts of the Apostles is not amply developed. Certainly, references to the

discourses of the apostles, particularly the Pauline doctrine, are disseminated

throughout the entire Treatise, and yet are not fully developed as with the history of

the Jewish people. Although the apostles embody the true religion, strikingly, in the

Treatise Spinoza dedicates to the specific description of the apostolic doctrine no

more than one chapter. In this chapter, Spinoza offers a concise but extremely dense

account of the mission of the apostles towards society, within which a very different

and dynamic conception of religion is proposed.

Given this brief and meaningful portrait of the apostles, an analysis of Spinoza’s

view of these figures and their effective role within a political context become very

difficult and, at the same time, crucial. If the objective of both the prophecy and the

Mosaic laws is the development of obedience, the epistles of the apostles aim at

obedience too. Two questions arise: What is the distinctive strategy of the apostolic

message, and how does this effectively contrast with prophecy? What are the

political stakes not only of the doctrine of the apostles itself but also the form in

which these arguments are realised? In order to investigate these aspects, our strategy

of the conceptual personae becomes imperative. It is through this alternative

approach that these questions might, perhaps, find a response.

Pilgrims, doctors and communities

In chapter XI of the apostles, at the very beginning, Spinoza draws a line between the

status of the apostles and the prophets as Moses (TTP, Chapter XI: 499). If the

protagonist of the Old Testament was Moses, the storyteller of the images of God,

the protagonist of the New Testament is the apostle, who divulges the life of Christ.

These aspects delineate two different modes of knowing and experiencing the pre-

individual force nature. The knowledge of the prophet, Spinoza explains, is

structured through images, visions, signs and revelations, which are grounded in the

243

domain of imagination (TTP Chapters I, II, VI). These are nuanced by various and

different affective tones, which run from fear, devotion, anger, hope, wonder to

anguish.

The knowledge of the apostles differs profoundly from the one of Moses and, more

generally, the prophets of the tradition of the Old Testament. The apostles, Spinoza

affirms, are the expression of the new religious formula, which establishes a different

relation with God, nature and humankind. The Catholic faith is based on the life and

precepts of Christ, who recovers the notions of love, piety, devotion and joy from the

domain of Mosaic commandments to general suggestions and admonitions. These

simply delineate a mode of living.

As simple and general styles of life the precepts of Christ pass from being an

exclusive gift of the Jewish nation to universal (Catholic) recommendations for

pursuing a better life, which can easily be followed by every human being regardless

of nation, culture and language (TTP, Chapter XI: 501). Thus, the idea of God as

legislator and judge of human actions is replaced by the role of Christ as teacher and

friend.88 The encounter with Christ leads the apostles to re-situate themselves

directly within the world, without passing through an initial relation of fear and

anguish with the obscure power of God. This involves the conversion of the anguish

of death and hope for salvation into love and piety for the humankind.

In our conceptual persona, Spinoza’s divide between the knowledge of the

prophets and the apostles, and also the Catholic formula of the universal love are the

fundamental conditions, around which the political body of the Apostles is

constructed. Love and piety, as we will see, structure a relational process and

transformations, which re-configure the realm of the Apostles towards new modes of

thinking and actualising the political. The persona of the Apostles brings about the

discovery of multiple meanings emerging through and within the political context.

88 “For Christ was not sent to preserve the state and to institute laws, but only to teach the universal law. Hence, we can readily understand that Christ by no means abrogated the law of Moses, for it was not Christ’s purpose to introduce new laws into the commonwealth, His chief concern was to teach moral doctrines, keeping them distinct from the laws of the commonwealth” (TTP, Chapter V: 436).

244

These involve the understanding of the political as generative of relations, time,

tensions and forces, which greatly exceeds, not opposes, the notions of state, laws,

justice and equality. The claim I will make through this conceptual persona, is that

Spinoza’s definition of the apostolic mission as love and piety opens the way to re-

shape the meaning of the political, including in its domain unsuspected notions such

as desire, love, becoming and productive time. These crucially express life.89

Spinoza describes the apostles as teachers, messengers and pilgrims of the “Good

News”. These multiple functions bring to light the manifold status of the Apostles

within the political body. Like the Subjects of Moses, the persona of the Apostles is

already folded within an established political domain, the state of Israel. As with

have seen with the Israelites before and after the exodus, the apostles are the group of

the disciples of Christ and the Jewish tradition. More importantly, they are not only

apostles collectively, but also they experience the life of Christ as a group.90 This

means that the realm of the Apostles is a political and collective individual formed of

individuated reality (the Mosaic laws, system of rituals, sacrifices, Jewish history)

and forming one (the presence of Christ).

Unlike the Subjects of Moses, importantly, they do not pass progressively from being

disciples, teachers, messengers and pilgrims as the Israelites from the phase of

servitude, through “the whatever” of the state of nature, to subjects. By contrast, the

apostles are teachers, messengers, pilgrims and disciples contemporaneously.

Spinoza remarks, on many occasions, that their peculiarity concerns the fulfilment of

all these roles, for which the apostles differ from the prophets of the Old Testament

(TTP, chapters XI, XIII, XIV, XV). This indicates, on the one side, that anatomy the

Apostles is consistently more complex and diversified (disparate) than the previous

conceptual personae examined, revealing a structure traversed by a higher degrees of 89Concerning the theme of the politicisation the concept of life, or better the widening of the definition of the political to physics and, to some extent, biology, there has been a flourishing literature recently, commenced with works of Foucault (1998, vol.1). For the purpose of this work, the theories of Deleuze and Guattari (2004a; 2004b), Simondon (2007), Negri (2006; 2005), and Agamben (2000; 1998) have been particularly influential. 90 Concerning the collective formation and development of the Apostles, there are many places in the New Testament, showing this collective condition. Over all, I think that the image of the “Last supper” offers a quite illuminating example, see for example Saint Paul, Epistle to the Corinthians 11:23-26, to which certainly Spinoza pays attention.

245

relational movements, contingencies and a variety of heterogeneous forces. On the

other, this multisided constitution portrays the body of the Apostles as an open

system, within and through which a never-ending process of actualisation,

transformation and tension takes a place.

These elements lead us to conceive the Apostles as fundamentally a collective and

problematic individual, which is the ground of powerful exchanges and alterations of

meanings, bodies and thoughts. The roles of pilgrim, teacher, disciple and messenger

create not only a relational status; these also function to maintain the equilibrium of

our conceptual persona in an enduring condition of exposure toward the multiplicity

of the world. These roles, firstly, presuppose a community or, at very least, other

disciples. Secondly, they imply a tension and movement toward something or

someone, which is owner of further meanings, demands and information in turn. It is

in this context that the collective individual of the Apostles becomes an element and

place of the production of the political, within which positive affects acquire a

pivotal role.

The multiform dimension of the Apostles throws light upon a range of affective

states, which actualise, complicate the collective individual. Differently from the

persona of the Subjects of Moses, which is traversed by positive and passive affects,

the group of the apostles is, instead, nuanced predominantly by the active affects of

piety, love, joy and wonder. More significantly, in the case of the Apostles the affect

of wonder is not addressed to an obscure God but rather to nature itself embodied by

the life of Christ. These affects shape the body of the Apostles as an open structure,

which is traversed intensively by relational movements, heterogeneity and

transformation.

246

Love and piety: The actualisation of the present and the potency of the action

In chapter III, we have seen, in the Ethics the view of the body as pure openness

means the re-signification of the individual as place and part of a more complex

process of individuation. This is moulded through affects, desire, conatus (forces),

common notions, movements of speed and slowness, grades of intensity (hard and

fluid bodies), which signify and re-signify the realm of the individual. In our

conceptual persona, these elements set forth the actualisation and differentiation of a

novel political being. It is in this context that love becomes a powerful source of

political transformation and destabilisation, through which life folds the political and

vice versa.

As in the state of claimants and the “whatever” of the Subjects of Moses, the affects

of love and piety operate as expansive and productive forces, through which different

forms of time, relations, meanings and problems come to light. In the persona of the

Apostle, the encounter with Christ in his actuality re-positions the Apostles within

the order of the real, exposing their naturale iuditium (natural understanding)

towards the production of more problematic modes of structuring the present,

actions, ideas and commonalities. Following Spinoza’s arguments, it is from the

simple human (natural) understanding that the Epistles of the apostles derive, each of

which expresses a different mode of thinking the life of Christ (TTP, Chapter XI:

500). Furthermore, the differences and disagreements between apostles, which have

caused varied controversies within the Catholic Church, are the results of this

productive force of the lumen naturalis shaped by love and piety (TTP, chapter XI:

503).

In the Ethics Spinoza explains that the positive affects of joy and love give

rise to a transition from a condition of lesser perfection to a greater one, through

which the power of acting, existing and thinking (conatus) of individuals is increased

and further developed (E. III, postulate I, prop. XI; schol., Def. II, VI). Related

particularly to singular beings, the increase of the level of perfection indicates that

individuals are formed of great number of heterogeneous elements such as bodies,

247

potentials and thoughts, which intensify the power of mind and body (E. II,

postulates I, III, IV; prop. XIV, prop. XXXVII, corollary). Perfection determines the

level of complexity of the individual beings. In this sense, positive affects are

fundamental conditions, which bring into the realm of the individuals further orders

of heterogeneity and contingency (E. III, prop. XV).

From the study of the “geometry of the affects” through Simondon’s ontology of

individuation conducted in chapter III, we have discovered that Spinoza’s conception

of joy and love as transitional phases unveils a more complex process, which greatly

exceeds ethical and psychological habits between already individuated beings. These

are located in the middle of the collective field or, to say with Simondon, active

affects are transversal to both beings and the collective field. Given the assumption

of these affects as important instruments for the increase of the level of perfection,

this means that joy and love re-actualise and re-signify the entire equilibrium of

individuals. In this light, joy and love become recognised as powerful sources of

intensive and relational movements, which individualise individuals within the

collective context, moving further the process of individuation. This view of affects

as productive forces impacts effectively on the order of the real, setting forth

concrete actions, ideas, tendencies and, more generally, problematic collective

beings. The role of joy and love acquires great consistency within the political

context of the Treatise, specifically through the figures of the apostles. These re-

organise the equilibrium of the political body throughout the emergence of more

complex flowings of time, incompatibilities and relational individuals.

If in the Subjects of Moses the becoming of time suddenly collapses in the gap

between the past of exodus and the future of the arrival of the Messiah (the state of

anguish), here past and future take only the coordinate of the present. The present

becomes an enduring process of actualisation of the future and the past.91 The

apostles, Spinoza refers, are disciples of Christ. This means that they do not wait for

91 The theme of the notion of the present as the form of actualisation and differentiation of the individuals is central in Simondon’s process of the collective and psychic individuation, to which I refer. For Simondon, the role of collective process of individuation concerns the re-signification of past and future within the domain of the present, Simondon (2007: 97-132, 175-214).

248

the advent of the Messiah, rather the Apostles enter into relations with the materiality

of Christ, his life (TTP, Chapter XI: 499).

As life, Christ abandons all the divine properties of omnipresence, omnipotence and

omniscience by taking the form of pure materiality. Christ becomes a body,

expressing the abundance and potentialities of the material world. As we have seen,

Spinoza gives full rights to the status of the body as an unavoidable element of

transformations, relations, thoughts and actions. This conception brings Spinoza to

consider the body a fundamental condition for the constitution of time. In the Ethics,

Spinoza states that it is solely through the existence of the body that various modes

of organising time come to light. To be more precise, it is through the plenitude of

the actuality of the body that our awareness of time emerges.92 Thus, the actuality of

the world is the only condition, through which the past and future can be thought.

As a body, consequently, the presence of Christ becomes crucial within the

development of the conceptual persona of the Apostles. The corporeality of Christ re-

configures the notion of time, through which the mode of the present becomes the

only source and condition for the flowings of the past and realisation of the future.

Put differently, it is through the actuality of Christ that the present does not mirror

the events of the past; neither it is a mere consequence of previous gestures. By the

same token, the constitution of the present is not a place, within which the future can

be prepared or simply expected. The materiality of Christ reinstates the importance

of the present, which acquires the pivotal role of producing the past and actualising

the possibilities of the future.93 In this sense, Christ’s gesture of indignation for the

92“The mind can exercise neither imagination nor memory save while the body endures” and in the proof: “ It is only while the body endures that the mind expresses the actual existence of its body and conceives the affections of the body as actual […]. Consequently […], it does not conceive any body as actually existing save while its own body endures. Therefore […], it cannot exercise either imagination or memory save while the body endures […].” (E., V, prop. XXI and proof) [Italics mine]. 93 Concerning the theme of the incarnation of Christ as the expression of the richness of the material world, see Hardt (2002: 77-84).

249

vain Hebrew rituals, followed by the commitment of the apostles to the re-foundation

of the community of God, greatly exemplifies the path of the present.94

In the persona of the Apostles this implies the replacement of both the messianic

time and the motionless remembrance of the glorious gestures of the Old Testament

with the richness of expressions of the present. This actualisation of past and future

within the becoming of the present leads directly to the production of actions

developed through relational movements, exchanges and alterations of individuated

meanings, intensity and potentials. It is precisely in this moment that the affective

tones of the persona of the Apostles re-populate and complicate the political realm.

As we have seen with the figure of Moses, what is at stake here is not solely

re-founding the temple of God, returning the Church to its origins. It is the

affirmation and the realisation of the “Good News”. For the meaning of the term

“News” suggests, good news should indicate qualitative changes and certainly not a

return. The power of the apostolic message, Spinoza tenaciously reminds us, resides

in its open structure, upon which the Catholic paradigm of universalism is founded

and developed. For this open structure, the revealing of the “Good News” goes far

beyond the simple re-organisation of preformed religious rules within a given

political context. The potency of the “Good News”, as we will see, concerns, on the

one hand, the destabilisation of the existing political orders as the state of Israel or

the Roman Empire; on the other, this sets forth different actions, thoughts and

tensions, which prepare the terrain to the constitution of the community of God (the

universal Catholic Church).

In this fashion, the tension encapsulated by the “Good News” opens the collective

body of the Apostles towards complex and unpredictable modes of actualising, better

individuating, the life of Christ. Importantly, these are not only different ways of

narrating the precepts of Christ; instead, these re-signify the structure of every

political being encountered by the apostles, re-configuring religious communities,

94 For the indignation of Christ, I refer to his visit of the temple in Jerusalem and his whip in seeing the moneychangers, as reported in Mathew 21-26. In the Ethics, Spinoza defines indignation as “hatred toward one who has injured another” (E. III, Def. XX).

250

laws, human relations and states. For this open structure of the “Good News”, Saint

Paul, for example, considers work irrelevant for the attainment of the faith, whereas

for James only actions qualify a catholic observant (TTP, Chapter XI: 503). These

two modes of defining faith have direct effects on societies visited by each apostle,

which generate diverse ethical practises, relations, ecclesial groups and conflicts

(TTP, Chapter XI: 503). Given this notion of the “Good News” as a mixture of force

and intensity, many questions arise. Firstly, what truly are the contents of the “Good

News”, secondly to what extent this might re-shape the boundaries of the political?

Following Spinoza’s arguments, the message of the “Good News” does not

contain metaphysical notions and obscure truths, but instead, the life of Christ as it

is, (TTP, chapters XI, XIV). As reported in the Epistles of the Apostles, the story of

the life and teachings of Christ simply concerns the praxis of universal love, that is

the unlimited loving-kindness towards others. As anticipated, Spinoza attributes to

the affect of love a very fundamental role. The theme of love occupies the entire

thread of the Ethics from the third and fourth to the fifth part, which becomes

recognised as an ontological political function. Accordingly, love is viewed as an

expansive force, which individualises and further develops human desires. This force

engrossed by love is formed through a degree of intensity always greater than any

disruptive tendencies as hate (E. III, Def. VI, prop. XLIII, XLIV), which maintains

the equilibrium of the process constantly in tension (metastable). As productive

sources of movements and transformations, this embraces the entire system of

production of nature-God, bringing into the order of the real meanings, movements,

heterogeneity and contingency. More accurately, it is the potency of love that lies at

the very basis of the whole system of production of the Ethics. It is the mechanism

that governs, produces and individualises the domain of nature, which is defined in

the final part of the Ethics as the intellectual love of God (the third kind of

knowledge).95 The intellectual love of God is twofold. On the one side, it refers to

95Deleuze gives a very suggestive account of Spinoza’s conception of the intellectual love of God or Beatitude. For Deleuze, Spinoza’s third kind of knowledge concerns the complete actualisation of the plane of immanence initiated in the part I of the Ethics, which becomes re-populated with novel forms of multiplicities such as desires, bodies, affects and, more generally, heterogeneity (Deleuze, 1992: 289-320). In successive works, Deleuze will further develop this idea of the intellectual love of God, describing this as the plane of consistency, that is, pure desire-machine (Deleuze and Guattari,

251

the mode in which the process of individuation of humankind proceeds through

phases of actualisation, differentiation and complication. On the other, it expresses

the love of God towards the world, which simply is the life of nature (E. V, prop.

XXXVI, corollary).

Without venturing into the vicissitudes of the third kind of knowledge, for the

purpose of this work, we need to draw attention to the political implications of

Spinoza’s notion of love as productive force, which emerges from the Ethics and

becomes a political category within the pars contruens of the Treatise. In the

conceptual persona of the Apostles, this vision of love as force becomes crucial. It is

through love folded within the “Good News” that the Apostles act politically,

moving further the process of individuation. As mentioned before, the message of the

“Good News” refers to the notion of life, specifically the life of Christ. We have seen

that the corporeality of Christ re-founds the conception of the present as a place of

actualisation of past and future. This exposure of Christ to the abundance of the

world, Spinoza tells us, is shaped by love and piety toward humankind. The life of

Christ is the actualisation of the affect of love, which gives rise to the political

actions and thoughts of the apostles. It is in this moment that the notion of life as

actualisation of love enters the threshold of the political, re-drawing the boundaries

of the political in turn.

The great modernity of Spinoza’s political move lies precisely in this context. From

the pars destruens to the pars contruens of the Treatise, Spinoza only refers to the

life of Christ politically without mentioning his crucifixion and resurrection. For this,

Spinoza discusses the political stakes of Christ through his actions and teaching

formed by love and piety. In this light, the life of Christ discloses the political effects

2004b:170-184). Differently, Negri, Balibar and Matheron, among others, read the third genre of knowledge directly connected with the two the political treatises, underling the political implications of Spinoza’s notion of the intellectual love of God. Negri, for example, argued that parts IV and V of the Ethics together with the Political Treatise constitute the mature foundation of Spinoza’s form of materialism, upon which the political theory of the power of the multitude is grounded and developed (Negri, 1998: 193-285, 296-342).

252

of the notion of love, which exposes and complicates the realm of our conceptual

persona towards further transformation and individuation.96

The political implications of the affect of love do not concern the development of

practises of participation, sharing and giving. Spinoza’s politicisation of love,

instead, brings about the discovery of love as the expression of the potency of action,

which lies precisely in the middle of a collective individual. As force, love traverses

and transforms individuals without inhering within these, exposing continuously the

collective ground towards unpredicted and unsuspected relational movements and

transformations.97

In the Treatise, Spinoza tells us, the mission of the apostles is directed to every

people regardless of nation, language and culture. In each of their destinations, the

encounter with the community structures meanings, time, society and relations. In

other words, it re-organises the entire equilibrium of both the collective body of the

apostles and the community. As Spinoza affirms, the Epistles and the teachings of

the apostles, on the one side, are attuned to the different opinions, ideas and

imaginations of the people, to whom the apostles speak. On the other, the community

itself is transformed by the “Good News”. This re-signifies and actualises the realm

of the existing group into new ethical and political practises, which are nuanced by

the evangelic formula of “love one’s neighbour” (TTP, chapter XIV: 515). This

brings to light the production of new political and ethical notions of justice, labour,

right and impiety, Christ and the anti-Christ (TTP chapter XIV). In other words, as

force and tension love re-shapes the boundaries of the “common”.

Concerning this view of love as an enduring source of production, nevertheless, one

might question the kinds of political practises the teachings of the apostles have

brought to light; and also how these have created novel political individuals. The

96 On the figure of Christ in Spinoza’s politics, see particularly Matheron (1971), and Deleuze (1992: 290-310). 97 The theme of Spinoza’s political conception of love and joy as power has been particularly developed by Negri and Hardt. For Negri and Hardt Spinoza’s vision of love is productive of political praxis and resistances, through which the multitude as a political subject emerges (Hardt and Negri, 2006; and Negri, 2005).

253

political stakes, I think, of the praxis of love concern essentially the destabilising role

played within the political scene. As the encounter of Saint Paul with the Roman

Empire exemplifies, the apostle questions the meaningless and motionless

equilibrium of the Roman state as such, challenging not the ruler or the subjects but

the stability of the system itself. Saint Paul as well as the other apostles brings into

the existing community problems (the corruption of the Roman system, the

hierarchic structure, the question of the pauperism) and possible solutions.98

In this light, the originality of Spinoza’s political gesture concerns not only the

political meaning of the notion of love, (which has been used in Ancient Greek

philosophy, particularly in Plato’s thought). Rather, Spinoza’s move brings about the

discovery of the political significance of love as production, action, transformation,

that is, a process. As a process of production, consequently this does not pass from

one individuated being to another; differently, love resides in the collective field,

however, without inhering within this.

In chapter III, in order to re-conceptualise this tendency, we have employed

Simondon’s definition of transindividuality. Simondon affirms that religion

expresses one of the ways in which the transindividual force operates. The domain of

religion is the place, in which a sense of spirituality emerges, which is productive

insofar as remains within the collective body. In a political context, the spirituality of

a group is precisely a force, which gives rise to relations, transformation and

metastability. It is this expansive force that shapes the progress of a society

(Simondon, 2007:175-197).

From the Ethics to the political Treatises, Spinoza, I would argue, gives voice to

these instances and tensions, which lie underneath any community. In the Ethics 98 The political and ethical role of Saint Paul has nurtured an intense debate recently, which is centered on the essays of Badiou and Agamben. Whilst Badiou envisages in the figure of Paul the example of revolutionary subject and universalism, who challenges the Roman Empire and the Judaic law (Badiou, 2003), Agamben opposes Badious’s ethical reading with the ontological notion of the “remnant”. By this, Agamben refers to a concept of singularity based on what is “left”. This is a condition, in which there are no differences left between the Jew and the Greek, or a principle of beginning and end, rather the absence of all possible divisions. The notion of “remnant” embodied by Saint Paul, in Agamben’s analysis, opens up towards new perspectives in politics that might dismiss traditional notions of people and democracy (Agamben, 2005a: 44-58).

254

towards the end, Spinoza describes this spontaneous need for spirituality as “the

feeling and experience of eternity” (E. V, prop. XXIII, schol.). This traverses and

orients every given political, ethical and ontological society and, more importantly,

the one to come. In the political section of Treatise, this tendency is presented by the

figure of the Apostles through the notion of the credum minimum, and, as we will see

in chapter V, the role of democracy as mens una.

The notion of the credum minum unveils Spinoza’s awareness of the importance of

spirituality as one of the condition, through which the body politic is founded and

developed. The becoming and the power of a society go far behind the fulfilments of

material and intellectual needs, the question of the social contract and the boundaries

of the state. This involves, rather, a structural tension, which re-situates and alters

intensively a collective body, gathering individuals together in as many ways as is

infinite the multiplicity of nature. This, however, does not mean that material and

intellectual needs are irrelevant for the advancement of the social system, rather these

are fundamental parts of a more complex process, which structures and complicates

the realm of a community in any given time and space. Our awareness of this, I

think, should be incorporated within contemporary political discourses, which aspire

to re-found a paradigm of philosophy of praxis.

255

Conclusions: towards a life in common

This chapter has examined the relation between affectivity and politics within

Spinoza’s political philosophy, and considered the extent to which his conception of

the political meaning of affectivity might open novel possibilities for thinking the

anatomy and becoming of the community today. In order to examine the political

status of affects and passions as fundamental elements of a more complex process, I

have adopted a different strategy of reading the Treatise. This refers to the exposition

of the facts and personages of the theological section of the Treatise through

conceptual-affective personae. Following Deleuze and Guattari’s conception of the

conceptual personae, I have re-considered Spinoza’s themes of the Jewish nations

and the apostles as parts of more complex conceptual personae, each of which

expresses the ways in which affects and passions re-signify intensively the domain of

the political. Related particularly to the pars destruens of the Treatise, the use of

conceptual personae has revealed a more extensive meaning of the political role of

passions, which reconfigures the political body through different notions of

temporality, meanings and relations.

These arguments of the concrete dynamics within a community move our discussion

directly to the question of the next chapter. This investigates what form of political

society emerges from Spinoza’s view of community as a mixture of affects,

spirituality and passions. More precisely, the problem arises as whether only religion

is the ground of these transindividual disposition; or rather there are more complex

political models, which incorporate Spinoza’s multifaceted theory of society. As

mentioned, Spinoza in the political section of the Treatise puts forward the idea of

democracy as a place, within which a community acts and thinks as mens una (a

unique mind). Spinoza’s conception of democracy, I think, opens up to a quite

different understanding of the dynamics that operates within a political context,

raising fundamental questions concerning the multiple connections between desires,

life, love and sovereignty. It is to these arguments, specifically to the relation

between affectivity and democracy that the remaining chapter investigate.

256

Chapter V

Time for democracy: Towards a life in common

Introduction

In chapter IV, I investigated the relation between politics and affectivity in the

Tractatus Theologicus Politicus, and argued that affects are constitutive elements

within Spinoza’s political analysis. Attention has been given to the ambiguous

position of passions within the theological section of the Treatise, and the ways in

which these are productive of both social relations and subjection. Following

Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of conceptual personae, I have re-considered the

arguments of the theological section of the Treatise concerning prophecy, the Jewish

history and the apostles as phases of more complex conceptual personae, expressing

various affective tones. These have shed light on the powerful role of affectivity

within the process of production of the political.

In the pars destruens of the TTP, we have encountered the conceptual-affective

personae of the Devotees of the prophet, Subjects of Moses and the Apostles, which

have revealed the multisided meaning of Spinoza’s definition of passions. The

political status of passions expresses not only the subjection of an individual and

community towards the authority of the ruler or God, but also the emergence of a

new order of problems, a drama, within the political itself. This refers to the

progressive stabilisation and simplification of the political body, within which

passions of fear, hate and hope are founded and developed. This has brought about

the discovery of affectivity as a generative source of political individuation, through

which notions of life, death, time and relation re-colonise the domain of the political.

It is precisely in this context, I have argued, that the great modernity of Spinoza’s

philosophical gesture lies. This concerns the affirmation of the autonomy of affects

257

from the spheres of ethics and psychology, which have narrowed affectivity to an

obscure intimacy of the individual, antagonist to rationality, and also pre-established

moral formulas. Spinoza extrapolates affects from an already-made individual and

re-situates affectivity at the centre of a materialist ontology. Affects become

recognised as productive, collective and, fundamentally, complex.

Taking into account these themes, this chapter explores the relation between

affectivity and democracy in Spinoza’s political writings. The focus is addressed to

the centrality given by Spinoza to affects of joy, love and indignation within the

process of actualisation of the democratic community. It means that I draw attention

to the emotive circumstances described in both the Theological Political Treatise and

the Political Treatise, which activate and, in same other cases, defer the production

of democracy. As full expression of affectivity, the multitude becomes crucial for

understanding Spinoza’s theory of democracy. Thus, an inquiry into the relation

between democracy and affects implies directly the analysis of the anatomy of the

power of the multitude, and the ways in which this political body acts and thinks

democratically. The importance of examining the relation between affectivity, the

multitude and democracy concerns the possibility of re-affirming the independence

of democracy from concepts of the state, the public and individual freedom.

Spinoza’s vision of democracy escapes the logic of the state apparatus, identifying

this directly with the process of producing the ‘common good’. Affectivity lies at the

very heart of the fruition of the ‘common good’, through which the political life of

the multitude under democracy emerges.

Concerning these arguments, many questions accompany this chapter. First of all,

the main problem refers to the understanding of the ontological status of the

multitude, whether this derives from a certain condition of lack or abundance. From

the Theological Political Treatise to the Political Treatise, Spinoza gives a quite

ambivalent account of the ontological causes, which determine the political

behaviour of the multitude. In some cases, Spinoza describes the multitude as a

disruptive force of the constituted order, which is nuanced by the passive tones of

fear, ambition, hate and anger. In others, Spinoza emphases the role of the multitude

258

as a powerful source of social cohesion and mutual assistance shaped by the affects

of joy, love and devotion, which unveils a certain tendency towards democracy.

Therefore, the questions arise as to whether the multitude posits itself as a

counterpart of the sovereign authority of the state, greater than the state, or rather

other than sovereignty as such; and if this is the case, the problem is whether the

multitude is already an expression of a certain democratic existence. Secondly, given

Spinoza’s portrait of the multitude as fundamentally affective and problematic, how

this might play an active role within the construction of democracy? What forces,

thoughts, affects and actions activated through the multitude are essential for the

development and defence of democracy? Thirdly, assuming Spinoza’s concern with

the importance of increasing affects of joy and love within the democratic

community, what new elements, order of problems, transformations, affectivity

introduces within democratic theory and practices? How might be these considered

politically relevant for contemporary thought and society?

In order to address these questions, I propose to insist further upon a detour of

Spinoza’s political theory via the philosophy of individuation of Simondon.

Simondon’s ontological categories might provide us, once more, with alternative

instruments, through which the interface between affectivity and democracy might

come to light. The use of Simondon’s ontology of individuation might allow us to

discover the novelty of Spinoza’s paradigm of democracy. I will argue that Spinoza’s

political move refers to the view of democracy as pure openness, which means a

complex, metastable, and collective body. In order to explore the dynamics of a

democratic life within Spinoza’s writings, I think that the use of conceptual personae

adopted in chapter IV continues to be crucial. Having analysed the emotive gestures

of the Devotees of the prophet, Apostles and the Subjects of Moses, the protagonist

of this chapter is the conceptual-affective persona of the Citizens of democracy. The

conceptual persona of the Citizens of Democracy will show us an alternative mode of

thinking the linkage between the multitude and democracy, affectivity and the

‘common good’, and also the relation between life and sovereignty. It indicates the

way in which a ‘life in common’ might be constructed.

259

1. The political turn of the multitude: Re-theorising the ‘common’ today

The theme of the political role of the multitude has become a central argument within

contemporary thought, which has nurtured a very intense debate recently. The

discovery of the multitude as a proper political category embraces ontological,

political and ethical issues. These concern a more extensive genealogy of the notion

of power within society, the re-definition of present forms of solidarity and an

expansive view of the concept of production, which should incorporate

heterogeneous factors involved within the triad of the product-producer-producing

such as affects, relations, language, information, imagination and time.

As the name “turn” suggests, the political turn of the multitude indicates a novel path

toward the re-characterisation of the domain of the social, opening the way to

ignored possibilities for politics and society. The political turn of multitude means a

heterogeneous and complex form of political subjectivity, which posits itself as other

than the notion of people, nation, individuality and class. It embodies every

contemporary phenomenon of association, resistance and struggle, expressing a

productive process of meanings, affects, thoughts, actions and contingency. In other

words, the multitude, as we will see in this chapter, has to be understood as a theatre

and, at the same time, actor of the political scene.

The increasing popularity of the concept of the multitude derives from a more

general discussion within a certain post-Marxist thought concerned with the re-

conceptualisation of the meaning, genesis and anatomy of community, upon which a

new paradigm of materialism and philosophy of praxis might be predicated. As I

have indicated in chapter II, certainly Althusser’s dictum of the “detour of Marx via

Spinoza” offered fundamental theoretical insights for re-thinking the dynamics of

social practises of cohesion, giving rise to a new approach to political theory not to

mention the re-situating of Spinoza’s politics within contemporary thought.

260

Post-modern thought have brought about the need for re-structuring the domain of

the political, which might disclose unexplored avenues of thinking and making

community. Although this question has generated different theoretical positions,

common to post-modern political theory is the conviction that the reality of society

greatly exceeds the Liberal divide between private and public spheres, political state

and civil society; and also the rationalistic formula of homo economicus, who acts

moved by self-interest and rational choice.99 In contrast with the traditional model of

society as a mere agglomerate of rational and autonomous individualities, the system

of a community, they claim, follows a non-linear path, which folds and unfolds a

variety of heterogeneous elements such as desires, affects, bodies, thoughts and

forces.100 This implies the complication of the domain of the political with non

conventional notions such as life, becoming, multiplicity, contingency, imagination

and spirituality.101

In this light, the focus of the inquiry into the political domain of a community,

generally, has replaced the concept of individuality with singularity, self-interest

with desire, authority (Potestas) with power (potentia), progress or evolution with

becoming, homogeneity with multiplicity, and sequential and quantitative time

(Kronos) with the time of contingency and productive moments (Kairos).102 These

re-formulations, over all, bring to light the growing awareness of society as a

99 Concerning the post-modern debate around the meaning of the political, the anatomy of community and the re-definition of the status of individuals within society, particularly influential have been the works of Balibar (1994, 1998), Foucault (1998), Negri (1998; 2000), Badiou (2005; 2002) and Nancy (1991) recently. 100 Concerning the role of affectivity, body and desires in the production of the political, Feminist thought has given an important contribution, see for example Irigaray (1994), Cavarero (2002) Ticineto Glough and Halley (2007), and Manning (2007). 101On the theme made of the politization of the concept of life, Foucault (1998, vol. 1), first, introduces the question of the impact of the political authority of the state over everyday life, coining the term bio-power. Negri and Hardt (2000; 2006) conceptualised the term bio-politics as the opposite to bio-power, which is seen as the insurrectional response of the multitude through the use of the body and life to the bio-political control of the capitalist state. For further readings see also Agamben (1998: 71-104). 102 Concerning the theme of time in post-modern political thought, Deleuze and Guattari (2000a; 2000b) put forward the idea of the flowing of time through contingency and multiple movements of composition and decomposition of planes. Negri (2005: 131-169) reiterates the two Greek conceptions of time as Kronos (quantitative time) and Kairos (the time ‘in between’, qualitative), describing the latter as proper of the multitude. For further readings see particularly Massumi (1992, 1993) and Hutchings (2008).

261

complex body, for which alternative and more adequate categories have to be

employed.

Concerning these arguments, many questions arise. Given the multisided account of

the community of the global era, the question concerns whether there is any existing

or past political model (democracy, republic, anarchy, socialism and communism)

that might fully incorporate the abundance and complexity of this social body.

Secondly, assuming that political gestures greatly exceed models of rational choice

and self-interest, the problem concerns what is (if any) the emerging philosophy of

praxis? Thirdly, supposing that social relations go beyond the differences of class,

geographical and political territory, the question is what lies at the very basis of the

political community today? Ultimately, if the process of production of a collective

body does not or not solely reside on the dual schema of the object-subject

distinction, the difficulty becomes one of the unveiling the possible mechanisms of

the contemporary system of production; and revealing the instruments employed and

the outcomes of this process. In other words, what is at stake here is the

understanding of the production of the ‘common’ (Negri, 2005; Hardt and Negri,

2006).

In order to re-theorise the complexity of the social, the inquiry into the

anatomy of the contemporary society has taken a myriad of different positions.

Without embarking on a detailed discussion of the variety of theoretical approaches

that have been developed in political theory recently, for the purpose of this chapter,

we must, at the very least, consider the important contributions made by certain

theories of radical democracy. These have raised fundamental questions about the

redefinition of contemporary mass movements through more exhaustive concepts of

hegemony, power, subject and bio-politics.103 Central within radical democratic

theory has been the recovery of the notions of freedom, equality, rights, public and

private spheres from the liberal tradition of thought, which have reduced these values

to abstract and incontrovertible truths. In contrast with the liberal democratic

approach, these principles, it has been claimed, involve concrete political practises of 103 For a complete account of debate surrounding the theme of radical democracy, see Thomassen and Tønder (2005), Laclau and Mouffe (2001); Butler, Laclau and Zizek (2000); and Badiou (2002).

262

transformations, and the constitution of new social and political identities (Laclau

and Mouffe, 2001; Connolly, 2002).

These themes of the autonomy of democracy from the liberal paradigm have

nurtured fruitful debates concerning the meaning of community, repositioning its

existence outside the boundaries of the state and civil society. This has brought about

the necessity of re-considering the anatomy of community as an expression of

heterogeneity, spontaneous movements, which is not lacking or contrary to the state;

rather it is other and more than the sovereign authority. In order to re-conceptualise

the richness of expressions of community, notions of ‘being-in-common’, violence,

and the ‘whatever’ have been proposed.104 These have offered an alternative account

of the forces and potentials that shape the present community, and unexplored

possibilities for realising a pure democracy, escaping the surreptitious violence of the

state apparatus.

Although these theories have brought to light thoughtful arguments and problems on

the question of the autonomy of the community, a thought of and about the multitude

becomes, even more, crucial today. I think that the “class-concept” of the multitude

appears to a far greater extent as expressing the anatomy, becoming and dynamics of

the political subjectivities (Negri, 2004). For the indeterminacy and multiplicity that

the term “multitude” expresses, this concept brings to light fundamental questions

such as the role of affectivity, imagination and relation within the political context, as

we will see, re-shaping the idea of society as a process.105

104 Concerning the re-formation of the paradigm of community, parallel to the notion of the multitude, see for example, the stimulating dispute between Agamben and Nancy, articulated through Agamben’s reaction to Nancy’s thesis of the Inoperative Community (1982) with the theory of the Coming Community (1991); and also the continuous debate between Nancy and Blanchot, who responses to Nancy’s thesis of the inoperative community with the writing Unavowable Community (1988). 105The origins of the term “multitude” comes from the Latin idiom “multitudo-inis”, which is a composite of the adjective multus (many, plural, a large number of etc.) and the suffix –tude (corresponding to the English -ess). By multitudo, the ancient Romans refer to a condition, permanent or transitory, of indeterminacy. It means the state of being numerous, within which singulars events are not visibly discernible one from the other; these are also impossible to be counted qualitatively and quantitatively. In political theory, Roman writers as Polybius (Polybius is of Greek origins, however, he spent almost of his life in Rome, where he also completed his Histories), Seneca, Cicero and Sallust, have amply used the term “multitudo” in most of the cases with the negative meaning of a large number of (multus) people without any political authority and social cohesion. It is during the

263

Concerning the theme of the multitude, no one can deny that the conspicuous part of

the actual debate is largely indebted to the works of Deleuze and Guattari, Negri and

Hardt. Deleuze and Guattari have pictured the community of the global era as a

nomadic organisation structured through “desiring-machine”, and movements of

territorialization (maintenance) and deterritorialization (dissipation), opposing the

homogeneity and stability of the state-apparatus.106 Deleuze and Guattari’s

philosophy has played a central role within the development of the ontological and

political conception of the multitude today. This has significantly formed the

ontological ground, upon which the multitude as a proper and alternative political

individual has emerged. It is, however, through Negri’s political reflections that the

thought of the multitude acquires great consistency and coherence, giving rise to

what we have called above the “political turn of the multitude”.

The importance of Negri’s philosophical gesture concerns the retreat of the multitude

from its negative definitions of chaos, mass and mob to a positive meaning of

productive force of desires, power, actions and conflicts and, more generally,

commonalities. Negri examines the emergence of the multitude not as a transitional

social phenomenon derived from a specific historical or political moment of crisis

within the political body, which would be re-incorporated into the categories of

citizens, subjects and people as soon as the hierarchic order of the state is restored.

Rather, the multitude, Negri claims, is the political antagonist of the contemporary

state apparatus, which is as global (plural, decentralised and powerful) as the

capitalist state itself, and as invasive as the Empire. The multitude opposes to the

politics of the Empire, a praxis of spontaneous democracy structured through desires,

kairotic flowings of time and life, through which the production of the ‘common’ is

founded and developed (Negri and Hardt, 2000; 2006). XVI and XVII centuries that the expression “multitudo” acquires a more neutral significance and political consistency. Machiavelli, Hobbes and, over all, Spinoza amply adopted the category of the multitude for describing the role of the mass within the state. 106 Deleuze and Guattari’s conception of the “Desiring-machine”, roughly, affirms the productive nature of desires, opposing both the Freudian and Marxist views of desire as emerging from lack (Deleuze and Guattari, 2004a). The notions of territorialization and deterritorialisation, and the theory of nomadic forms of organisation connote an expansive force (“nomadic war machine”) composed of heterogeneity and contingency strongly challenging the process of homogenization and stabilisation of the state-apparatus (Deleuze and Guattari, 2004b).

264

It is in this moment that the marginal status traditionally occupied by Spinoza within

the history of political thought is eventually undermined. Negri reiterates Spinoza’s

conception of the multitude, reinstating Spinoza’s politics and ontology as its

weight.107 For Negri, Spinoza’s political philosophy proposes a multisided vision of

the multitude, which is not solely capable of challenging concretely the hegemony of

the state and the Church, but also the only condition for the attainment of democracy.

Although Negri and other political theorists such as Balibar, Moreau,

Matheron and Giancotti have consistently re-located Spinoza’s thought of the

multitude and democracy within contemporary political theory, nevertheless there

are, I think, still dormant and unexplored themes within Spinoza’s political treatises

that require further consideration. Firstly, I refer to a more extensive understanding

of the concrete political stakes of affects of joy, love and indignation within the

constitution of the multitude, which are presented in the final part of the TTP and the

TP.

As we have examined in chapter IV, passions do not only describe an inoperative

psychological and ethical condition, which is rooted in a specific historical, political

and religious community. Affectivity, however passive or active, sets in motion

intensive and relational movements of exchanges and variations of parts, which

transform the political scene entirely. In the conceptual persona of the Subjects of

Moses, for example, we have seen that Hebrew’s fear of God and hope for salvation

generate a form of anguish, which signals the emergence of a dramatic moment

involving not only the Jewish people and Moses, but rather the production of the

political as whole.

In this light, if passions are capable of producing and dissolving the political, the

status of affects of joy, love and indignation in Spinoza’s political inquiry upon

democracy and the multitude certainly goes far beyond particular practises of

sharing, sedition, subjection, individual freedom and mutual assistance. As we will 107The reinstatement of Spinoza’s philosophy today certainly is not only Negri’s achievement. In the course of the chapter, I will further discuss the other readings.

265

analyse in the following section, affects are the ground of fundamental political

notions of social contracts, natural and civil rights, sovereignty and consensus, upon

which the very power of the multitude resides. Therefore, the study of the ontological

and political foundations of affectivity is instrumental to investigating the many ways

in which the multitude produces the ‘common’ regardless of regimes of monarchy,

aristocracy and tyranny. It is for this reason that in the thread of both Treatises, the

multitude, obstinately, persists in any historical juncture, political crisis and

restoration.

In the absence of an adequate political vocabulary for affectivity, Spinoza’s analysis

of the multitude’s affective politics, I believe, becomes crucial. This might enable us

to re-consider how the ‘common’ is produced, and specifically the forces,

movements and tensions activated by affects of joy, love and hate for the constitution

and fruition of the common. Furthermore, Spinoza’s concern with the affective tones

of the multitude might provide us with alternative instruments for re-theorising the

richness of expression of the social. The claim I will make through this chapter is

that Spinoza’s attention to a praxis of joy and love reframes the controversial

question of the relation between life (whether biological or already political) and

sovereignty.

Secondly, re-locating the role of affects for the production of the ‘common’ directly

questions the effective anatomy and potentials of democracy in Spinoza’s thought,

which is described as the most natural system. As examined in chapter IV, societies

are processes, which follow a non liner path shaped by a mixture of relations,

complexity and tensions. The emergence of a specific political individual does not

create community made by the establishment of laws, rules, private and public

spheres. From the arguments of both the Ethics and the Theological Political

Treatise, we have learnt that individuals are already collective and the order of nature

is not qualitatively different from human vital and political systems. As the most

natural model, democracy cannot be considered as a well-ordered form of

government with a specific organisation of authority into laws and social division.

Democracy instead refers to a process of continuous actualisation and

266

transformation, which gives full rights of citizenship to the actuality of the

community as it is. This means that incompatibilities, relations and tensions shape a

democratic realm, maintaining its body constantly open towards alternative

transformations in turn. As we have seen in chapters III and IV, affectivity is the

cornerstone of relation, which places individuals in the middle between generality

and singularity, movements and transformations. It is in this context that the interface

between affectivity and democracy comes to light, complicating the domain of the

political through the production of the “the common good”.

This focus on Spinoza’s conception of democracy introduces a new awareness of the

relation between affectivity and politics, the meaning of ‘common good’ and its

production. In the search for a different conception of democracy today, Spinoza’s

account of the linkage between affects and democratic praxis, I argue, might open

unexplored avenues towards alternative modes of re-thinking pacts of solidarity,

fidelity and struggles. It is to this interface between democracy and affectivity that

contemporary political thought should pay greater attention. Taking into account

these arguments, in the following section I shall pass to examine Spinoza’s

multisided theory of the multitude, and the extent to which its life, political gestures

and affective tones carry democratic meanings, actions and forces. As mentioned, the

discussion on democracy, the multitude and affects will proceed through conceptual

personae. In this chapter we encounter the Citizens of the democracy. This embraces

and somewhat challenges, in my analysis, Spinoza’s engagement with democracy,

that is, how a life in common might be formed.

267

2. Spinoza’s political strategy: Democracy, sovereignty and the power of

the Multitude

The theme of democracy occupies the central part of Spinoza’s political theory,

which is developed in both the political section of the TTP and the unfinished

Political Treatise. Whilst in the pars contruens of the TTP, Spinoza’s treatment of

democracy is folded within a more general investigation of typical themes of modern

political thought such as the contractualist origin of society, natural and civil rights,

freedom of speech and thought, in the Political Treatise the analysis of the

democratic state follows a more complex discussion of the structure of sovereignty

within monarchy, aristocracy and democracy. These questions involve the study of

the notions of the differences and relation between natural and civil rights, the

definition of political authority, the aims of the state, the meaning of the law,

citizenship and the various forms of freedom. In both Treatises, Spinoza’s arguments

delineate an accurate anatomy of power, through which its twofold status comes to

light: power as fixed authority (Potestas) and as productive force (potentia).108 The

description of the complex structure of power within society is the ground of

Spinoza’s conception of democracy as the full expression of human association.

The theme of inalienable right plays a fundamental role in the two Treatises. In the

TTP, this argument is crucial for understanding Spinoza’s conceptions of the

authority of the state, the social pact and freedom. More precisely, definition of the

inalienable right explains where sovereignty is located within the body politic, and

more importantly under what circumstances its authority might be legitimate. In the

TP, the definition of inalienable rights is instrumental for determining the emergence

of the multitude as a proper political counterpart of the state, and Spinoza’s thesis of 108Concerning the category of power within the political treatises, Negri identifies its twofold status of power. Accordingly, the notion of power refers on the one side to Potestas, indicating the authority of the state; on the other, power means Potentiae, describing the productive force of the multitude. Negri concludes that Spinoza’s thought of the multitude is an affirmation of “potentia contra auctoritas” (Negri, 1998: 242-253). Moving on the same distinction between Potestas and Potentia, but taking a complete opposite direction, Rice too points to the two dimensions of power. In a liberal fashion, Rice claims that power as Potestas denotes the authority of the state, which is viewed as an “added capacity” always inferior to the individual and opposing the order of nature. In this sense, Spinoza’s notion of the state is not a further development of his ontology. Power as Potentia, instead, means the ability of the individual, which is greater than the state (Rice, 1990).

268

the superiority of democracy over the other political models of aristocracy and

monarchy.

In the political section of the TTP, Spinoza claims that natural rights are coextensive

with civil rights, and reiterates this more strongly in the TP through his adage of the

“tantum juris quantum potentiae” (TTP, Chapter XVI: 527; TP, Chapter II.3). This

means that the creation of the political body does not suppress the rights owned by

every man in a pre-civil condition. For Spinoza, natural and civil rights are not

contradictory terms, rather these are compatible one with the other. Spinoza defines,

more importantly, natural right as power, which means unpredicted and productive

force. Following Spinoza’s analysis, in the state of nature the power of each

individual does not lead necessarily to actions of reciprocal cruelty as in the

Hobbesian condition of perpetual war. Rather, Spinoza’s account of the pre-civil

situation is multisided, where a variety of affective tones shape the actions and

thoughts of individuals. This variegated structure of the state of nature produces a

different kind of relational condition as the fear towards others, humility or self-

esteem (TTP, Chapter XVI: 528-529; TP, Chapter III. 3-8). To put this in a more

Simondonian fashion, the state of nature is fundamentally a heterogeneous being,

which carries problems, incompatibilities and metastability that give rise to

complicated individuals in turn. In this light, as a productive force, power exposes

the equilibrium of the individual towards further transformations and actualisations.

It is in this moment that the desire for society emerges. As mentioned, the civil body

does not oppose the state of nature, rather the passage from the pre-civil context to

the civil one indicates a process rather than a rupture. As there is no contradiction

between these two forms of power, this leads Spinoza to maintain natural rights

entirely within society. Furthermore, individuals surrender collectively (collegialiter)

their powers for the creation of the new political equilibrium (TTP, Chapter V: 438,

Chapter XVI: 528). This implies the acknowledgment of civil authority as a result of

this union, thus dependent on this collective power, which is always greater than the

established authority (TP: Chapter III. 6-8).

269

These arguments regarding the transfer of natural rights to the political body

moves Spinoza to pose the fundamental problem of sovereignty; and consequently

which regime between monarchy, aristocracy and democracy best maintains and

guarantees the balance between powers (civil and natural) within society. In the TTP,

Spinoza finds untenable the composition of sovereignty within the systems of

monarchy and aristocracy. For Spinoza, these easily degenerate into regimes of

violence and tyranny (TTP, Chapter XVI: 531). In order to justify their sovereignty,

both monarchic and aristocratic governments, Spinoza explains, have to rely on

religious expedients, such as the divine origin of authority or the suppression of the

mass’s desires, needs and freedom. In the unfinished Political Treatise, Spinoza re-

espouses the theme of sovereignty more rigorously, introducing the question of the

maintenance of consensus within the body politic; and the extent to which this is

defended and encouraged within monarchy, aristocracy and democracy. If in the TTP

the contruactualist foundation of sovereignty might be interpreted as the premise for

the formulation of the category of political obligation, which binds both the state and

civil body, it is in the TP that the theory of consensus dispels entirely any possible

recourse to a politics of obedience. As Spinoza relates directly the notion of the

consensus with the multitude, this brings to light the centrality of the multitude as a

powerful political individual (TP, Chapter IV).

In order to consolidate the legitimacy of the state, Spinoza explains, both monarchy

and aristocracy have necessarily to be dependent on the consent of the multitude (TP,

Chapters V, VII, X). Specifically, the preservation of monarchical government

resides in the reinforcement of the ruler’s alliance with his subjects, and the

progressive disappearance of the nobility’s privileges (TP, Chapter VII. 20). This

involve the constitution of counsellors to the king chosen from the citizen-body, the

formation of a popular army, non hereditary election of the monarch, and the

definition of the king as representative of the people’s will and not as the owner of

the state (TP, Chapter VI. 10, 15; Chapter VII. 12, 25). For Spinoza, these are the

conditions, through which subjects’ consent can be best preserved, and thereby the

authority of the monarchic regime maintained. Similarly, in an aristocratic regime,

Spinoza’s attention is given to the increase of the relation between patricians and

270

plebeians. In order to avoid the predominance of a specific cast of patrician, Spinoza

opts for a solution of a regular alternation between the patrician clans. This should

prevent the emergence of inequalities between patricians and the formation of

hereditary privileges, which would encourage sedition, ambition and rivalry among

citizens (TP, Chapter X).

A central consequence of this strategy of consensus is that in each of these regimes,

the stability of the state is based essentially on the progressive reduction of indirect

forms of representation, which would better guarantee the balance between powers.

In this light, each regime seems to move progressively towards democracy, through

the constitution or, at the very least, the permission of practices of sharing,

participation and freedom. Given this intrinsic tendency towards democratic customs

within each type of regimes, the question immediately arises as what might be the

anatomy of sovereignty in a proper democratic state?

Since the chapter XI on democracy is missing from Spinoza’s text, we do not

know how the distribution of sovereign power in a democratic body is articulated in

his later thought. In order to avoid tempting conjectures on how Spinoza might have

conceived the democratic state, I think that we might instead examine, deductively,

Spinoza’s paradigm of democracy from the arguments developed in the Theological

Political Treatise and his theory of the consensus conducted in the Political Treatise.

These reveal, we will see below, Spinoza’s awareness of the pivotal role of the

multitude within the formation of democracy, and its centrality for the production of

the ‘common good’.

In the TTP, Spinoza advocates democracy as the more natural form of political

institution, within which the individual “transfers it [the natural right] to the majority

of the entire community of which he is a part” [italics mine] (TTP Chapter XVI:

531). For Spinoza, the democratic state ensures stability, peace and freedom of

speech and thought, which are the only aims of the state. More accurately, in the

TTP, Spinoza claims that the aims and purpose of the state are freedom and the

observance of the principles sanctioned in the social pact, whereas in the TP the

271

reason of the state is the defence and preservation of peace and stability through the

preservation of the citizens’ consensus. Given this collective structure, it is unlikely

that the democratic government will degenerate into tyranny and efface human

rights. It is through the maintenance and development of these conditions that the

progress of society lies.

Concerning these themes about the very role of the multitude from the TTP to

the TP, civil and natural rights, consensus and democracy, many interpretations have

occurred in the history of Spinoza’s thought, each of which stresses a particular

argument and ignores or, at the very least, underestimates others. As mentioned at

many junctures in this work, there have been two influential ways of reading

Spinoza’s political philosophy. These are a liberal-individualistic approach, and a

contemporary study of Spinoza’s philosophy influenced by Marxist paradigm, which

has flourished particularly in France within certain post-Althusserian debate. Related

particularly to the thesis of the political section of the TTP, the liberal-individualistic

approach has been quite dominant and this has been challenged by post-Althusserian

interpretations more recently (Smith, 1998; Feuer, 1987). As Spinoza posits a

contract at the very basis of the political body, this has led to an assimilation of his

thought to Hobbes, Locke and Grotius. Furthermore, Spinoza’s reference to the

notion of profit as the very basis of the state has aligned him on the utilitarian

tradition of thought of Benthan and Mill, or the theory of the rational choice (Israel,

2002).

The main limits of these interpretations, in my view, are that they do not pay

adequate attention to crucial aspects of Spinoza’s themes of the pact and the profit.

The foundation of the pact is, first of all, a form of spontaneous passage from the

natural condition; also this is collectively postulated. Thus, there is no singular

individual being at the basis of the contract but instead a collective being. This

implies that the conception of the community is to some extent prior to civil society.

As it is formed collectively, the authority and the reason of the state resides in the

power of the collective. Whilst Spinoza’s claim of the interest or profit as the basis of

the state may certainly lead one to utilitarian conclusions, however this contrasts with

272

the definition of the human being given in the Ethics as desire (E. III, Def. I). As we

will further discuss in the successive parts, from the state of nature to the civil body

Spinoza does not refer to the human being as a self-independent individual, who

experiences society as an attached and secondary body (Rice, 1990).109 By contrast,

society is an expression not of self-interest, however rational or passionate, but

instead of desire, which greatly exceeds both models of the rational choice and the

Hobbesian fear of death.

Furthermore, assuming Spinoza’s theory of the state and the human being as

expressions of Liberal and individualistic conceptions, this would mean that, for

Spinoza, the individual can live under any form of government insofar as this does

not limit the attainment of personal interest and self-realisation, as the Hobbesian

man can perfectly exist under the Leviathan. In this case, monarchy and aristocracy

might adequately meet the needs of individuals similarly to democracy insofar as

these do not degenerate into despotic and confessional regimes. However, as we have

seen, Spinoza firmly advocates democracy as the best and more natural model of

governance for the development of a society as a whole. The superiority of

democracy, Spinoza claims, resides not on the possibility of expansion of the

singular freedom either on a community as quantitative sum of parts. It is rather a

system, through and within which the sharing of power is the only condition of

collective freedom.

In an opposing way, post-Althusserian approaches to Spinoza’s politics have

stressed the collective aspects of his thought. These have forwarded the idea of the

political foundation of Spinoza’s ontology and, at the same time, the ontological or

naturalist ground of his politics. Post-Althusserian analysis has highlighted how his

philosophy raises fecund arguments in relation to the strategy for maintaining power

over people, the mechanisms of alienation used by religious and political authorities,

the multisided forms of ideology, and a non individualist conceptions of society and

human nature. In this light, Spinoza’s affirmation of freedom of speech and thought

has been explained as a project of emancipation of the mass, the ultimate object of 109For an analysis of the psychological implications deriving from of Spinoza’s theory of the contract as the deference of the individual to the state, see Curley (1996: 315-342), and James (1997: 136-156).

273

which is the creation of a community aware of itself as unity and not as sum of

individuals (Matheron, 1988; Giancotti, 1995). It follows that the political body,

instead of representing a mere sum of singular individualities, is the result of the

collective power and desires of people. Thus, Spinoza’s advocacy of democracy is

understood as the affirmation of the power of the mass against the authority of the

state. Above all, these series of studies have brought about the rediscovery of the

originality of Spinoza’s theory of the multitude, which is conceptualised without

reference to citizens, people and subjects.

Taking into great consideration both readings of Spinoza’s politics and

proceeding further with the post-Althusserian approach, I think that there are some

further important arguments emerged from the Theological Political Treatise and the

Political Treatise, which might still offer thoughtful theoretical insights for

contemporary thought. Besides these disputes of the foundation of democracy as

either individualist or collective in nature, we should emphasise the hypothesis that

lies at the basis of Spinoza’s democratic thought. The importance of Spinoza’s thesis

of democracy, in my reading, resides primarily in the question, which brings him to

affirm the superiority of this institution over the other political models. Spinoza does

not ask what is the best form for governing and gathering people together within the

boundaries of a political equilibrium. Most importantly, Spinoza’s quest is not

addressed to how people can rule themselves. This would imply a certain acceptance

of the intrinsic incapacity of individuals to govern themselves collectively. We

already know from the Ethics that individuals are ontologically collective. Therefore,

Spinoza questions how this complex and collective being may act politically.

Given the Greek meaning of the term democracy as the government of the many

(demos), this might appear to Spinoza the more adequate political formula able to

give rise to the manifold and heterogeneous status of the individuals. The open

equilibrium of the democratic system creates the conditions, through which relational

movements can be further actualised and developed. It is for this reason that Spinoza

fiercely defines democracy as the most natural form of political praxis.

274

If Spinoza’s account of democracy is concerned with the question of how people

govern themselves in order to develop further the collective process of individuation,

many problems arise. Firstly, how does this complex individual act politically once

democracy is formed? Secondly, given Spinoza’s conviction of the affective and

passionate nature of individuals, how does the multitude act politically, favouring the

progress of a society? In other words, how do affects and passions impact positively

and concretely on the production of democracy? In order to address these questions,

our reading of the Treatises through affective-conceptual personae acquires great

significance. The analysis of the relation between the multitude and democracy as

more complex conceptual persona might shed light on certain dormant aspects of

Spinoza’s democratic theory, which otherwise would remain entangled in the gap

between individualist and collective readings of Spinoza’s political philosophy.

These refer to an alternative mode of thinking the relational role of affectivity within

the democratic order and, more generally, the interface between affects and

sovereignty. In the remaining part of the chapter, I shall pass to examine the affective

political phases of the multitude towards democracy as a conceptual persona, which I

call the Citizens of democracy

275

3. Citizens of democracy: Sovereign life, common good, affective time

The conceptual persona of the Citizens of democracy expresses the central problem

that accompany Spinoza’s inquiry from the Ethics, through the Theological Political

Treatise, to the Political Treatise. This concerns the understanding of the form of life

in common embodied by and through the multitude. Following Deleuze’ and

Guattari’s thesis, if the conceptual persona of Descartes is the Idiot and the one of

Nietzsche is Dionysus, I would argue here, Spinoza’s major persona is the living in

common, which he envisages in the body of the multitude (Deleuze and Guattari,

1994: 61-83; and also chapter IV of this work.). By this, importantly, I do not intend

that the multitude itself is Spinoza’s conceptual persona; rather, the paradigm of the

life in common of the multitude becomes the privileged object-subject of Spinoza’s

philosophical production. It activates multiple potentialities of Spinoza’s concept,

raising a problem and glimpsing a solution. It is the multiform life in common of the

multitude that forces Spinoza to question the power of affects and the openness of

the body, dismissing the paradigm of individuality and the Cartesian hegemony of

the mind.110

Related particularly to the production of the political, Spinoza is confronted with the

multiple and various levels of the relational behaviour and forces that the multitude

introduces through cruelty and joy within the political process. The multitude,

Spinoza observes, obstinately persists through historical crises and social hierarchy.

The multitude’s omnipresence in history, Spinoza recognises, is not inoperative at

all, rather it carries unsuspected meanings, relations, powers and tensions, which

transform and further individualises the political scene. Every attempt to restrain the

life of multitude within a well-organised class of subjects, people and plebs causes

directly the collapse of the political body (for the language of the TP “the outrage of

the masses”). By contrast, as we have seen, the search for a form of consensus leads

towards more democratic regimes. Therefore, Spinoza questions what are the

founding elements of a life in common of the multitude, and how we might

110 For a full account of the questions of the body, the autonomy of the affects and the negation of Cartesian philosophy developed in the Ethics, see chapter III of the present study.

276

conceptualise its collective political life. It is in a consideration of these problems

that Spinoza’s quest lies, drawing a line of continuity between the Treatises. The

conceptual persona of the Citizens of democracy precisely takes shape from this

continuity between the Treatises, expressing the variety of affective tones given by

Spinoza to life-in-common. Hence, I consider the arguments and problems of the

pars construens of the TTP and TP as phases in the more complex conceptual

persona of the Citizens of democracy, each of which expresses a crucial relational,

thus emotive, moment within the production of democracy. Taking into account

these arguments, let us flesh out the dynamics and problematic characters of this

conceptual persona.

As anticipated previously, Spinoza gives a multisided account of the political

role of the mass within a political context. In the TTP, Spinoza’s rare use of the term

multitude and frequent reference instead to mob and plebs appears to stress only the

passionate character of the mass, which can be mobilised now against this faction

now against the other. In contrast, in the TP the multitude becomes the central name

for defining the political status of the mass within the state. This is recognised as the

concrete counterpart of the state, which can destroy any form of tyranny;

consequently any ruler has to adapt its authority to incorporate the consent of the

multitude. In other words, the mass is the social and political category, whose

consent, however passive or active, alters inevitably the equilibrium of the political

system.

From this multifaceted vision of the mass, many questions arise. Firstly, how

do they can found a political body as democracy without being ruled by any external

authority? In other words, given the passionate tones of the masses, how does

Spinoza think a possible government of the many, which could guarantee stability

and peace? Secondly, given Spinoza’s refusal of any form of agency and a strictly

determinist philosophical system, how might the mass pass from being a passionate

and violent mob to the citizens of democracy and the guardians of freedom?

Concerning these questions, for the purpose of this chapter, Balibar (1994; 1998) and

Negri’s (1998) theses offer fecund arguments for our discussion. The former

277

emphasises the ambivalent status of the multitude in Spinoza’s analysis, whereas the

latter its praxis of emancipation.111

Barlibar’s focus is upon the twofold dimension of Spinoza’s notion of the multitude,

within which imagination and communication play a pivotal role for the attainment

of democracy. For Balibar, Spinoza’s analysis of the power of the multitude within a

given political context reveals an irresolvable internal contradiction, which refers to a

passive tendency towards servitude, and a constitutive power of new political order.

On the one side, Balibar observes, the body of the multitude is the rich expression of

collective praxis, which limits the growth and expansion of any despotic and

confessional state. In this light, affectivity is the generating source of the constitution

of the power of the mass against the authority. On the other, Balibar rightly notices,

the TTP displays a negative aspect of the movement of the mass, which is

characterised by manipulation. The role of imagination generates superstition,

mystification, alienation, for which a politics of obedience and a doctrine of mutual

support become indispensable instruments for the stability of a community. Balibar’s

reading concludes with envisaging an irreversible aporia within Spinoza’s theory of

the multitude, which is characterised by the internal contradiction between citizens

and mob (Williams, 2007; 2002). It is precisely in this aporetic status of the

multitude that the great originality and modernity of Spinoza’s political gesture lies.

The coexistence of the mob and the citizens, Balibar argues, makes of the multitude

the very problem and subject of the historical process, which traverses and forms

human societies. 112

In contrast with Balibar’s reading and in a strong Marxist fashion, Negri opposes the

definition of the masses as inconceivable contradiction with the view of the

multitude as internal to the domain of the state. Negri points to the constitutive force

of the multitude, which re-signifies the political and social conception of power

111For an analysis of Negri and Balibar’s interpretations of Spinoza’s theory of the multitude, and a possible advancement of both readings through a more complex theory of imagination and affectivity, see Williams (2007; 2002), to which this discussion refer. 112Concerning the twofold status of imagination within the TTP, Balibar stresses the double meaning of the passion of fear as fear of the mass and the fear experienced by the ruler in relation to the mass (Balibar, 1994: 3-37).

278

itself. For him Spinoza’s theory of the multitude reveals a radical anatomy of power,

which brings to light its two meanings as dynamic force (potentiae) and immobile

authority (Potestas). In Negri’s view, Spinoza’s notion of the multitude exemplifies

the dimension of power as transformation of the established order, which contrasts

the authority of the state. The role of the multitude becomes recognised as the

counterpart of the state and the destabilising actor within the political scene (Negri,

1988: 242-253).

Without negating or supporting either of these readings, the strategy, I follow in this

part, considers the condition of the multitude from another perspective. In order to

re-situate the problem of the multitude within a political body and especially in a

democratic system, I draw attention to the emotive states themselves, through which

political actions are founded and developed. Thus, I propose to examine both passive

and active actions of the mass as a result of a more complex process formed by

affective phases, each of which discloses relational movements, problems and

potentialities. The arguments, I will put forward through the thread of this conceptual

persona, concern the discovery of a more complex process nuanced by varied

confluences of emotive tones, which shape and further complicate not the singular

being rather the collective body of the multitude.113 It is through this affective

process of enduring individuation that Spinoza’s vision of democracy as mens una

comes to light.114 Furthermore, this analysis of Spinoza’s thesis of the multitude as a

process draws attention to the ways in which affects are generative sources of the

‘common good’; and allows the opportunity to address the question of the interface

between democracy and affectivity.

113Concerning Spinoza’s theme of the political actions of the mass, Balibar and Negri too view these as phases of more problematic process. Whilst Balibar stresses the notion of process in the treatise as a form of historical becoming, and Negri instead as emancipating progress, my reading tends to maintain a stronger ontological foundation in the same line with Simondon’s thought. 114Spinoza in the Theological Political Treatise does not use the term mens una explicitly. This will appear in the Political Treatise (Chapter II. 16). In the Theological Political Treatise, he instead adopts the equivalent expression “coetus universus hominum” (“united body of men), (TTP, Chapter XVI: 530).

279

States of fear: The servitude of the emperor, the freedom of the subjects

Following the political arguments of the two Treatises, Spinoza addresses the reasons

for the necessity (its natural status) of democracy. In order to expound this thesis, he

considers first non democratic systems and historical circumstances, in which the

politics of consensus has been totally or partially corrupted. In the TTP, Spinoza

looks at the negative examples of the Roman Empire, the Jewish state, and the recent

events of the English Revolution of Cromwell. In the TP, he examines the ways in

which the multitude’s agreement can be preserved within monarchy and aristocracy.

In each of these cases, the multitude is the centre and the end of Spinoza’s inquiry. In

his analysis of non democratic orders, the passive tones of fear, anger, hate and

ambition form the political practises of the mass. These cause instability, anarchy

and the collapse of the entire political apparatus. In the thread of the persona of the

Citizens of democracy, these passive states determine crucial phases within the

process of the democratisation of the political, revealing an alternative mode of

producing the ‘common’.

Spinoza makes a fundamental claim at the beginning of the chapter XVII of

the Theological Political Treatise, in which he affirms “Nobody can so completely

transfer to other all his rights, and consequently his power, as to cease to be a human

being, nor will there ever be a sovereign power that can do all it pleases” (TTP,

chapter XVII: 536). As discussed above, Spinoza’s thesis of the inalienability of

natural right becomes the dominant argument of the Political Treatise, upon which

his theory of legitimacy of the state is based and developed (TP, II. 3-4). It is the

impossibility of the complete embodiment of the natural right within the canon that

raises the problem of consensus and the existence of the multitude into politics. In

the case of the conceptual persona of the Citizens of democracy, Spinoza’s

statements are crucial.

As nobody transfers entirely to an external authority his natural right, there remains a

non expressed quantity of power within any given state. The anatomy of a political

body is constituted by an individuated part (the civil right, laws and freedoms) and an

280

undifferentiated potential mass, which might suddenly be actualised, bringing into

the system novel meanings, actions and thoughts. This vision of the constituted

political order brings about the discovery of society continuously traversed by

different and heterogeneous forces and movements, which maintain its equilibrium

constantly in tension and open to transformations. As we have seen with the previous

conceptual personae in chapter IV, Spinoza’s conception of the civil community

unveils his awareness of society as a process, a becoming, which particularly in

states of fear and violence acquires great cogency.

In the political order regulated by fear and violence (such as the Roman Empire and

the Jewish monarchy after the death of Moses), the state of passivity does not only

delineate the decrease of power of action within the domain of the Citizens of the

forming democracy, but also expresses a condition of potentiality, through which

unsuspected and unpredictable political beings (revolts, anarchic phenomena,

despotic regimes) emerge. These varied phenomena derive from the partial transfer

of natural rights to a new political authority, which maintain the collective power of

individuals naturally stronger than the established political order.

The phases of fear and anger characterising non democratic system activate a distinct

tendency within the body of our conceptual persona. In the states of fear, the Citizens

of democracy begin to act politically as demons.115 This demonic role is twofold. The

Citizens of democracy incorporate the two meanings of the image of the demon: the

Ancient Greek notion of the inspiring and multiple force or spirit, and the Catholic

figure of evil as negative presence. As an inner force within the political system, they

constitute an expansive and invasive power, which bring into the existing order

tensions, problems and various forms of resistance. This aspect becomes more

intense, particularly under the states of violence, tyranny and, generally, slavery,

115 I borrow the figure of demons from Hardt and Negri’s appropriation of the novel of Dostoyevsky Demons (1873) (Negri and Hardt, 2006: 138-140). The authors refer to the notion of demons as an inner force, which is always present within any given political context. They indicate the Greek origin of the term demon, which means a great number, and also a creative spirit. My use of the notion of demons follows partly Hardt and Negri’s elaboration, partly the negative meaning of demon as disruptive tendency.

281

which are structured through fear, hate and indignation. They are, now latent now

manifest, the real enemy of the established political system (TP, Chapter III. 9).

In a condition of oppression, Spinoza reminds us through the Annals of Tacitus, the

power of the mass becomes increasingly stronger, causing the collapse of the entire

political apparatus, the overthrow of the emperor or, at very least, an enduring state

of insecurity.116 In the Roman Empire, in order to maintain the authority over the

subjects, every emperor had to justify his role through the expedients of the glorious

and divine origins of his power (for example August’s alleged origin from Aeneas)

(TTP, Chapter XVII: 538).

Spinoza argues that the state of passivity, the decrease of the power of action and

thinking, does not pertain to the mass, but instead to the tyrant. It is the fear felt by

the emperor for a possible insurrection of the subjects and their hate that causes him

to rely upon external aids such as myth and violence. Therefore, the authority of the

ruler relies on the pure image of power, whereas the force of his subjects is a

concrete and effective obstacle (TTP, Chapter XVII: 537). In the case of the persona

of the Citizens of democracy, Spinoza’s analysis has many important political

implications.

The state of fear re-defines the political scene entirely, within which the Citizens of

the coming democracy, in their demonic aspect, play a pivotal role. They act as

productive forces, which re-signify the domain of the ‘common’ through new

flowings of time, relation and society. The re-characterisation of the ‘common’ does

not only signal a cultural or religious turn, but also a different political theatre. In the

state of Israel after the death of Moses and the failure of the democratic experiment,

the fear and ignorance of the collective body of the Israelites gave rise to anarchic

phase, that prepared the terrain for the complete dissolution of the political apparatus

and the dispersion of the Jewish people (TTP, Chapter XVII: 541-544). In the Roman

116 “It is also beyond doubt that a commonwealth is always in greater danger from its citizens than from its enemies; […]. It follows that he on whom the whole right if the state has been conferred will always be more afraid of citizens than of external enemies and will therefore endeavour to look on his own safety, not consulting the interests of his subjects but plotting against them […]. ” (TP, Chapter VI. 6).

282

Empire, fear, hate and indignation of the subjects maintained the equilibrium of the

political body in an enduring state of tension, through which the mythic foundation

of the empire, restrictive laws and various forms of violence emerged as the only

defence of the state.

In the despotic regime, society is characterised by two main passions: fear

and indignation. In the Ethics, Spinoza defines fear as “inconstant pain arising from

the idea of a thing future or past, of whose outcome were in some doubt” (E. III, Def.

XIII); whereas by indignation Spinoza means “hatred toward one who has injured

another” (E. III, Def. XX). In the conceptual persona of the Citizens of democracy,

the tyrant is nuanced by the passive tones of fear and the mass is mostly shaped by

the indignation toward the ruler. These two passions give rise to crucial political

moments, which question concepts of life, death, relation and time.

The emperor, Spinoza reminds us, is constantly dominated by the fear of the

imminent upheaval of the subjects against his domain. For this, he calls for friends

support and seeks alliance with Greek and Christian gods, through which he attempts

to placate the anger of the mass (TTP, Chapter XVII: 538). These attempts are the

results of a more complex process, whose origin lies in fear and passivity. The sacred

origin of the figure the ruler goes far beyond the establishment of the ideological

apparatus of the state, revealing instead the emperor’s fear for a secure death. It is

this fear that causes paradoxically the death of the ruler and thereby the dissolution

of the entire political body.

Spinoza’s definition of the ontological state of fear as pain emerging from the

uncertainty of a future or past has an effective impact on the realm of the political.

This concerns a different constitution of time, the re-definition of the form of

government and the institution of slavery. Like the Subjects of Moses under the

phase of anguish analysed in chapter IV, in this context, the two coordinates of the

past and the present play out the drama of the emperor. In order to avoid the future

possibility of death, the emperor’s fear brings back, however real or illusory, gestures

of the past and the authority of his predecessors. In this light, the present abandons

283

the forces and multiple possibilities of the future, and becomes a mere reflection of

the past. Spoiled of the potentialities of the future, the realm of the emperor tends

progressively toward a stable equilibrium, which implies the loss of opportunities for

transformation. However, this fear of death goes beyond the constitution of time, re-

structuring the political reality of the emperor’s authority.

As mentioned before, this fear of the future shaped by the need for the past produces

the divine status of authority, which implies the entire re-characterisation of the form

of government. The emperor, under the state of fear, ceases to be the absolute ruler

of the state, and becomes now the son of Jupiter now the heir of Aeneas. The

emperor’s need for Greek gods brings about the discovery of the progressive process

of enslavement of his state. In order to persuade the mass of the legitimacy of their

authority, Spinoza explains, Roman emperors such as August or Alexander declare to

simply follow someone’s desire. For example, Alexander will motivate his power as

the realisation of an higher policy rather than an act of pride (TTP, Chapter XVII:

538-539).

These examples indicate the growing condition of servitude coming from the state of

fear, which becomes two-sided. On the one hand, the emperor is slave of the epic

gestures of his fathers, which exclude his dominion from any possibility of change

and becoming. On the other hand, as we already mentioned, the tyrant is subjected to

the anger and indignation of the mass. As anticipated, the passion of fear activates

this condition of servitude, upon which despotic regimes are based and developed. It

is precisely the fear of death (“you will find more who died at the hands of their own

people” recites Alexander’s plea) that lies at the very basis of the emperor’s

enslavement. In the Ethics, Spinoza affirms that only one who acts moved by fear of

death and hope for salvation is a slave (E. IV, prop. LXIII), whereas a free man is

concerned solely with the enjoyment of life and thinks least of death (E. IV, prop.

LXVII). The political consequence of this fear of death concerns the realisation of

the emperor’s anxiety, that is, death (TP, and the whole Chapters VI, VII). In the

Roman Empire, Spinoza comments, subjects have made their rulers destitute six

284

times, and in the state of England, for the first time in the history, a popular assembly

has condemned the king to death (TTP, Chapter XVIII: 556-557).

Many questions arise from this analysis. First of all, the main problem concerns who

or what is the real enemy of the emperor, that whose power is so great so as to reduce

him to servitude? Secondly, given Spinoza’s claim that it is the subjects of the tyrant

who are most feared, the question arises as to how their forces are structured; and

what elements might give rise to the death of the ruler. These questions bring us to

the core of Spinoza’s political philosophy, that is, to the origin of sovereignty.

Without addressing this theme, our inquiry would not go any further.

In order to examine the problem of sovereignty, an investigation of Spinoza’s

definition of reason of the state is required. In the opening of the Political Treatise,

the question of the relation between life and sovereignty is posed as soon as Spinoza

comes to define the aim of the state. For Spinoza, the purpose of the state is “peace

and security of life” (TP, Chapter V.2), which is centred on a well-organised balance

between duty and freedom. From the position of individuals, the creation of the state

apparatus guarantees the improvement of their lives. Since, the state is the higher

expression of human association and is always desirable to the state of nature, and

the preservation of its form is necessary (TP, Chapters III. 4-8, VI. 1-8). Following

these general elements of Spinoza’s conception of sovereignty, one might argue that

his notion of the political authority tends towards a certain vision of an all-invasive

state, which decides upon human life and death through laws and punishments. If we

include in this notion of the state Spinoza’s statements regarding the inalienability of

natural right, the power of affects, and his definition of the political body as the

union of individual powers, then his paradigm of sovereignty becomes more

complex.

In order to explore Spinoza’s thesis of sovereignty and life, our inquiry into

the anatomy of sovereignty might be usefully framed by Agamben’s political

philosophy. Without venturing into the vicissitudes of Agamben’s inquiry regarding

the structure of contemporary sovereign power, or presenting a dialogue between

285

him and Spinoza, for the purpose of this work, I will draw attention to his definitions

of sacred and bare life, utilising these as theoretical tools to analyse the question of

sovereignty in Spinoza’s political writings.

In order to describe the very status of the human being in relation to contemporary

sovereignty, Agamben looks back at the ambiguous figure of the sacred man defined

in Roman law. The sacred man (homo sacer) is a person whose life lies in the

between of an inclusion and exclusion from the state. The sacred man is excluded

from civil rights, thus he may be killed but not be elevated to religious sacrifice. In

Agamben’s own re-formulation, the paradigm of the sacred man defines the existing

condition of the individual in relation to the state, in whom life “is sacred but yet

may be killed”(Agamben, 1998: 15-28, 72-85) For him, the political position of

human life resides dramatically in the paradox of the inalienability of human rights

(the sacredness of human being sanctioned by the Declaration of the Rights of Man

and of Citizen), which, given certain “exceptional” circumstances, may be abrogated

(such as during wartime, and in the case of refugees). Deprived of the sacrality of its

status, individual life returns to its original meaning of bare life (biological

existence), which in turn may be killed. It is precisely in the schism between bare life

and political life, Agamben claims, that the power of sovereignty lies (Agamben,

1998: 71-110).117 Agamben envisages the origins of this paradox in the history of

Western thought from Aristotle onwards, which has classified qualitatively the unity

and complexity of human existence into two capacities, vital and political, negating

the relevance of the biological one (Agamben 1998: 15-30). Certainly this reading

goes far beyond Spinoza’s definitions of the relation between the state and citizens,

natural and civil rights. Nevertheless, I think, Agamben’s concepts of bare life and

sacred man might offer very thoughtful points of discussion for developing further

the theme of life, affects and sovereignty in Spinoza’s thought.

In our conceptual persona of the Citizens of democracy under the state of fear, the

relation between the sacred authority of the emperor and the passionate life of his

subjects re-defines the domain of tyranny, provoking the enslavement of the despot 117 Agamben’s definition of bare life has been strongly influenced by Arendt’s description of the refugee as “naked life” explained in the Origins of Totalitarianism (1951).

286

and the uprising of his subjects. In the state of fear, it is the life of the emperor which

is considered sacred, whereas the life of the subjects is deprived of any political

significance. In a regime of fear, Spinoza reminds us, the only form of life permitted

by the emperor is that of a pure biological life, a bare life in Agamben’s terminology

(TP, Chapters V. 4, VI. 4). Whilst they are reduced to bare life, the emperor’s

subjects do not only resist slavery, they are also capable of political action. It is in

this context that the interface between affects, sovereignty and life comes to light, re-

configuring dramatically the state of fear.

In Spinoza’s political analysis, the notions of conatus, desire and passions

explained in the Ethics occupy a strategic role. A bare life, in the language of the

Ethics, is conatus, which is power (literally striving) of preserving and persevering

into life. Thus, life even at the biological level, is intrinsically linked to the idea of

producing, better individualising (E. III, prop. VI, VII, VIII). Strictly speaking,

conatus is a power of acting and thinking, which pervades beings without coinciding

with them. As I have argued in chapter III, it is a process, which gives rise to

relational and expansive phases of exchanges and subsequent variation of

information, bodies and potentials located within a collective ground. With particular

reference to human beings, conatus is a power of desiring structured through

invasive and relational movements of affecting and being affected, through which

individuals re-signify themselves within the collective and vice versa (E. III, Def. I).

This vital force of affecting and being affected incorporates political action too. In

other words, spoiled of all its predicates (vital, affective, rational, political and

ethical), life is fundamentally abundant (desire) and politically cogent.

In the case of our conceptual persona, under the state of fear, the bare life of the

emperor’s subjects gives rise to effective political actions, meanings and time. These

are, on the one side, the ground of the enslavement of the tyrant moulded through the

loss of the present and the refuge in the past; on the other, the rise of subjects to

freedom. In chapter XX of the TTP, Spinoza re-formulates in more political terms

the affective anatomy of the power of subjects under a despotic regime, which is

287

always stronger than any restrictive laws. Spinoza claims that in the state, where

freedom is avoided

Those who are conscious of their own probity do not fear death as

criminals do, nor do they beg for mercy, for they are not tormented with

remorse for shameful deeds. On the contrary, they think it an honour, not

a punishment, to die in a good cause, and glorious thing die for freedom

[Italics mine] (TTP, Chapter XX: 570).

In this apologia for freedom, we might discover the political constitution of the

power, now dormant now manifest, of every community under a repressive state. It is

this indifference to death, I argue, that transforms the emperor’s subjects into his

cruel enemy. The subjects oppose to the despot’s fear of death the attachment to life

(conatus), which is a pure abundance of forces, desires and tension. As anticipated

before, in the Ethics, the lack of concern for death makes individuals free, which

implies in turn a pleasure for life.118 The indifference to death, which in the Ethics is

freedom and plenitude of life, structures concretely the political resistances not of the

enlightened men but of a heterogeneous group of individuals spoiled of political

status. Strictly speaking, everyone who lives under a regime of despotism rebels

against the ruler regardless of the forms of life and rights allowed by the state. Thus,

in the TTP Spinoza warns his readers that human beings under coercive laws

naturally react against the state, causing rebellions and disorders.119 Whilst laws

against freedom originate from fear of death (the sacredness of the tyrant’s life), a

group’s revolts derives from desire of life (conatus). The former condition, as we

have seen, generates the progressive enslavement of the emperor, to say with

Simondon the folding of the individual in himself, whereas the concern of life opens

118 “A free man, […], is not guided by fear of death […], but directly desires the good […]; that is […], to act, to live, to preserve his own being in accordance with the principle of seeking his own advantage. So he thinks of death least of all things, and his wisdom is a meditation upon life” [italics mine] (E. IV, prop. LXVII, proof). 119 “Men in general are so constituted that their resentment is most aroused when beliefs when they think to be true are treated as criminal, and when that which motivates their pious conduct to God and man is accounted as wickedness. In consequence, they are emboldened to denounce the laws and go to all lengths to oppose the magistrate, considering it not a disgrace but honourable to stir up sedition and resort to any outrageous action in this cause” [italics mine] (TTP, Chapter XX: 569); and (TP IV. 4).

288

the way to freedom. No matter how many times a sacred power attempts the de-

politicising of life, this always turns to the political again.

Spinoza’s definition of bare life as already and always political has more radical

implications. The view of bare life is not only an expression of defence and care of

life; but also it is capable of transformations. Spoiled of all its predicates, the life of

the Citizens of democracy is conatus (perseverance in life), as a knot of power and

potentiality, singularity and generality. It is this perseverance in life that connotes the

aspect of the Greek demon, which acts as an inner and invasive force of the body. In

the political individual (when some of its parts are damaged), this force passes from a

condition of potentiality to actuality. In order to signal the total or partial corruption

of the system, the demons internal to the structure of the state operate through the

actualisation of concrete actions and thoughts (TP, Chapter X. 1). This is the case of

despotic regimes structured through repressive laws. The administration of authority

of these political orders, Spinoza explains, inevitably produces the indignation of its

subjects, giving rise to rebellions, disorders and the entire dissolution of the state

(TTP, Chapter XX: 569-570).

However, these themes of the demonic force of the subjects of the emperor

leave two fundamental questions unanswered. Firstly, how might the bare life of the

Citizens, however powerful and demonic, produce the common? Secondly, how and

why is the people’s power always greater than any established authority even under

the guidance of the passions? In order to avoid tempting populist answers and

alliances with certain Marxist explanations, we might find a response to the origin of

the power of the mass in Spinoza’s definitions of the social contract and natural

rights. Spinoza’s arguments regarding the pact and the power of individuals in

nature, I think, are the basis of the natural (ontological and political) condition of

superiority of the multitude under every established authority in any given time and

space. Further, these explain the reasons of Spinoza’s thesis of the primacy of

democracy over other forms of government such as monarchy and aristocracy.

289

In this light, the power of our conceptual persona derives from two crucial elements.

Firstly, it is the form of the pact stipulated between individuals, from which civil

society emerges. As analysed at the beginning of this chapter, the contract signals a

passage and not a rupture from a hypothetical state of nature to a political one. This

leads to a conception of society as becoming and not as an artificial institution, which

is merely added to the lives of human beings. In accordance with the thesis of the

Ethics, it is a process from a lesser phase of perfection to a greater one, which signals

the increasing level of complexity within the collective field. This contract, more

importantly, occurs between already collective individuals, through whom the

stipulation of an agreement acquires political cogency. In this way, the community is

prior and founds the state, which is always dependent, in turn, upon the power of

individuals as a collective body. Furthermore, Spinoza insistently reminds us that the

status of individuals within the state must not to be considered as a “state within the

state” but rather as a mens una (TP, Chapters II.2; III.2-6). Spinoza’s statement has

crucial implications for determining the very role and persistence of the non yet-

Citizens of democracy.

Since the state is not fragmented into different organs, each of which holds a specific

function separated from the others, the power of our conceptual persona goes far

beyond the role of challenging, opposing and defending the state. Spinoza’s idea of

the body politic as a mens una does not allow a dialectical mechanism or a strict

divide between the public affairs of the state and the private interests of the citizens.

They are, instead, the constitutive and indestructible forces of more complex process

of signification and re-signification of sovereignty itself. In other words,

paraphrasing Agamben’s expression, the Citizens of democracy are not sacred and

yet may be sovereign, thus cannot be killed. It is for this reason, I would argue, that

they are the demons of the state; plural, powerful and, importantly, inherent within

the body politic. In the case of the despotic regime examined before, they become

operative when dismissing the ruler and moving further the process of

transformation.

290

Secondly, as Spinoza claims, individuals do not surrender entirely their natural rights

to the point of “ceasing to be a human being”. As we have seen, this means that the

collective being preserves in any individualised social system a potential mass of

power (natural rights), which constitutes, using a Simondonian expression, the

reserve of being of the individual (Simondon, 2007: 125-132). In a political context,

I think, this reserve of being (potentiality) is the ground of the production and

fruition of the ‘common’, upon which the boundaries of the political are constantly

signified and re-signified. It is precisely the power of producing the domain of the

‘common’ that the natural (ontological) supremacy of the collective body, whether

mob or citizens, lies. This power of producing the ‘common’ secures, generally, the

equilibrium of the system from possible tendencies toward stabilization, which

would prevent movements of exchanges and alterations of intensity and potentials. In

a particular situation, this generative power of production orients and constrains the

actions of any form of government, however democratic or despotic, as the events

occurring in the Roman Empire have shown (TP, Chapter VI.2).

In chapter IV the affective and relational gestures of the Subjects of Moses have

brought about the need for re-shaping our understanding of society through a thought

of complexity. This vision of society as part of a more problematic process and the

disparate status (excess of heterogeneity) of individuals does not suggest the idea of a

form of agency behind and beyond the constitution of the political order, which

would direct the system toward the better or the truth. Rather, historical events amply

testify to the impossibility of conceptualising the development of societies within

fixed categories of Truth, Spirit and obscure agency. A theory of complexity, instead,

implies the understanding of the human modes of association as intensively

problematic, which resolve and further complicate an excess of heterogeneity

inherent within the order of the real.

As there is no pre-established project beyond the becoming of human societies, this

means that its development follows unsuspected movements, which can hardly be

predicted. For this, spontaneous movements might lead in some cases to dramatic

phases as the state of anguish of the Subjects of Moses or the joyful moments in the

291

emergence of the “Good News” within the conceptual persona of Apostles. In the

conceptual persona of the Citizens of democracy, the complexity of the system

becomes more problematic and multisided, disclosing more intense levels of

heterogeneity. This concerns, on the one hand, the aspect of the Greek demon, which

we have analysed before. On the other, the disparate status of our conceptual persona

brings to light a destructive tendency, which gives birth to cruel political gestures. It

is in this moment that the Citizens of democracy behave as evil within the body of

society.

The evils of the state: a defence of life

As we have seen, Spinoza does not only refer to the productive aspect of the mass (as

the figure of the Greek demon), in many circumstances he describes it in quite

negative tones.120 On several occasions, Spinoza develops severe attacks upon the

masses, accusing them of ignorance, servility and ambition. Spinoza’s hostile vision

of the many opens up to the other aspect embodied by the Citizens of democracy,

that of the meaning of demon in a Catholic sense.121 This refers to an inclination to

act as an evil force within the state, which brings about the emergence of a blind

cruelty.

As we have seen above, in repressive states, passions of fear, hate, ambition and

indignation shape the political actions and thoughts of the entire body of society,

passing from the ruler to the ruled. Although passions of indignation and anger might

lead to concrete and constructive actions, such as the collapse of despotic regimes,

nevertheless, Spinoza explains, these still remain passions. From the arguments of

the Ethics, we know that passions decrease the power of acting and thinking of 120 See for example, Spinoza’s attack to the multitude, who is easily manipulated by theological superstition, as he says, “Following this example of the Pharisees, the vilest hypocrites, urged on by the same fury which they call zeal for God’s law, have everywhere persecuted men whose blameless character and distinguished qualities have exited the hostility of the masses, publicly denouncing their beliefs and inflaming the savage crowd’s anger against them”[italics mine] (TTP, Chapter XVIII, p. 555). 121For Spinoza the notions of evil and good do not exist in terms of universal categories of thought. Rather, Spinoza claims that the couple evil and good refers to what can increases or decreases the individual conatus, see (E. IV, Def. I-II; TTP, Chapters XVI-XIX). My use of the image of the evil is addressed to simply conceptualise a disruptive force, which operates within the body of Citizens of democracy.

292

individuals, which implies the reduction or stabilisation of the level of complexity,

thus, heterogeneity. To put this in more Simondonian terms, passions are negative for

the individuals insofar as these detach the singular being from exchanging and

altering grades of intensity, information and various individuated realities with the

collective field. Strictly speaking, in a passive state an individual loses the possibility

of being a constitutive part of the process of individuation.

In the thread of the conceptual persona of the Citizens of democracy, Spinoza’s

account of passions has important political implications. These concern the role of

evil played by the mass within a civil context, in which the objects of the social pact

are partially or totally corrupted. As mentioned before, this aspect is significantly

highlighted in the Theological Political Treatise. Commenting on the events of the

English revolution of Cromwell, Spinoza observes that people were only able to

change the monarch without extinguishing the causes of tyranny effectively (TTP,

Chapter XVIII: 556). This has led, Spinoza claims, to the re-creation of the

monarchic system under a different ruler, who behaves politically as the former king

in all but in name.122 It is through the example offered by the English events that the

passive tones of our conceptual persona re-define the political scene entirely.

As discussed before, in a despotic regime fear shapes the political action of the

emperor, whereas indignation structures the reaction of its subjects. The

consequences of the emperor’s fear were the progressive enslavement and the death

of his empire. The limit of the subjects’ indignation concerns the incapacity of

structuring actions, which go far beyond the defence of actual life. Although the

subjects of a tyrant are a powerful and free community, Spinoza observes, their

political gestures are unable to defeat tyranny. This inadequacy is caused mainly by

the origin of the emotions of indignation and anger, which Spinoza explains in the

Ethics, are generated from hate and not joy. This causes the effacement of

movements of exchanges and alterations of intensity, meanings and potentialities,

thus the possibility of transforming and being transformed (affect and being affected

by the others in the language of the Ethics). 122Spinoza specifically refers to the execution of Charles I (1649), the establishment of Cromwell’s protectorate (1653-58), and the Restoration of monarchy (1660).

293

This absence of expansive movements in the political body implies immediately a

different constitution of time, which becomes folded only within the form of the

present. The present is no longer the actualisation of the infinite possibilities of the

future or the meanings of the past; rather, it is a static place characterised by retreats

and restorations. Spoiled of the multiple and heterogeneous potentialities of the

future, the care of life nuanced by indignation and hate cannot produce political

gestures other than destructions and sudden returns. For this, the Citizens of

democracy can kill and overthrow monarchs as many times as they please without

abolishing monarchy. As the English revolution has shown, after having executed the

king and caused cruel massacres, people searched for the return to monarchy.

It follows that the care and defence of life, however free from the fear of death, do

not directly mean joy and love of life, which instead are the ground of productive

movements of complication, differentiation and actualisation. By contrast, in its

aspect of evil our persona lacks a future, which involves a loss of power to actualise

the possibilities of the future within the present. Concerned more with the defence of

actual life rather than an enjoyment of it, the Citizens of democracy understand all

the new and unpredictable events as possible risk (a new king) to their life, which

consequently have to be destroyed as soon as these enter the threshold of the

community (TP, Chapter V.6). For this lack of future and joy of life, they will kill

Christ. Masses under the guide of hate, Spinoza warns us, do not hesitate to

prosecute Christ, philosophers and intellectuals (TTP, Chapter XVIII: 555).

A consequence of this evil tendency is that the body of our conceptual persona tends

toward a stabilisation of the political order, which implies the progressive decrease of

the power to re-signify the domain of the ‘common’. In this light, every emerging

political reality will be necessarily re-defined and bounded within the pre-existing

order. For this, Cromwell’s protectorate and August’s empire are simply a motionless

repetition of the former ruler. This, notably, does not mean that the collective body

under the control of hate ceases to be the ground and the generative source of the

‘common’. As we have analysed, it is the very ontological (natural) constitution of

294

the collective beings that produces the ‘common’ and makes them impossible to kill.

The evil character, rather, involves a mere reproduction of the present order and the

oblivion of the future.

In this way, Spinoza’s inquiry into the cruelty of the mass unveils his concern for the

loss of political life under the domain of hate, and thereby the necessity of giving a

sacred status to people through civil rights and laws. As discussed before, whilst the

lives of individuals might be reduced by a politics of hate, this is always political.

Spinoza’s analysis brings to light a more complex process, that is at risk under the

states of fear and hate. This process pertains to the development and fruition of the

‘common’, through which and solely through which relations, meanings and further

transformations are founded. Concerning these arguments a fundamental question

arises. Assuming Spinoza’s refusal of any form of agency, higher mind and a society

of philosophers, how might this complex and disparate collective being constitute a

democratic state? To answer this question, we must examine the constructive

elements in Spinoza’s discourse, which encourages the development of a community

and prevent its possible dissolution.

Spinoza observes that the political life of every community nuanced by the

affects of joy, love, piety and hope has been directed towards stability, peace and

unity of the entire society. In the TTP, Spinoza reflects upon the “amor patriae”

(love of one’s nation) of the Israelites under Moses’ governance, and the apostolic

doctrine of love and piety. Although the Hebrews’ love for their nation in the end

caused the exclusion and successive failure of the Jewish nation, Spinoza notes how

this amor patriae in itself favoured a politics of fidelity and solidarity, which

certainly reinforced the entire political order (TTP, Chapter XVII: 547). This was

based, Spinoza explains, on the use of a popular army, a certain respect for the

principle of unanimity in issuing laws, decision making, and common ethical habits

and opinions. Concerning the religion of the New Testament, Spinoza finds many

fruitful insights in the precepts of the apostles and teachings of Christ, which might

consolidate an ethics of mutual assistance and cohesion. Specifically, Spinoza’s

interest is directed to the apostolic principle of “love one’s neighbour”, which

295

reinstates the importance of relations, sharing and tolerance, favouring the

development of democratic values. The Jewish form of patriotism and the apostolic

ethics shaped by love and devotion provide Spinoza with important instruments for

conceptualising in more political terms his theory of consensus and thereby

democracy. Spinoza’s inquiry into the dynamics of the democratic community is

addressed to unveiling some of the mechanisms in which joy and love structure

powerful political behaviours and transformations.

Agorà: A “common desire”

Beside the question of the apostolic doctrine and the patriotism of the Jewish people,

the importance of Spinoza’s references to amor patriae and universal love concern

his recognition of love, devotion and wonder as important counter arguments to the

state of fear (despotism). Affectivity, once again, populates Spinoza’s political

discourse as a basis and not an instrument for the establishment and progress a

community. In his search for more adequate conditions for the development of

society, the role of affectivity becomes increasingly central and multisided. It is

through the affects of love, devotion and piety that democratic values are mostly

founded and developed.

These affects are recognised as proper political categories, which open the way to a

new path of making and thinking the polis. Spinoza develops the idea of a possible

linkage between democracy and affectivity, specifically between love (piety) and

democracy, through which notions of life, qualitative flowings of time and relations

re-colonize the domain of the political. The novelty of Spinoza’s political move, I

think, concerns the way his arguments are not limited to the unveiling the

mechanisms, in which the sovereignty invades every moment of the lives of a

community, but to how life as an expression of joy and love determines the

production of the political.123 In other words, Spinoza’s democratic formula offers

important insights on how life can re-exercise control over the sovereign power.

123 The political relevance of Spinoza’s notions affects and life has been particularly emphasised by Negri and Hardt, influencing also the development of Negri and Hardt’s own theory of bio-politics (Negri and Hardt, 2006: 93-95; Negri, 2005: 170-229).

296

Although a detailed description of the democratic institution is missing from the TP,

nevertheless, its absence does not constitute an insurmountable obstacle. Since the

focus of this work is mainly on how the affective life in common of the multitude

tends naturally towards democracy, both the Treatises amply address these themes.

Drawing particularly upon the final chapters of the Theological Political Treatise

with the theoretical support of the Political Treatise and the Ethics, we might

determine the modes in which the multitude behaves democratically, specifically,

how affects are powerful sources of democratic actions, thoughts and tensions.

Having explained the collective foundation of the social pact and the negative

consequences of an exercise of a politics of fear, Spinoza makes a fundamental claim

at the very beginning of the Political Treatise, which enriches the thesis espoused in

the TTP, Spinoza affirms that a “common desire” gives birth to civil society.124 This

reveals Spinoza’s awareness of the emergence of society as the abundant and

collective production of desires, and certainly not poverty or need, through which

human beings re-orient themselves into the world and vice versa. The significance of

Spinoza’s position is that he identifies an excess of being, desires and tensions at the

very basis of the origins of society, which opens up to the reading of human forms of

association through complexity shaped by problems, potentials and transformations

(TP, Chapter III. 6-9). It is at this moment that Spinoza’s quest for democracy

commences.

Spinoza describes democracy as “a united body of men (“coetus universus

hominum”) which corporately (“collegialiter”) possess sovereign power over

everything within its power” (TTP, Chapter XVI: 530). For Spinoza, the superiority

of this political model is that the authority of the state (Potestas) relies directly on the

power of its members, who through the original pact, have founded the civil body. It

is for this reason, Spinoza argues, that democracy is the closer form of political

124“Since men, […], are led more by passions than by reason, it naturally follows that a people will unite consent to be guided as if one mind not at reason’s prompting but through some common emotions, such as […] a common hope, or fear, or desire to avenge some common injury” (TP, Chapter VI. 1)

297

organisation and coherent transformation of the state of nature, in which the right of

everyone is coextensive with its own power (TTP, Chapter XVI: 531). These primary

definitions form the basis of Spinoza’s advocacy of democracy, that is the defence

and expansion of consensus and freedom within the commonwealth. In the TTP,

Spinoza clarifies his treatment of democracy before the other forms of state, because

the notion of freedom is immediately implied in the democratic system (TTP,

Chapter XVI: 531). A democratic life inaugurates a practise of freedom, which is

never simply individual liberty circumscribed within the private sphere of the citizen.

From the arguments of the TP, we know that freedom is concerned with a collective

(“collegialiter”) production of consensus and unanimity (a mens una), which is

fundamentally political and inherent within the domain of sovereignty.

Related particularly to the TTP, the vision of democracy as a collective and

spontaneous (unrestricted) production of consensus moves Spinoza to advocate

freedom as the very object and end of the state, without which the entire body of a

society loses its power and potential (TTP, Chapter XX: 567). Spinoza claims that

the organisation of the political body should be based on the inalienable freedom of

speech and thought, upon which the progress of the whole society resides (TTP,

Chapter XX: 568). The importance of Spinoza’s arguments of the inalienability of

the freedom of judgement resides on how this has a direct impact on the political life

of a community, re-characterising and further transforming practises and ideas

collectively. Moreover, Spinoza’s advocacy of freedom is immediately nuanced by

affectivity, specifically love and piety, which consequently become the sources and,

at the same time, the outcome of a politics of freedom.

Spinoza’s thesis of the linkage between democracy, freedom and affects

become a crucial element within the thread of our conceptual persona of the Citizens

of democracy, which we have examined under the state of fear. The affects of love

and piety deriving from the democratic state give rise to more problematic relational

movements, which connote the political actions of the collective body of the

Citizens. In the state of democracy, they behave politically as virtuosi and demons of

the state. More accurately, in democracy demons are the virtuosi of the state and vice

298

versa. It is in this moment that the affective production of the common good

emerges.125

In the states of fear and violence, we have seen that our persona incorporates the two

meanings of the image of demon (the Ancient Greek and Catholic one), which

characterise its political actions now as productive force (the enslavement of the

emperor) now disruptive one (the execution of Christ). In the state of democracy, the

citizens still express the Ancient Greek conception of demon as inspiring force,

which plays a pivotal role within the dynamics of the community. Unlike the state of

fear, in this democratic stage the Catholic figure of evil is replaced by the

constructive function of the virtuosi of the polis.

As mentioned before, freedom is the ground of the development of democratic body.

In the Ethics, we have seen, the notion of freedom has a direct relation with the

concept of life, which is connected with the theme of desire as the very essence of

humankind in turn (E. IV, prop. LXVII, prop. LXIII and schol.). For Spinoza, a free

life is nuanced by the affects of joy and love, which individualise and further

complicate the disparate status of beings (excess of desires and tensions) toward

more heterogeneous realities (E. III, prop. XI, schol.; E. IV, prop. LX, prop. XLI). In

chapter III, we have seen that these affects do not express a private virtue or ethical

attitude. Rather, love and joy are expansive and invasive phases of a more general

process of individuation, which resolve problematics of heterogeneity into more

complex individuals. Importantly, these do not coincide with already individuated

individuals, instead these create individuals coinciding one with the other. Thus, joy

and love increase the relational composition of individuals (the level of complexity),

giving rise to thoughts, bodies, power and potentials.

Given these conceptions of love and joy as relational and powerful forces of

transformation and individuation, and also conditions of freedom, then Spinoza’s

theory of a free democratic community necessarily exceeds practises of sharing,

mutual assistance and political principle of unanimity. In the conceptual persona of 125 Concerning the ways in which the multitude, in its aspects of demons and virtuosi, act within democracy, I follow Hardt and Negri’s analysis (2006).

299

the Apostles in chapter IV, we have seen that the actualisation of love through the

body of Christ has produced not only a different religious and cultural move, but also

complex political transformations. In Spinoza’s political inquiry, affects acquire a

more radical and powerful position.

To assume the necessity of founding a democratic body on love, joy and thus

freedom, suggests the idea of democracy as openness, whose structure allows for

transformations, heterogeneity and exchange of forces. In this way, the time of

democracy is structured through unsuspected and unexpected phenomena, which

activate the multiple potentialities of the future. In aristocracy, for example, this

proceeds through the interstices of the patrician assemblies and the rumours of the

plebs, and suddenly accelerates each time a state of fear collapses (TP, IX. 14- VII.

27). Given that for Spinoza there is no theory without praxis, thus democracy is not

solely a political project or possibility and it can be never fully realised. This would

inevitably imply a return to a form of messianism, a time of expectation. In contrast,

the openness of democracy means an actual individual, whose reality is shaped by a

metastable equilibrium. This metastable equilibrium maintains democracy in a

condition of actuality and potentiality. In this way, a democratic system is a concrete

political organisation, which is actualised in many different forms; and also it

contains unexpressed meanings, individuals and actions, which will be transformed

into more complex political subjectivities. For Spinoza, paraphrasing Negri,

democracy is the one already achieved and yet to come.

However, the open structure of the democratic state does not imply that it is

qualitatively more perfect, or the embodiment of truth. Rather, it denotes the level of

complexity of a society, its grade of disparation, the pathways of being towards

different thoughts, communities and actions. Thus, the democratic community is

densely populated by emerging problems, realities, conflicts and pacts. It is in this

moment that the Citizens behave as demons within the domain of the political.

In a free democratic system, Spinoza warns us, many are the possible problems as

internal enemies and various conflicts. Spinoza, here, refers to possible phenomena

300

of subversion (TTP, Chapter XX: 567-568) and, more generally, disagreements

amongst citizens. As in the state of fear, the demons imbued within the body politic

pass from a condition of latency to an actual one. The actions of the demons, we

have seen, do not tend to remove or exclude the emerging political being, but instead,

transform this into a more complex reality. Importantly, the emerging problematic

reality will be not integrated and attuned with the existing community. This would

direct the process toward movements of retreat and restoration as occurred in the

English revolution or the crucifixion of Christ. As argued before, in the state of joy

and love (democracy), instead, the collective body is affected by and affects the

emerging reality, enriching the present with the possibility of the future.

In this light, certainly, the Citizens of democracy place the existing political order

under constant threat. It is in this constant risk that the superiority (its openness) of

democracy lies.126 For this, Spinoza concludes, “what cannot be prohibited must

necessarily be allowed, even if harm often ensues” [italics mine] (TTP, Chapter XX:

569). In other words, Spinoza tells us that a life in common is always placed on the

edge of incompatibilities and further movements of signification, which is always

better to release rather than restrain. Thus, as with the state of fear, the life in

common of the Citizens of democracy expresses a pure excess of desire, through

which they move towards tyranny. It is this form of the life in common of the

individuals originated by a “common desire”, which cannot be killed. Collective

individuals, in every community (historical, political, ethical) they live, express a

constant condition of incompatibility. As I have argued in chapter IV, it is in the very

anatomy and power of individuals to encounter this incompatibility. Therefore, a

political institution founded on this ontological structure necessarily has to give rise

to the complete actualisation of these problems and incompatibilities, and also to be

the place itself of these tensions.

Spinoza’s complex description of a democratic life populated intensively by

relations, tensions and various forms of heterogeneity, evokes the Ancient Greek

126 “I do indeed admit that there may sometimes be some disadvantages in allowing such freedom, but what institution was ever so wisely planned that no disadvantages could arise therefrom?” (TTP, Chapter XX: 569).

301

notion of agora (literally “place of assembly”). The Ancient Greek agora was a

place of assembly not recognised by the sovereign state as politically relevant, in

which nevertheless political ideas, discussion, struggles and sedition were organised.

The agora delineated an alternative political life out of the boundaries of the state,

impacting upon the stability of the body politic. In Spinoza’s own re-formulation, the

agora acquires a more radical political meaning. It becomes the fundamental place of

the actualisation of the “common desire” and the production of the “common good”.

In the TTP, the structure of the agora is not conceived as a “state within the state”,

but instead becomes the condition for the production of the political itself. It is

precisely in this context that our conceptual persona embodies the role of the virtuosi

of the state. In the Spinozian agora everyone, who intervenes within the

administration of democracy, is a virtuosi rather than an enemy of the state. A good

citizen is, for example, a man that views,

[…] a certain law is against sound reason, and he therefore advocates its repeal. If he at the same time submits his opinion to the judgement of the sovereign power […], and meanwhile does nothing contrary to what is commanded by that law, he deserves well of the state, acting as good citizen should do. (TTP, Chapter XX: 568).

This active role given to the virtuosi of the state moulded through love and piety

reinforces and further expands the image of the demons, which expose the political

domain towards novel realities, tensions and metastability. As we have analysed in

the state of fear, the power of the demons is fundamentally founded on the capacity

to produce ‘the common’, through which Greek gods, divine fathers and epic

gestures have been developed. It is in this context that the originality of Spinoza’s

notion of democracy lies. Spinoza’s definition of the political status of virtuosi as

fundamentally productive and invasive leads to relate directly the meaning of

democracy with the fruition of the “common good”, which is grounded in the

collective body of the Citizens of democracy. To situate the production of the

“common good” at the very heart of democratic praxis is to set aside the construction

of the democratic body from the logic of the state apparatus. The identification of

democracy with the production of the “common good” suggests the vision of

302

democracy as an actual and complex process, which is structured through the

intensive and expansive forces of the affects of joy, love and piety. From the Ethics,

we know that these are transversal to the collective body, which expose and

complicate the realm of the individuals. This implies the understanding of democracy

as a political individual in the middle between generality and singularity,

individuation and potentiality.

This view of democracy as essentially an amphibious individual brings about the

discovery of a different paradigm of the democratic body, which is constituted by

and through a theory of complexity. As anticipated, a thought of complexity in

political theory is based on a process of collective ad affective individuation moulded

through intensive and expansive phases of actualisation, differentiation and

alterations of power and potentials. The understanding of democracy through a

theory of complexity might provide us with an approach, which exceed dialectical

process, logic of poverty or lack, transcendent and religious agency.

Conclusions: Towards a new grammar of democracy

This chapter has investigated the relation between democracy and affectivity within

Spinoza’s political writings, and considered the extent to which his democratic

theory might offer relevant insights for contemporary thought and practice. Attention

has been given to the affects and passions of joy, love, fear, hate and indignation

within the political section of the TTP and the unfinished TP, and some of the

mechanisms by which these produce important political individuals, meanings and

transformations. In both treatises, Spinoza gives full attention to the political status

of affectivity within the constitution and development of the democratic community,

locating affects directly within the realm of the multitude. This has brought our

inquiry to investigate the anatomy of the power of the multitude, asking whether or

not the multitude can be an expression of democratic practises and tendencies.

The protagonist of this chapter was the conceptual persona of the Citizens of

democracy. This has shown us an alternative mode of thinking life under democracy,

303

within which affectivity and the multitude occupy central positions. More precisely,

the Citizens of democracy have brought to light the fundamental problem and thesis

of Spinoza’s philosophical production, that is, how a life in common might be

constructed.

In this light, the manifold status of the Citizens of democracy exemplified by the

aspects of demons, evils and virtuosi has indicated how affects of joy, love, hate and

indignation have a concrete impact upon the political body, reconfiguring notions of

temporarility, sovereignty and relations. It is precisely in this context, I would argue,

that the originality of Spinoza’s philosophical gesture lies. Spinoza forwards the idea

of the ‘bare’ life of individuals structured through a confluence of desires, affects and

passions, which are powerful source of political meanings and actions and make

them always stronger than any formed sovereign state.

As a full expression of collective and joyful life, democracy is an open plane

moulded through continuous transformations, movements of actualisation and

complication, through which the flows of time take only the coordinates of the

present. This means that Spinoza’s vision of democracy is not merely a project or a

possibility, instead, is a concrete political individual, which is actualised in many

ways as infinite is the multiplicity of nature. This definition of democracy as pure

openness has a further political implication. This refers to the relation between the

democratic body and the state apparatus. The novelty of Spinoza’s thesis concerns

the identifying of the realisation of the democratic order with the fruition of the

‘common good’, without passing through the constitution of any form of sovereign

authority; democracy resides thereby directly in the collective body of the multitude.

In order to search for an adequate paradigm of democracy today, I argue, Spinoza’s

account of the democratic system as open structure, which is at the same time,

individual and process of transformation, might disclose alternative trajectories

towards a different political vocabulary for democracy. This should include a more

expansive view of the relation between affectivity and democracy, through which the

power of the multitude might conceptualised.

304

Conclusion:

The individual as a powerful problem

The thesis has investigated the convergence between ontology and politics in Baruch

Spinoza, and considered the extent to which his philosophy might disclose

unexplored possibilities for re-theorising the social in a materialist way. The inquiry

upon Spinoza’s thought is situated within the general tendency inaugurated by

Continental thought, which has seen the rehabilitation of the materialist ontology

within political theory. My contribution in the existing debate has been the re-

positioning of the importance of a materialist ontology of individuation in order to

re-define the realm of the individual of the present.

The return to a thought of individuation, claimed in the thesis, has been motivated by

post-modern portrait of the social body, as a complex and heterogeneous system, for

which a fresh notion of the individual is required. A materialist ontology of

individuation does not offer a formula, principle and archetype of the individual

being, but rather explains the mechanism through which individuals come to light.

More importantly, for a materialist theory of individuation this mechanism is

common to all beings and inherent within nature.

In order to re-assess the importance of a thought of individuation today, the

philosophy of Baruch Spinoza has been decisive. The study of Spinoza’s philosophy

of individuation has been constructed around a specific object. Following a

suggestion of Balibar about a certain affinity between Spinoza and Simondon’s

philosophical views, I have re-interpreted the arguments of the Ethics and the

political Treatises through Simondon’s ontology of individuation. My aim has not

been directed to the establishment of similarities and influences between the two

thinkers. Rather, the recourse to Simondon’s reflections has re-situated Spinoza’s

thought upon an alternative theoretical ground. This refers to a materialist model of

305

individuation, which analyses the genesis and development of ontological, ethical

and political beings.

Spinoza’s theory of individuation is based on an intricate paradigm of materialism.

This interpretation of Spinoza’s materialist discourse has been conducted in chapters

I and II. In chapter I, the central theme has been the analysis of Spinoza’s claim of

the absolute and positive infinity of reality, upon which his rejections of

transcendence and the pluralism of essences such as matter and thought are

grounded. By absolute, Spinoza means the absence of the negative from the genesis

and becoming of reality. The absolute and positive infinity is the inclusion of God,

its predicates and contingent beings within one and self-caused plane, within which

none of these elements is assumed as prior and contradictory to the others. The

category of the absolute replaces the metaphysical figures of the creator, the “I”, and

the prime motor, with the notion of the plane, which is located within the domain of

nature.

In order to determine the strategic position of the notion of the absolute within the

Ethics, I have examined the many ways in which this has been translated into a form

of pantheism, radical rationalism and acosmism in the history of philosophy. The

analysis of Goethe, Jacobi, Schelling and Hegel’s engagements with Spinoza has

been decisive for unveiling the complexity of Spinoza’s materialist ontology. This

has brought to light a common difficulty characterising these readers of the Ethics,

which refers to the impossibility of conceptualising Spinoza’s notion of the absolute

through the categories of thought elaborated by the Enlightenment, Romanticism and

German Idealism. Spinoza’s notion of the absolute greatly exceeds Goethe’s

definition of the material world as a divine subject and also Jacobi’s faith in the

ineluctability of reason.

For Schelling and Hegel, Spinoza’s ontology of the absolute becomes a challenge,

which they fiercely reject. This confronts them with the vision of the world not as the

object of the “I” and the counterpart of the ideal but rather as the place of

transformations, which is always thought at the present. The discussion of Schelling

306

and Hegel’s respective impasse in following the arguments of the Ethics has

disclosed that Spinoza’s gesture of excluding the negative from the absolute plane of

reality does not mean the effacement of all the distinction in nature and thought

within an obscure absolute identity as Schelling supposed. Similarly, Spinoza’s

account of the absolute as positive infinity does not involve the negation of the

cogency of the world under the supremacy of an all-inclusive Being as Hegel argued.

By contrast, Spinoza’s ontology of the absolute introduces a different meaning of the

actual, which invalidates the authority of the ideal. This refers to Spinoza’s move of

constructing the absolute from the multiplicity and contingency of singularities and

modes of Being, through which the actual is recovered from a place of mechanical

rules to an extremely abundant, multiple and powerful plane. It is precisely the

concept of the absolute, I have claimed, that poses the actuality of the world as the

only condition of possibility of reality. The reinstatement of the actual implies

crucially the withdrawal of thought from the domain of the ideal to the concrete

realm of nature.

Having delineated Spinoza’s foundation of reality, chapter II has been

engaged with the analysis of the conditions, upon which Spinoza’s materialist system

of production is developed. The study has been preceded by an overview of

twentieth-century new approach to Spinoza’s thought, paying particular attention to

Deleuze’s elaboration, which has been followed by the re-assessment of the

importance of the geometrical method of the Ethics for the establishment of

ontological claims. The central question of the chapter has been the role of

singularities (attributes and modes) within Spinoza’s plane of absolute immanence.

The problem concerned the ways in which attributes and modes, actualising and

differentiating nature, activate a system of production.

In order to address these questions, I have proposed a reading of Spinoza’s

definitions of nature, attributes and modes as elements of a complex process, through

which the notions of immanence, contingency, power and heterogeneity acquire a

pivotal position. This has shed light upon the structure of nature as a dynamic

organisation, within which singular beings maintain the system constantly in tension.

307

The strategy of the process has brought about the discovery of a complex conception

of multiplicity, which governs Spinoza’s system of production of reality. In the

Ethics, multiplicity does not only express the contingency and heterogeneity of

beings, but more importantly the multiple phases of the process of production. These

set forth a non-linear process, which proceeds through expansive and affirmative

movements of actualisation and differentiation. In this way, Spinoza replaces the

dialectical production of reality structured through moments of conflict and

reconciliation with the understanding of the material world as a multi-phasic process

of production. It means that his treatment of nature as a plane of immanence, I have

argued, does not only involve the rejection of transcendence, but also the recognition

of the world as an extremely powerful body, which is traversed by unsuspected and

unexpected forces, tensions and transformations. This model indicates an alternative

mode of thinking the development of historical, natural and social systems and the

mechanism in which these are connected one to the others.

Taking into account Spinoza’s vision of nature as a multi-phasic process of

production, in chapter III, I have examined Spinoza’s materialist vision of the

individual. Spinoza’s conception of the individual derives from his denial of a

unitary definition of individuality such as matter and body. This becomes more

evident in his analysis of the human being. Spinoza does not deduce the peculiarity

of humankind from a priori principle or archetype such as the mind, the self and the

soul. Furthermore, there is not in the Ethics a moral evaluation of human nature as

egotistic and self-interested. By contrast, there is an accurate study into the vital and

psychic mechanisms, through which individuals are formed. This indicates the

centrality given by Spinoza to the relation between individuals and their milieu.

As mentioned above, given Spinoza’s attention to the genesis and development of

beings and his dismissal of the formula of individuality, I have suggested a detour of

Spinoza via Simondon’s paradigm of individuation, focusing on the Simondonian

categories of pre-individuality, collective field, disparation, metastability and

transindividuality. These notions delineate the value of the collective as an

irreducible condition of individuation, the definition of the individual as an excess of

308

heterogeneity, and the crucial role of emotions within the formation of psychic

beings. The usage of these categories has brought to light many ignored and obscure

themes within the Ethics. These refer to the collective character of thought, the

openness of the body, the power of affects, the vision of nature as an individual and

place of individuation.

By reading Spinoza’s theses of the individual and affectivity via Simondon, the

arguments, I have put forward, concern the way in which Spinoza’s ontology unveils

a manifold process of vital and psychic individuation. This is constructed around the

notions of relationality and affectivity. More rigorously, for Spinoza, vital and

psychic individuals are created through relational confluences and exchanges of

power, which are located in the collective domain of nature. Related particularly to

the psychic process of individuation, this resides in the realm of the affects, which

individuate and further differentiate beings into more complex forms of collective

life. The status of the individual emerging from this process of individuation is very

complex. This is not the principle of individuation either a unitary system and yet it

is extremely powerful. For Spinoza, the individual expresses an unstable mixture of

various grades of reality, where perfection consists in its capacity of affecting and

being affected by other individuals. Considered in itself, the singular being is not

lacking, instead, abundant of individuated and non individuated parts, which are

actualised and further differentiated within the collective. The role of the individual

within the process of individuation resides in constituting the problem and solution

within the system. As a problem, the individual introduces into the collective

heterogeneous meanings and potentials. As a solution, the singular exchanges

subsequently transforms a mass of power with the collective, moving further the

process of individuation. In this light, the power of the individual, I have suggested,

concerns its being one and more than one, in the middle between collective and

particular realities. In other words, it is the unavoidable and powerful problem in

every context (political, psychic and natural) in which the individual lives. The

understanding of this is imperative for determining the political stakes of Spinoza’s

thought.

309

In chapters IV and V, I have discussed the political implications of Spinoza’s

ontology of individuation for the constitution of the multitude as a political category.

In these chapters, I have adopted an alternative strategy of reading the political

Treatises. Following Deleuze and Guattari’s conception of conceptual personae, I

have constructed conceptual-affective personae around facts and historical figures

discussed in Spinoza’s political writings. These pose or resolve a question within

Spinoza’s political reflections.

In chapter IV, the passionate-conceptual personae of the Devotees of the prophet,

Subjects of Moses and the Apostles have been crucial in addressing the problem of

the ambiguous position of passions within the Theological Political Treatise. These

are, on the one side, the origin of human servitude and, on the other, productive of

social relations, common values and practises of sharing and participation. In both

cases, passions impact effectively upon the dynamics of a community, generating

new meanings, relational events, collective life and flowings of time. These factors

re-shape consistently the existing political theatre.

The exposition of these themes via conceptual personae has revealed a more

extensive role attributed by Spinoza to passions within the political context. In each

conceptual personae examined, passions of fear, hope, devotion and wonder indicate

the emergence of a problem, which affects not the individual community but rather

the entire political body. This refers to the stabilisation of the political equilibrium in

formal norms and rituals, which are indicated by the presence of passions such as

anger and anguish. It means that the domain of the political is not the place of

exchanges and transformations of thoughts, actions and potentials, which inevitably

modifies the development of the process of individuation.

The conceptual personae of the Treatise do not signal a rupture within the production

of the political but the presence of incompatibilities in the existing system. In this

light, we have seen, for example, the Apostles and the Subjects of Moses are not the

political and ethical revolutionary subject either are the oppressed class. Rather, they

are fundamentally incompatible with the homogeneity of the state of God, the

310

pharaoh and the Roman Empire, for which they constitute a powerful problem. The

great modernity of Spinoza’s political thesis resides in his idea of community,

structured and individuated through levels of heterogeneity, incompatibilities and

problems, which do not proceed through logics of social contract, rational choice and

transcendent agency. Affectivity, even its passive aspect, is the ground of this

process, which introduces and further problematises the political domain with more

complex flowings of time, collective life and tensions.

Having examined the affective tones of the political within the Theological

Political Treatise, in chapter V, I have discussed the interface between affectivity

and democracy, which Spinoza describes as the greatest expression of political

society. Specifically, I have drawn attention to the affective politics of the multitude,

and considered its role within the development of democracy.

The protagonist of chapter V is the Citizens of democracy. This affective-conceptual

persona articulates the central thesis and great preoccupation that accompanies

Spinoza’s quest from the Ethics, through the Theological Political Treatise, to the

Political Treatise. This is the conceptualisation of the paradigm of the life in common

embodied by the multitude. Spinoza envisages in the life in common of the multitude

an alternative form of democratic praxis, which lies, obstinately, in the interstices

between the authority of the tyrant and the power of its subjects, revolutionary and

reactionary movements of the mass.

The analysis of the affective status of the multitude through the conceptual persona

of the Citizens of democracy has shown that the power of the multitude emerges

from its life. Spoiled of its predicates (ethical habits and political rights), the life of

the multitude is a mixture of affects and passions such as joy, love and hate, which,

we have seen in chapter IV, are continually productive of complex political

meanings, individuals and actions. These form the domain of the ‘common’, which is

produced and further developed by the affective politics of the multitude. It is for this

reason, I have argued, that in Spinoza’s political writings the multitude tenaciously

persists in every historical juncture and is greater than any form of sovereignty such

311

as monarchy, oligarchy and tyranny. It means that the multitude is not only a

political subject such as the people, class and subjects, but more significantly it is the

theatre of the realisation of ‘common’. In this manner, the multitude cannot be

thought as a social category in opposition to others, but rather as a problematic and

incompatible individual.

In a Spinozist way democracy is an open individual, which embodies and

further develops the collective and affective life of the multitude. This marks the

difference between Spinoza and his contemporaries, indicating his modernity.

Spinoza does not associate democracy with the concept of sovereignty, but instead,

with the fruition of the ‘common good’, which in turn resides in the realm of the

multitude. More significantly, democracy is not a final goal, to which human society

should tend, but rather a concrete political reality. This lies inside and between the

state apparatus, which is actualised in infinite ways as many are the lives of the

multitude. The discovery of these democratic practises is the challenge that

Spinoza’s thought launches to post-modernity.

It is for this reason that the position undertaken in the thesis has not meant to re-draw

a manifesto for the multitude of the present or establish new principles for

democracy. By contrast, it aims at the understanding of these ignored concrete forms

of political life, and from their analysis learn a novel democratic grammar. Spinoza’s

ontological politics of individuation provides contemporary thought with alternative

theoretical instruments for re-conceptualising the connections between affectivity

and politics, life and sovereignty and the a-temporarality of the multitude.

312

Bibliography

Agamben, G., 1990. La comunità che viene (Torino: Einaudi).

Agamben, G., 1993. The coming community (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota

Press) [trans. Hardt M.].

Agamben, G., 1998. Homo sacer: sovereign power and bare life (Stanford: Stanford

University Press).

Agamben, G., 2000. Means Without End: Notes on Politics (London: University of

Minnesota Press.

Agamben, G., 2005a. Time that remains: a commentary on the letters to the Romans

(Stanford: Stanford University Press).

Agamben, G., 2005b. State of Exception (Chicago, London: University Press

Chicago).

Alai, M, 1988, Filosofia della scienza del novecento scritti di Karnap (Roma:

armando editore.

Althusser, L., 1976. Essays in Self-Criticism (London: NLB).

Althusser, L., 1971 Lenin and Philosophy and other essays (London, New York:

Monthly Review Press).

Althusser, L., 2005. For Marx (London: Verso).

Althusser, L., 2006. Philosophy of the Encounter. Later Writings, 1978-87 (London:

Verso).

Ansell Pearson, K., 1999. Germinal life. The difference and Repetition of Deleuze,

(London, New York: Routledge).

Aristotle, 1985. Metaphysics. Books Zeta, Eta, Etha, Iota (Indianapolis: Hackett).

Aristotle, 1986. De Anima. On the soul (New York: Penguin Books).

Badiou, A., 2002. Ethics: an essay on the understanding of Evil (London: Verso).

Badiou, A., 2003. Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism (Stanford: Stanford

University Press).

Badiou, A., 2005. Being and Event ( New York, London: Continuum).

Balibar, É. , 2002. Spinoza il transindividuale (Ghibli: Milano).

Balibar, É., 1991. ‘From Class Struggle to Classless Struggle’, in Race, Nation,

Class: Ambiguous Identities, in ed. É. Balibar and I. Wallerstein (London: Verso).

313

Balibar, É., 1994. Masses, Classes, Ideas: Studies on Politics and Philosophy Before

and After Marx (Routledge: New York).

Balibar, É., 1998. Spinoza and Politics (London: Verso).

Barthélémy, J. H. and Beaune J. C., 2005. Penser l’individuation: Simondon et la

philosophie de la nature (Paris: Harmattan).

Beiser F. C., 1987. The Fate of Reason. German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte,

Harward University Press.

Beiser, F. C., 2000. ‘The Enlightenment and idealism’, in The Cambridge

Companion to German Idealism, ed. K. Ameriks (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press).

Beiser, F. C., 2002. German idealism: the struggle against subjectivism (Harvard:

Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press).

Beiser, F. C., 2005. Hegel (New York: Routledge).

Beiser, F. C., ed., 1993. The Cambridge Companion to Hegel (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press).

Bell, D., 1984. Spinoza in Germany from the 1670 to the Age of Goethe (University

of London: Institute of German Studies).

Blanchot, M., 1988. The Unavowable Community (New York: Station Hill Press).

Bordoli, R., ed., 1994. Lucas, Köhler (Colerus), Le Vite di Spinoza, (Macerata:

Quodlibet).

Bowie, A, 1993 Schelling and the Modern European Philosophy: An Introduction

(London, New York: Routledge).

Bowie, A, 2003, Aesthetics and Subjectivity. From Kant to Nietzsche (Manchester,

New York: Manchester University Press).

Burbidge, J., 1993. ‘Hegel’s conception of logic’, in The Cambridge Companion to

Hegel, ed. F. C. Beiser (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

Butler J., Laclau E. and Zizek S., 2000. Contingency, Hegemony, Universality:

contemporary dialogues on the left (London: Verso).

Cavarero, A., 2002. Stately bodies: literature, philosophy and the question of the

gender (University of Michigan Press).

Combes, M., 1999. Simondon, Individuo et collectivité: pour une philosophie du

transindividuel (Paris: Pressese Universitaries de France).

314

Connolly, W., 2002. Identity/Difference: Democratic Negotiations of Political

Paradox (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press).

Coole, D., 2000. Negativity and Politics. Dyonisus and dialectics from Kant to

poststructuralism (London, New York: Routledge).

Croce, B., 1907. Cio’ che e’ vivo e cio’ che e’ morto della filosofia di Hegel (Bari:

Biblioteca di Cultura Moderna).

Curley, E, 1996. ‘Kissinger, Spinoza and Gengis Khan’, in The Cambridge

Companion to Spinoza, ed. Garret (New York: Cambridge University Press).

Curley, E., 1988. Behind the geometrical Method. A reading of Spinoza’s Ethics

(Princeton: Princeton University Press).

Damasio, A., 2004. Looking for Spinoza (London: Vintage).

De Landa, M., 1992. ‘Nonorganic life’, in Incorporations, ed. J. Crary and S.

Kwinter S., voll. I-II (New York: Zone).

De Landa, M., 2002. Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy (New York:

Continuum).

Deleuze G. and Guattari F., 1994. What is Philosophy? (New York: Verso).

Deleuze G. and Guattari F., 2004a. Anti-Oedipus: capitalism and schizophrenia

(London: Continuum).

Deleuze G. and Guattari F., 2004b. A Thousand Plateau (London, New York:

Continuum Impacts) [trans. B. Massumi].

Deleuze G., 2004b. Desert Islands and Other Texts, 1953–1974 (Los Angeles, New

York: Semiotext).

Deleuze, G., 1988. Spinoza.Practical Philosophy (Saint Francisco: City light).

Deleuze, G., 1992. Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza (New York: Zone Books).

Deleuze, G., 1997. Spinoza and the three Ethics, in The New Spinoza, ed. W.

Montag and T. Stolze (Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press).

Deleuze, G., 2001. Pure Immanence: Essays on A Life (New York: Zone Books).

Deleuze, G., 2002. Molteplici e potenziali differenze, Roma: DeriveApprodi n. 20.

Deleuze, G., 2004a. Difference and Repetition (London: New York, Continuum)

[trans. P. Patton].

Della Rocca, M., 2008. Spinoza (New York, Oxford: Routledge).

315

Descartes, R., 1996. Mediation on First Philosophy with Selections from the

Objections and Replies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

Duns Scotus, 1987. Philosophical writings (Indianapolosis: Hackett).

Euclid, 1956. The Thirteenth Books of Euclid’s Elements, Dover: Publication).

Feuer, L. S., 1987. Spinoza and the rise of Liberalism (New Brunswick, Oxford:

Transaction Books).

Foster, M., (1993), Hegel’s dialectical method, in The Cambridge Companion to

Hegel, ed. F. C. Beiser (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

Foucault, M., 1998. The History of sexuality, vol. I (Victoria: Penguin Books).

Gagamer, H. G, 1976. Hegel’s dialect: Five Hermeneutical Studies (New Haven:

Yale University Press).

Garelli, J., 1994. Tranduction and Information, in Gilbert Simondon: Une pensee de

l’ Individuation et de la Technique (Paris: Aubier).

Giancotti, E, 1970. Lexicon Spinozanum (La Haye: Martinus Nijhoff).

Giancotti, E., ed., 2002, Etica. Diminstrata con Metodo Geometrico (Roma: Editori

Riuniti).

Giancotti, E.,1995. Studi su Hobbes e Spinoza (Napoli: Bibliopolis).

Goethe, J. W. ,1967. Goethe’s theory of Colours (London: Cass).

Gould, S. J., 1997. Ontogeny and Phylogeny (Cambridge: Harward University

Press).

Grant, Cooper N., 1989. From Cardinals to Chaos (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press).

Guyer, P., 2000. ‘Absolute Idealism and the rejection of Kantian dualism’ in The

Cambridge Companion to German Idealism, ed. K. Ameriks (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press).

Hardt, M, 1993. Gilles Deleuze: an apprenticeship in philosophy (Minnesota:

University of Minnesota Press).

Hardt, M., 2002. ‘Exposure: Pasolini in the flesh’, in A Shock to though:

expressionism after Deleuze and Guattari, ed. B. Massumi (London, New York:

Routledge).

Hegel, G. W. F., 1955. Hegel’s Lectures on The History of Philosophy, vol. III

(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul LTD).

316

Hegel, G. W. F., 1967. The Phenomenology of Mind (New York: Harper

Torchbooks).

Hegel, G. W. F., 1970. Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature (London: Humanities Press).

Hobbes, T., 1998. The Leviathan (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Hottois, G., 1996. Entre Simboles et techosciences: Un itineraire philosophique

(Champ Vallon).

Howie, G., 2002. Deleuze and Spinoza, aura of expressionism (Basingstoke:

Palgrave).

Hutchings, K., 2008. Time and world politics: thinking the present (Manchester:

Manchester University Press).

Illuminati, A., 1998. Il teatro dell’amicizia. Metafore dell’agire politico (Roma:

ManifestoLibri).

Illuminati, A., 2002. La pubblicita’ dell’ intelletto, in Singolarita’ e Moltitudine, n.

XXI (Roma: Derive Approdi).

Illuminati, A., 2003. Del comune -cronache del general intellect (Roma:

manifestolibri Bandiere).

Irigaray, L., 1994. Thinking the Difference: For a Peaceful Revolution (London:

Routledge).

Irigaray, L., 1997. ‘The Envelop: A reading of Spinoza, Ethics, “of God”, in The

New Spinoza, ed. W. Montag and T. Stolze, (Minneapolis, London: University of

Minnesota Press).

Israel, J., 2002. Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and Making of Modernity 1650-

1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Israel, J., 2004. ‘The intellectual origin of Modern Democratic Republicanism’, in

European Journal of Political Theory, vol. 3, num. I.

Israel, J., 2006. Enlightenment Contested. Philosophy, Modernity and the

Emancipation of Man 1670-1752 (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press).

Jacobi, F. H., 1994. The Main Philosophical Writings and the Novel Allwill,

(London: McGill-Queen’s University Press).

James, S., 1997. Passion and actions: The Emotion in the Seventeenth-Century

philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

317

Laclau E. and Mouffe C., 2001. Hegemony and Socialism Strategy: towards a

radical democracy politics (London: Verso).

Lloyd G. and Gatens M., 1999. Collective Imaginings: Spinoza past and present,

(London: Routledge).

Macherey, P., (1997). ‘The problem of the attributes’, in The New Spinoza, ed. W.

Montag and T. Stolze (Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press).

Macherey, P., 1979. Hegel ou Spinoza (Paris V: Maspero).

Macherey, P., 1998. In a materialist way. Selected essays (London, New York:

Verso).

Mackenzie, A., 2002. Transductions: Bodies and Machines at Speed (London, New

York: Continuum).

Manning, E., 2007. Politics of touch: Sense, Movements, Sovereignty (Minneapolis:

Minnesota University Press).

Massumi, B., 1992. A user’s guide to capitalism and schizophrenia: Deviation from

Deleuze and Guattari (MIT Press).

Massumi, B., 1993. The Politics of everyday fear (Minneapolis: Minnesota

University Press).

Massumi, B., 2002a. Parables of the virtual (Durham, London: Duke University

Press).

Massumi, B., ed., 2002b, A Shock to though: expressionism after Deleuze and

Guattari (London, New York: Routledge).

Matheron, A., 1971. Le Christ et la salut des ignorants chez Spinoza (Paris: Aubier).

Matheron, A., 1988. Individuo et Communaute chez Spinoza (Paris: Le minuit).

Middlenton, C., ed., 1994. Goethe. The collected Works. Selected Poems, Vol.I-II,

(Princeton: Princeton University Press).

Montag W. and Stolze T., ed., 1997. The New Spinoza (Minneapolis, London:

University of Minnesota Press).

Montag, W., 1999. Bodies Masses, Power: Spinoza and his Contempories (London:

Verso Books).

Moreau, P. F., 1996. ‘Spinoza reception and influence’, in The Cambridge

Companion to Spinoza, ed. Garret (New York: Cambridge University Press).

Nadler, S., 1999. Spinoza. A life (New York: Cambridge University Press).

318

Nancy, J. L., 1991. The Inoperative Community (Minneapolis: University of

Minneapolis Press).

Negri A. and Hardt M., 2000. Empire (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press).

Negri A. and Hardt M., 2006. Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

(London, New York: Penguin Press).

Negri, A., 1998. Spinoza (Roma: Derive e Approdi).

Negri, A., 2004, ‘Approximations: Towards an Ontological Definition of the

Multitude’, in Multitudes n. 9.

Negri, A., 2005. Time for Revolution (New York: Continuum).

Newell, A. C, 1985. Solitons in Mathematics and Physics (Philadelphia: Society for

Industrial and applied Mathematics).

Norman J. and Welchman A., ed. , 2004. The new Schelling (New York, London:

Continuum).

Patton, P., ed., 1996. Deleuze: A Critical Reader (Oxford: Blackwell).

Pollock, F., 2005. Spinoza. His Life and Philosophy (London: Adamant Media

Corporation).

Rice, L., 1990. ‘Individual and Community in Spinoza’s social psychology’ in

Spinoza: Issues and directions proceedings of the Chicago Spinoza Conference, ed.

E. Curley and P. F. Moreau (Leiden: Brill).

Riemann, B, 1873. ‘On the Hypotheses which lie at the Base of Geometry’, in

Nature, Vol. VIII, No. 183.

Runes, D.D., 1951. Spinoza Dictionary (New York: Philosophical Library).

Sagan, D., 1992. ‘Biology and multiplicity’, in Incorporations, ed. J. Crary and S.

Kwinter, voll. I-II (New York: Zone).

Schelling, F. W. J., 1978. System of Transcental Idealism (Charloteesville:

University of Virginia Press).

Schelling, F. W. J., 1980. The Unconditional in Human Knowledge. Four Early

Essays (1794-1796) (London: Associated University Presses).

Schelling, F. W. J., 1988. Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press).

Simondon, G., 2001. L’ individuazione psichica e collettiva, (Roma : Derive e

Approdi).

319

Simondon, G., 2007. L’individuation psychique et collective à la lumiére des notions

de Forme, Potentiel et Métastabilité (Paris : Aubier).

Simondon, G.,1958. Du monde d’existence des objects techniques (Paris: Aubier).

Skinner Q. and Gelderen Martin Van, 2002. Republicanism: a shared European

Heritage, vol. I, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

Smith, S., 1998. Spinoza. Liberalism and the Jewish Identity (New Haven: Yale

University Press).

Smith, S., 2003. Spinoza’s book of life (Yale: Yale University Press).

Spade, P.V., 1994. Five Texts on the Medieval Problem of Universal: Porphiry,

Boethius, Abelard, Duns Scotus, Ockham (Indianapolis: Hackett).

Steuer, D., 2002. ‘In defence of experience: Goethe’s natural investigations and

scientific culture’, in The Cambridge Companion to Goethe, ed. L. Sharpe

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

Strauss, L., 1997. Spinoza’s critique of religion (Chicago: University of Chicago

Press).

Stump E. and Kretzman N., ed., 1993. Cambridge Companion to Aquinas,

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

Stump, E., 2003. Aquinas (London, New York: Routledge).

Thomassen L. and Tønder L., ed., 2005. Radical Democracy. Politics between

abundance and lack (Manchester: Manchester University Press).

Ticineto Clough P. and Halley J., ed., 2007. The Affective Turn: Theorizing the social

(Durham: Duke University Press).

Toscano, A., 2004. ‘Philosophy and the Experience of Construction’, in The new

Schelling, ed. J. Norman and A. Welchman New York, London: Continuum).

Toscano, A., 1999. ‘Fanaticism and Production: On Schelling’s Philosophy of

Indifference’,in Pli n. 8.

Toscano, A., 2006. The theatre of production (London: Palgrave macmillian).

Tosel, A., 1984. Spinoza, ou, Le crépuscole de la servitude: essai sur le Traité

Theologico-Politique (Paris: Aubier).

Tosel, A., 1994. Du matérialisme de Spinoza (Paris: Kimé).

Virno, P., 2004. The Grammar of the multitude. For an analysis of contemporary

forms of life (New York: Semiotext).

320

Visentin, S., 2001. La libertà necessaria. Teoria e pratica della democrazia in

Spinoza (Pisa: ETS).

White, A., 1983. Absolute Knowledge: Hegel and Problem of Metaphysics (Ohio:

Ohio University Press).

Williams, C., 2001. Contemporary French Philosophy: Modernity and the

Persistence of the Subject (London: Athlone).

Williams, C., 2002. ‘Reading Spinoza today’, in Contemporary Political Theory n.

1/3 (Hampshire: Palgrave macmillian).

Williams, C., 2007. ‘Thinking the Political in the Wake of Spinoza: Power, Affects

and Imagination in the Ethics’, in Political Theory, n. 6 (Hampshire: Palgrave

macmillian)

Yovel ,Y., 1992b. Spinoza and Other Heretics: The Adventures of Immanence, v. II,

(Princeton: Princeton University Press).

Yovel, Y., 1992a. Spinoza and Other Heretics: The Marranos of Reason, v. I,

(Princeton: Princeton University Press).

Yovel, Y., 2009. The Other within. The Marranos: Split identity and emerging

modernity (Princeton: Princeton University Press).

Zizek, S, 2004a. Organs without Bodies. On Deleuze and Consequences (London,

New York: Routledge).

Zizek, S., 2004b. ‘Everything you always wanted to know about Schelling (but were

afraid to ask Hitchcock), in The new Schelling, ed. J. Norman and A. Welchman

(New York, London: Continuum).

Zizek, S.,1996. The invisible reminder: An essay on Schelling and related Matters

(London, New York: Verso).