Spinoza and the Ethics of Political Resistance

SPINOZA AND THE ETHICS OF POLITICAL RESISTANCE

Erik H. Stephenson Department of Philosophy McGill University, Montreal November 2010

A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

To Henrik. Nil volentibus arduum. 4

Abstract

My dissertation examines the question of the justification of political resistance in

Spinoza’s philosophy. More specifically, its purpose is to determine whether or not Spinoza regards political resistance as harmonizing with the dictates of reason, where the latter amount to prudential counsels for maximizing one’s “power to exist”. Having demonstrated the partial validity of the ‘conservative’ interpretation of Spinoza’s ethico-rational politics – according to which reason commands strict obedience to political authorities – I go on to challenge its near- hegemonic status in the secondary literature by extracting from Spinoza’s Ethics and political treatises a conditional, ethico-rational justification for political resistance.

The ultimate criterion for the ethico-rational validation of an act of resistance is the empowerment of its agent(s). Since one’s true empowerment is, in Spinoza’s view, inextricably related to the empowerment of all those with whom one’s life is intertwined, and the chief source of personal empowerment is the rational understanding of nature’s causal order, it follows that any act of resistance ought to contribute to an increase in the cognitive powers of the greatest number (including, ideally, those against whom it is directed).

On the basis of the fact that, by Spinoza’s own reckoning, the philosophical critique of prejudices through the development of adequate ideas regarding their constitution can serve to undermine the disempowering forms of rule that depend upon them, I contend that the critique of prejudices is the ethico-rationally justified form of resistance par excellence. Thus, a State is only organized rationally if it secures institutional ‘spaces’ for the exercise of this form of resistance as part of its normal functioning. Finally, I maintain that active civil disobedience subverting a political regime that prohibits the continuous exercise of resistance-as-critique is not only justified but is akin to a duty if individuals are to live up to Spinoza’s paradigm of rationality, the “wise” or “free” person. 5

Résumé

Notre travail se penche sur la question de la justification de la résistance politique dans la pensée philosophique de Spinoza. Plus exactement, il a pour but de déterminer si, selon Spinoza, la résistance politique s’accorde avec les préceptes de la raison, ces derniers étant compris comme conseils prudentiels en vue de la maximisation de notre « pouvoir d’exister ». Après avoir démontré la validité partielle de l’interprétation conservatrice prédominante de la politique

« éthico-rationnelle » de Spinoza – selon laquelle la raison recommande une obéissance absolue à toute autorité politique – je lui dispute son statut hégémonique dans la littérature secondaire en dégageant de l’Éthique et des traités politiques de Spinoza une justification éthique conditionnelle de la résistance politique.

Le critère de légitimation ultime d’un acte de résistance est que ce dernier contribue à augmenter le pouvoir de son (ou ses) sujet(s). Puisque, d’abord, l’augmentation de notre pouvoir est, aux yeux de Spinoza, étroitement liée à l’augmentation du pouvoir de tous, et qu’ensuite, la source principale de cette augmentation réside dans la compréhension rationnelle de l’ordre causal de la nature, il s’ensuit que n’importe quel acte de résistance politique doit contribuer à l’augmentation du pouvoir cognitif du plus grand nombre possible (incluant, idéalement, ceux et celles contre lesquels l’acte est dirigé).

Partant du fait que, selon l’avis de Spinoza lui-même, la critique philosophique des préjugés par moyen de la formation d’idées adéquates quant à leur genèse serait à même de saper le pouvoir des régimes qui en dépendent, nous suggérons que la critique des préjugés est la forme par excellence d’une résistance éthiquement justifiable. Par conséquent, un État n’est organisé de façon rationnelle que s’il se porte garant d’espaces institutionnels permettant le déploiement de cette forme de résistance au sein de son fonctionnement normal. Finalement, nous affirmons que la résistance politique active ayant pour objectif le renversement d’un régime politique qui pose 6 obstacle à l’exercice continu de la résistance-cum-critique est non seulement justifiée, mais se veut un devoir moral – dans le sens que Spinoza prête à ce terme – pour quiconque souhaiterait incarner, dans la mesure du possible, le modèle spinoziste de l’homme libre, du Sage 7

Acknowledgements

I would like to take this opportunity to thank professors Hasana Sharp and Calvin

Normore for agreeing to supervise the writing of this thesis. The latter would not be what it is were it not for the guidance and encouragement I have received from them – though the fault for whatever shortcomings it may have lies solely with me. I am particularly indebted to my primary supervisor, Hasana Sharp, who has been of invaluable assistance to me through every step of the thesis process, and whose graduate seminar in the winter term of 2006 first sparked my interest in

Spinoza. I have benefited immensely from her enthusiasm, her constructive criticism, her open- mindedness, and her knack for making some of the most difficult texts in the history of philosophy both clear and relevant.

I can think of no better way to express my gratitude to Martin Desrosiers, Don Beith,

Julien Villeneuve, Philippe Stephenson, Eduardo Ralickas, W.R. Newell, and Carol Collier, than to quote a passage from Xenophon’s Memorabilia that I consider the motto of our friendship:

Just as others are pleased by a good horse or dog or bird, I myself am pleased to an even higher degree by good friends (…) and the treasures of the wise humans of old which they left behind by writing them in books, I unfold and go through them together with my friends, and if we see something good, we pick it out and regard it as a great gain if we thus become useful to one another (I.6.14).

In this vein, special thanks are owed to professor D. Gregory MacIsaac at Carleton University’s

College of the Humanities, from whom I have learned so much over the years about the study and teaching of the history of philosophy.

My deepest debts are, of course, to my wife, Cynthia Ralickas, and to my parents, Donald

Stephenson and Jocelyne Béland-Stephenson. Every graduate student should be so lucky as to have a partner and parents so loving, so patient, and so supportive. If I have enjoyed the nearly eight years I have spent as a graduate student so much, it is in large part because my loved ones 8 have made sure I keep things in proper perspective – reminding me whenever necessary that there is life outside the library!

Finally, I would like to acknowledge the generous financial support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and of the Groupe de Recherche Inter-Universitaire en Philosophie Politique. 9

List of Abbreviations

Spinoza’s Works:

E Ethics Demonstrated in Geometric Order (…) (Ethica…) App Appendix Ax Axiom C Corollary D Definition Def. Affs. Definition of the Affects Dem Demonstration Lem Lemma P Proposition Pos Postulate Pref Preface S Scholium Ep Correspondence (Epistola) KV Short Treatise on God, Man, and His Well-Being (Korte Verhandeling…) TIE Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione) TP Political Treatise (Tractatus Politicus) TTP Theological-Political Treatise (Tractatus Theologico-Politicus)

Quotations from the Ethics are from Edwin Curley’s translation (London: Penguin, 1996). Quotations from Spinoza’s letters (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1995) and TP (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2000) are from the translation by Samuel Shirley. Quotations from the TIE are from the translation by Herman De Dijn included in his book, Spinoza: The Way to Wisdom (West Lafayette: Purdue UP, 1996). Finally, quotations from the TTP are either from the translation by Samuel Shirley (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2001) or from the translation by Michael Silverthorne and Jonathan Israel (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007); I select the best translation on a case-by-case basis. All translations used are compared to Spinoza’s original Latin text, and modifications are made where they are deemed necessary. Only the most important of these modifications are indicated.

Works by Other Authors:

AT Charles Adam & Paul Tannery (Eds.), Oeuvres complètes de Descartes, 11 Volumes (Paris: Vrin, 1996). L Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994). T II John Locke, Second Treatise of Government (Cambridge: CUP, 2005) 10

Table of Contents

Abstract 4

Résumé 5

Acknowledgements 7

List of Abbreviations 9

Table of Contents 10

Introduction 13

0.1. Presentation of the Dissertation Topic (13) 0.2. Spinoza’s Political Realism (20) 0.3. Spinoza’s Political Realism and the Question of Political Resistance (25) 0.4. Spinoza’s Ethico-Rational Politics (26) 0.5. Spinoza’s Ethico-Rational Politics and the Question of Political Resistance (28) 0.6. Need for the Dissertation: Survey of the Secondary Literature (30) 0.7. Methodology and Outline of the Dissertation (37)

Chapter 1: “Cognitio boni & mali”: Spinoza’s Ethical Theory (I) 45 1.1. Introduction (45) 1.2. Metaphysical and Anthropological Foundations (47) 1.3. Moral Values as Entia Imaginationis (53) 1.4. Moral Values as Entia Civitatis (74) 1.5. Conclusion (76)

Chapter 2: “Vera cognitio boni & mali”: Spinoza’s Ethical Theory (II) 79 2.1. Introduction (79) 2.2. “Vera cognitio boni et mali”: On the Possibility of Adequate Ethical Knowledge (80) 2.3. “Hominis summum bonum”: Its Nature and Implications (106) 2.4. Ethics and the Imagination (122) 2.5. Conclusion (130) 2.6. Appendix: On the Ontological Status of the “Universal Human Nature” in Spinoza’s Philosophical System (133)

Chapter 3: Resistance is Irrational: Spinoza’s Ethics of Political Obedience 150 3.1. Introduction (150) 3.2. In Praise of the State, or Why Obedience is Always to Our Advantage 3.2.1. Homo homini Deus est (151) 3.2.2. Homo homini lupus est (153) 3.2.3. The Origins and Instrumental Necessity of the State (157) 3.2.4. The Question of the Nature of Political Obligation (160) 11

3.2.5. The Wise Person Recognizes an Ethico-Rational Obligation to Obey (162) 3.2.6. The Spinozist ‘Test of Universalization’ and the Ethico-Rational Obligation to Obey (167) 3.3. The Imprudence of Revolution (173) 3.3.1. Nothing Fails Like Revolution (175) 3.3.2. Historical Examples (177) 3.3.3. La morale de l’histoire (180) 3.4. The Motives of Resistance and Obedience Considered from an Ethico- Rational Perspective (182) 3.4.1. The Sad Affects of Political Resistance (182) 3.4.2. “Odium nunquam potest esse bonum” (184) 3.5. The Fulfilment of Reason and Political Quietism (187) 3.5.1. “Acquiescentia in se ipso”, or No Longer Kicking Against the Pricks (188) 3.5.2. “In quacunque civitate homo sit, liber esse potest” (189) 3.5.3. There is Nothing to Resist for the Sage (190) 3.6. Conclusion (192)

Chapter 4: Resistance is Rational (I): Spinoza’s Ethics of Political Resistance 198 4.1. Introduction (198) 4.2. Strength of Character and Resistance: Preliminary Remarks (202) 4.3. Spinoza’s “Free Man” As Militant Joyeux: Resistance in the Ethics (205) 4.4. Fighting in the Name of Libertas Philosophandi: Political Resistance in the TTP (225) 4.5. Conclusion (243)

Chapter 5: Resistance is Rational (II): Objections, Problems, and Clarifications 252 5.1. Introduction (252) 5.2. Ethics IVP72 and the Ethico-Rational Necessity of Obedience: Two Responses (254) 5.2.1. The ‘Contractualist/Constitutionalist’ Response (Spinoza and Locke) (256) 5.2.2. On the Asymmetry of the Good and the Rational in Spinoza’s Ethics: The Garrett Response (279) 5.3. Spinoza and the Masses (289) 5.4. Sub specie durationis: the Uncertainty of Action (301)

Chapter 6: Knowledge is Resistance: On the Political Role of Adequate Ideas in Spinoza’s Philosophy 309 6.1. Introduction (309) 6.2. On the Nature of Ideas: Review (313) 6.2.1. The Modal Status of Ideas (313) 6.2.2. Inadequate Ideas (314) 6.2.3. Adequate Ideas (317) 6.3. Adequate Knowledge as Means of Political Resistance: An Example (320) 6.4. Preliminary Conclusion (329) 12

6.5. Two Possible Objections (331) 6.6. Conclusion: Spinoza as Intellectual Militant Joyeux (337)

Bibliography 350 13

Introduction

0.1. Presentation of the Dissertation Topic

It would be hard to overstate the importance of the question of the justification of political resistance in the political thought of the 16th and 17th centuries. After all, the question of the legitimacy of resistance, whether active or passive, follows quite directly from the broader question that was absolutely fundamental to all but a very small minority of political thinkers in the early modern period: viz., the question of the grounds, nature, and rightful limits of political obligation.1

Many factors can be cited to explain why these issues were granted pride of place by early modern political philosophers. The first factor, and certainly one of the strongest, was at work from the very outset of the 16th century, and is a classic example of how the domains of political and religious thought frequently impact upon one another: viz., the Protestant Reformation. In essence, the Protestant Reformation was a religious movement seeking to put an end to perceived abuses within the Catholic Church, to purge it of its medieval accretions, and thus to restore it to its ‘original’ purity as outlined in Christianity’s source-texts: the writings of the New Testament and of the Church Fathers (most notably: Augustine of Hippo). But the potential political

1 I am not claiming that the early modern period was the first to consider these issues. What I would contend is that never before the early modern period had political thinkers paid such a high degree of attention to these issues. Political thinkers of the High and Late middle ages were already far more concerned than their ancient Greek predecessors had ever been with the practically indissociable issues of the origins, nature, and proper boundaries of political authority, on the one hand, and of the validity of political resistance (active or passive) on the other – as even the most cursory comparison of the works of Thomas Aquinas, William of Ockham, and Marsilius of Padua with those of Plato, Aristotle, or Xenophon will confirm. This shift in focus is plain to see even in medieval treatments of questions inherited from Greek political philosophy (prime examples of which would be: What kinds of political regimes or constitutions are there and which of these is best? What is the psychological make-up of the ruler and/or citizens in each form of regime? And what kind of educational programme is required to produce individuals whose respective dispositions of the soul or ‘virtues’ would make them fit to be rulers and/or citizens in the best regime?). But it is only in the early modern period that these issues came to be the central preoccupation for most political thinkers. For an excellent introductory overview of the issues that were of concern to High and Late medieval thinkers, see: Canning (1996: Chs. 3 and 4). 14 ramifications of this movement soon became plain to everyone.2 For it was to be expected that in many cases, the secular authorities would not sympathize with the Reformers, but rather seek to uphold the status quo ante. More generally, it was inevitable that some secular authorities would seek to impose, or would at least profess, a faith other than that professed by some or all of their subjects. The question was thus: Under such circumstances, in which the secular authorities do not adhere to, or do not tolerate belief in and/or the practice of the ‘one true faith’, may those subjects belonging to the ‘one true faith’ disobey or depose their rulers? Might they not even be said to have a religious duty to do so?

A second factor is the dramatic rise of liberal-democratic and contractualist theories of political authority as of the 16th and, especially, 17th centuries. Fundamental to the theory of liberal democracy is the notion that there ought to be limits to the purview of governmental power. The necessity of such juridical restraints is often argued for by means of an appeal to a set of allegedly natural (i.e., inherent and inviolable) individual rights. These rights are typically regarded as objective norms by reference to which the conduct of governments may be appraised.

Where governments are deemed to have infringed upon the rights of their citizens, their rule becomes ipso facto illegitimate, and may justifiably be resisted. Hence, one could say that a theory of political resistance forms an integral part of any adequate account and/or defence of liberal democracy. The development of liberal-democratic theories would thus entail the development of theories of resistance. The link between the rise of contractualism as a theory of political authority and the development of theories of resistance is perhaps even more straightforward. For where the political authority of person or group x is obtained over person or group y by contract between x and y, the political authority of x (i.e., the obligation on the part of

2 Of course, many of these potential political ramifications would have been immediately apparent to anyone already familiar with the histories of earlier reform movements: e.g., that of the Hussites in 15th-century Bohemia, or of the Lollards in 14th- and 15th-century England. 15 y to obey x) is contingent upon x’s fulfilling, or adhering to, the terms and conditions stipulated in the contract agreed to by both parties. Where x fails to do so, x’s decrees ipso facto cease to be binding, and x’s rule – which has ipso facto become violent: i.e., has become the mere exercise of force without right – may justifiably be resisted by y.3

A third factor may be pointed to, although in its case it is difficult to say with certainty whether it really acted as a cause of the greater level of emphasis placed upon the related issues of political obligation and the legitimacy of resistance by early modern political thinkers, or whether it was not actually an effect of this increased focus. Indeed, it is perhaps most accurate to say that, on the whole, the relation was one of mutual dependence. At any rate, the factor in question is the large number of political revolts that marked the history of early modern Europe.

From France’s Wars of Religion to its numerous Frondes, right up to the Revolution of 1789, or from England’s Civil War to its Glorious Revolution, political movements of revolt were either condemned or vindicated – and this either before or after the fact – by political thinkers who were, more often than not, actors in, or at the very least profoundly affected by, these revolutionary events.

This is true, for instance, of Michel de Montaigne, whose extremely conservative stance with respect to the legitimacy of civil disobedience can be seen as a response to the atrocities committed by both Catholics and Protestants during the 16th century Wars of Religion.4 It is no less true of the pre-eminent 17th century theorist of absolute State power: Thomas Hobbes. For,

3 Crucially, according to the contractualist model, y at all times retains the right to judge whether x has lived up to the conditions set forth in the contract: for, within the contractualist schema, authority is thought to have been entrusted to x by y, and in such a relationship of trust, it is the party placing the trust that decides whether or not the trustee is acting in good faith (i.e., in a way consistent with the latter’s duties, and with the purpose of the latter’s having been entrusted with power, as specified in the contract). The exception, of course, is the contractualist theory of Thomas Hobbes. On his view, subjects did not enter into contract with the Sovereign, but with each other, to alienate the whole of their rights (including the right to judge), sight-unseen, to a third party: viz., the Sovereign. 4 On Montaigne’s conservatism, see (among others): Vincent (2001); Starobinski (1993: Ch. VIII); and Levine (2001: 58-64). 16 as can be inferred from passages in De Cive and Leviathan that stress the importance of a proper education for citizens regarding their civil obligations,5 Hobbes’ ultimate aim in writing on political matters was to teach his fellow citizens that they owed unconditional obedience to the

Sovereign, and that the latter’s sovereignty was indivisible by definition, in order to help prevent the recurrence of that dark chapter in English history, the Civil War and its aftermath (notably: the execution of Charles I in 1649), the horrors of which Hobbes was kept abreast of while living in exile in France, and which form the bloody backdrop of every page of both the De Cive6 and

Leviathan.7 At the opposite end of the political spectrum, John Locke’s Second Treatise of

Government has long been understood as a justification of the Glorious Revolution – although there is some amount of controversy over whether it was written before or after the revolution had taken place.8

The third major figure in the triumvirate of 17th century political philosophy – Benedictus de Spinoza – was, no less than his contemporaries Hobbes and Locke, profoundly affected by revolutionary political events that occurred both in his lifetime, and in the half-century or so before his birth in 1632. As is attested to by passages in his political writings and letters, Spinoza was well-informed regarding the history of the English Civil War, Commonwealth, Protectorate,

5 See DC XIII.9; L XXX.4-14. 6 An expanded second edition of which was published in 1647. 7 Which Hobbes began writing in 1646 and published in 1651. 8 Thus, Josiah Tucker reported in his Treatise concerning civil government of 1781: “it has been a continual belief of the friends and admirers of Mr. Locke, that he wrote his Essay of Government with a view to justify the Revolution” – i.e., after the fact (72; quoted in Laslett 46). For contemporary arguments to this effect, see (most notably): Ashcraft (1986: 7). In his introduction to his edition of the Two Treatises, P. Laslett famously argues that the Second Treatise is best seen as an Exclusion tract, rather than a post facto justification of the events of 1688. But as Laslett himself acknowledges, the two views are not necessarily mutually exclusive: “Some of the text undoubtedly was written in 1689 to apply to the situation then and its author must have intended the whole work to be read as a comment on these events. But it cannot be maintained that the original conception of the book was the justification of a revolution that had been consummated. (…) The conjunction of events which set his mind at work on these things must be sought at an earlier period. Two Treatises in fact turns out to be a demand for a revolution to be brought about, not the rationalization of a revolution in need of defence” (46-47). 17 and Restoration.9 But it is the revolutionary events that took place in his own country – the

Dutch Republic (or, as it was also called: United Provinces) – that had the most impact upon him, not only in terms of his political thought, but also more concretely in terms of his everyday life.

As S. Schama has argued, not only the Dutch Republic, but even the Dutch nation was, paradoxically, born in its protracted and violent revolt against Spanish rule: it pre-existed this armed resistance neither culturally, nor territorially, nor even linguistically.10 Its first act was thus an act of negation – of revolt – and once this act of negation had been accomplished, it had to invent its own identity (Schama 67). When the eighty-year conflict with Spain finally ended with the signing of the Treaty of Münster in 1648 (the Dutch Revolt had begun in 1568), Spinoza was a teenager taking on ever-greater responsibilities within his father’s trading business. As S.

Nadler points out in his biography on Spinoza, the peace that followed the signing of this treaty

“would have been a big boost for Michael’s [i.e., Spinoza’s father’s] business after the sluggish period during the war” (2005: 83), as it would have meant the re-opening of Spanish ports to

Dutch merchant ships, of which a high percentage (disproportionately so for their numbers) were operated by members of Amsterdam’s Sephardic community (to which the Spinozas belonged).

Thus, even in simple financial terms, the outcome of the Dutch Revolt had an impact on

Spinoza’s life. But to Spinoza the political theorist – the Spinoza who turned his back on the world of commerce to devote himself to philosophy – what ultimately mattered was the meaning and legitimacy of the armed revolt against Spanish rule. These were pressing questions for

Spinoza, as is shown by the fact that he addressed them (albeit briefly) in his first major work of

9 His personal library contained a Historie van Karel de II printed in Amsterdam in 1660. This was a Dutch translation of John Dauncey’s The History of his Sacred Majesty Charles II, King of England (…). See the inventory of Spinoza’s book collection in B. Pautrat’s French edition of the Ethics (694). 10 See chapter 1, section 1 of Schama (1987). 18 political philosophy, the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, and then again in the Tractatus-

Politicus, each time providing slightly different answers.

Another violent insurrection was of utmost significance to Spinoza. In 1672, Johan De

Witt’s relatively liberal, republican rule as Grand Pensionary of the States of Holland (a function which in effect made him the most powerful political figure in the Dutch Republic) was overthrown by the ultra-conservative, Calvinist, and pro-Orangist faction – i.e., the faction that wanted to see William III of the House of Orange be granted the office of Stadholder, which had been left vacant by the death of William II in 1650, and which De Witt had laboured to keep vacant and even abolish. After an attempt was made on his life, and bowing to mounting public pressure, De Witt resigned from the office of Grand Pensionary on August 4th, 1672. This was after William III had already been declared Stadholder in July. Yet the Orangists were not satisfied: their coup would be complete only with De Witt’s death. And so Johan De Witt and his brother Cornelis met a gruesome end in late August of 1672 at the hands of a mob gathered outside the Hague courthouse (where Cornelis had been held prisoner). Members of the Orangist circle had (almost certainly) played a large role in inciting the mob (Nadler 2005: 305). As the story goes, when Spinoza, who was living in the Hague at the time, learned what had just taken place, he had to be forcibly confined to his apartment by his landlord, to prevent him from facing the mob with a placard upon which he had written, pithily expressing his anger and disgust:

“ultimi barbarorum (you are the worst of barbarians)” (Nadler 2005: 306). It is, we may presume, thus thanks to Spinoza’s landlord that he did not share the fate of the De Witt brothers.

The question may be asked: did these revolutionary events in English and, especially,

Dutch history move Spinoza to develop a general theory of resistance, on a scale comparable to that of Hobbes or Locke? I have already stated that Spinoza briefly discussed the significance and legitimacy of both the deposition and execution of Charles I, and of the Dutch Revolt, in his 19 political writings. But did Spinoza’s interest in these events prompt him to work out anything like a systematic, theoretical justification or condemnation of political resistance?11

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the question of the theoretical justification of political resistance in Spinoza’s philosophy. Now, as I will explain in greater detail in the next sections of this introduction, scholars of Spinoza’s political thought have, for the most part, tended to focus exclusively on his (in)famous claim that right and power are co-extensive. They have also tended to focus on that aspect of much of Spinoza’s study of politics that goes hand in hand with this basic principle (a principle that defines what I call his political immanentism because, as I will explain, it is an outgrowth of his immanentist metaphysics): viz., Spinoza’s

Machiavelli-inspired realism.12 When these two aspects of Spinoza’s political theory are focused upon, Spinoza is revealed to be something of an anomaly in the history of early modern political philosophy – at least insofar as he appears not to be interested in the question of the legitimacy

(in the narrow, juridical/legal sense of the term) of political resistance at all (cf. Negri 1991).

Thus, if one attends only to what I will label the realist/immanentist lens through which Spinoza analyzes politics in general, it appears the only thing Spinoza can say about the ‘legitimacy’

(understood in the sense of a ‘right’) of resistance is that an act of resistance is legitimate to the

11 Of course, the events of 1672 could not have been behind such an account (if one is to be found) in the TTP, as it had already been published anonymously in 1670. There is, incidentally, yet another connection between Spinoza and contemporary revolutionary politics that it is worth signalling, if only in a footnote. After having moved to Paris in 1670, Franciscus Van den Enden – Spinoza’s former Latin tutor – became involved in a conspiracy to depose the French King, Louis XIV, and “establish a republican form of government in France” (Nadler 106). The plot was uncovered in 1674 and those implicated (including not only Van den Enden, but also another former student of his: retired officer Gilles du Hamel de Latréaumont) were executed (Ibid.). One wonders what view Spinoza would have had of this incident (of which he would surely have received news before his own death in 1677). After all, Van den Enden had been something of an intellectual father-figure to the young Spinoza: introducing him to many works of ancient and modern literature and – one presumes – inculcating in him some of the republican, liberal, and democratic ideals which he (Van den Enden) championed in two works of political philosophy written in the 1660s (the most important of which being his Vrye Politijke Stellingen), and which he apparently sought to put into practice in his plot against the King of France. For more on the intellectual connections between Spinoza and Van den Enden, see: Klever (1991); Israel (2001: Ch. 9); Bedjaï (1990); Nadler (2005: Ch. 5, esp. 103-107). 12 See, e.g.: Den Uyl (1983); Klever (1984); Zac (1985A); Matheron (1985A); Montag (1989). 20 exact degree that it is powerful (since anything in Nature has the right to do whatever it has the power to do).

However, part of what I want to show in this dissertation is that there is a second lens through which Spinoza analyzes politics, one that is frequently lost sight of, or not distinguished from the first with sufficient clarity, by Spinoza’s commentators: viz., that mode of analysis that is guided by the tenets of Spinoza’s ethical doctrine. In the most general terms, what this dissertation will demonstrate is thus, furthermore, that if one pays attention to this second theoretical lens, it becomes possible to discern in Spinoza’s works at least the key elements of – and thus to reconstruct on their basis – a complex account of what I will call the ethico-rational

(as opposed to the juridically-defined or rights-based) ‘legitimacy’ of political resistance.

Let us examine these lenses a little more carefully, and try to get a better understanding of the kind of theoretical justification (or condemnation) of political resistance that can be obtained within each one of them.

0.2. Spinoza’s Political Realism

In the opening paragraphs of his unfinished Political Treatise, Spinoza contrasts the approach “philosophers (philosophi)” have hitherto taken to political questions with the method espoused by “statesmen (politici)”. Spinoza characterizes all previous political philosophy as idle speculation, an armchair exercise in which fictions as beautiful as they are impossible to realize are dreamt up: e.g., the ideal human being, and the correspondingly ideal republic.13 In Spinoza’s view, political philosophers condemn themselves to futility and to “the highest possible

13 Spinoza leaves unspecified which philosophers he has in mind, which is good prima facie evidence that he intended his indictment to be as sweeping as possible. A. Matheron argues that while Spinoza’s critique is most obviously applicable to such figures as Thomas Aquinas and Thomas More, it is also appropriately levelled at Thomas Hobbes. See: Matheron (1986A). 21 discrepancy with practice” to the extent that they “conceive men not as they are, but as they would like them to be”, and content themselves with Utopian fantasies which have no “practical application”. Furthermore, what Spinoza seems to be most critical of in ‘philosophers’ is the fact that they have held humans to be morally accountable for their failure to live up to the model of humanity or of political community that the philosophers themselves have created and hoisted as a universal standard. Having thus “written satire rather than ethics [or true political theory]”,

Spinoza’s political philosophers ‘mock, bemoan, or curse’ humankind, considering themselves to have attained “the summit of wisdom when they have learnt how to shower extravagant praise on a human nature that nowhere exists and to revile that which exists in actuality” (TP I.1).

By contrast, Spinoza praises the writings of statesmen on political matters, alleging that:

“since experience has been their guide, there is nothing they have taught that is remote from practice” (TP I.2). With “that wise statesman” (TP V.7) and “most acute Florentine” (TP X.1) foremost in his mind, Spinoza describes how writers of Machiavelli’s ilk eschew ineffectual moralizing about how humans ought to behave, in favour of a realistic analysis of the way flesh- and-blood human beings tend to behave in various concrete circumstances, so as to be able to harness this knowledge as a means for acquiring and maintaining power. Spinoza’s point is that the writings of Machiavelli and his fellow statesmen yield true knowledge of human affairs because these writings must meet the pragmatic test of political efficacity: i.e., they must enable the anticipation and control of human actions.

Spinoza clearly displays affinities with/for the statesmen in portraying his own theoretical project in the Tractatus Politicus as an effort to approach the study of politics with the same spirit of objective detachment and moral neutrality “as is habitually shown in mathematical studies”, taking, as he puts it, “great care not to deride, bewail, or execrate human actions, but to understand them” (TP I.4). In this vein, Spinoza often declares himself to be engaged in a purely 22 descriptive theoretical enterprise, one in which the passions (or “agitations of the mind”) to which humans are inevitably subject are not regarded “as vices of human nature”, but rather as

“properties pertaining to it in the same way as heat, cold, storm, thunder, and such pertain to the nature of the atmosphere” – i.e., as natural phenomena determined by “definite causes” which it is the business of the moral and political philosopher to ascertain (Ibid.).

Such a bold declaration of Spinoza’s political realism and naturalism is by no means an anomaly, exclusive to the Political Treatise. The Ethics contains very similar statements. For example, in the Preface to part III, Spinoza signals his intention to develop a ‘geometrical science’ of “human actions and appetites, just as if it were a question of lines, planes, and bodies”. In contrast to those who “believe that man” – as a kind of “dominion within a dominion” – “disturbs, rather than follows, the order of Nature, that he has absolute power over his actions, and that he is determined only by himself”, Spinoza wants to avoid deriding or cursing “the affects and actions of men”, striving instead only to “to understand them” through the fixed and universal laws which govern the entire “common order of nature” (E IVP57S), to which humans are no less subject than any other finite part of nature. But perhaps the strongest assertion of the descriptive, politically realist, and morally neutral character of Spinoza’s theoretical project is to be found in a letter Spinoza addressed to Henry Oldenburg. Before going on to list his motives for writing the Theological-Political Treatise, Spinoza states:

For my part, these troubles [the ravages caused by the war between the Dutch and the English] move me neither to laughter nor again to tears, but rather to philosophizing, and to a closer observation of human nature. For I do not think it right to laugh at nature, and far less to grieve over it, reflecting that men, like all else, are only a part of nature, and that I do not know how each part of nature harmonizes with the whole, and how it coheres with other parts. And I realize that it is merely through such lack of understanding that certain features of nature (…) once seemed to me vain, disordered and absurd. But now I let everyone go his own way (Ep 30).

In sum, Spinoza’s realist theoretical project – predicated upon a thoroughgoing metaphysical and methodological naturalism – is to develop a geometrical science of the passions and, by extension, politics (since, to Spinoza, the latter is largely the product of the natural mechanisms of the former). When Spinoza approaches the study of politics in this way, he thus appears to prohibit the introduction of any normative elements into his account, since this would represent a contamination of its descriptive purity

In a sense, such an impression isn’t ill-founded, especially when one reads the passages quoted above in light of the most fundamental claim of Spinoza’s political theory: viz., that the right of any individual in Nature extends as far as its power. The argument Spinoza marshals in support of this position can be summarized as follows. Since God has sovereign right over all things (i.e., God has the right to do whatever he has the power to do), and the power of Nature

(considered as an absolute whole) is nothing but the power of God,14 it follows that Nature in its totality has the right to do whatever it can do. Now, since the power of Nature as absolute is reducible to, or nothing other than, the power of all the individuals in Nature taken together –

Nature’s power being expressed through the determinate power of the individuals it comprises – it follows that each individual in Nature has the supreme right to do everything it has the power to do.15 In other words, the most basic principle of Spinoza’s political theory is that each

14 This is no doubt the most contentious premise in Spinoza’s argument. It is argued for in chapter II, section 2 of the TP, and E. Curley summarizes this argument as follows: “(a) No definition of any finite thing in nature entails the existence of that thing. (b) Therefore, the continuance of any finite thing in existence requires explanation just as much as the beginning of its existence does. (c) No other finite thing can provide the required explanation, since it too requires an explanation both for its beginning to exist and its continuing to exist. (d) What explains the fact that finite things begin to exist, and continue to exist, and hence, the fact that they are able to produce effects, can only be the power of God [i.e., a being whose existence is necessary and absolute, because it is identical with its essence]. (e) Therefore, the power of natural things is the power God” (2001: 131). 15 I have paraphrased Spinoza’s argument as it is put forward in chapter XVI, section 2 of the TTP. It should be compared with the following version from chapter 2, section 3 of the TP: “So from the fact that the power of natural things by which they exist and act is the very power of God, we can readily understand what is the right of Nature. Since God has right over all things, and God’s right is nothing other than God’s power in so far as that is considered as absolutely free, it follows that every natural thing has as much right from Nature as it has power to exist and to act. For the power of every natural thing by which it exists and acts is nothing other than the power of God, which is 24 individual has the right to do whatever it is determined to do by the laws governing its own nature and the interaction of these laws with the laws that govern the common order of Nature, of which each finite individual is but a part: thus, fish have a natural right to swim in the waters they have the power to occupy unmolested, and the big fish eat the little ones by the same natural right. The only thing Nature – once again taken in its absolute sense as synonymous with such expressions as ‘Being as a whole’, or ‘the Universe in its infinity’ – forbids is that which no one has the power and/or the desire to do.

As Spinoza makes plain in a number of passages, the upshot of this argument is that it divests Nature of any inherent moral order. Nature in the absolute sense: “does not frown on strife, or hatred, or anger, or deceit, or on anything at all urged by appetite” (TP II.8). In this respect, at least, Nature does not differentiate between humans and all other individuals in nature, and does not underwrite hierarchical, normative distinctions of right within the human species:

“That is to say, just as the wise man has the sovereign right to do all that reason dictates, i.e., to live according to the laws of reason, so, too, a man who is ignorant and weak-willed has the sovereign right to do all that is urged on him by appetite, i.e., to live according to the laws of appetite” (TTP XVI. 3). Commentators are right to stress the importance of this claim, since in many ways Spinoza’s political theory represents a radical effort to follow the implications of the equation of right and power to their logical limits, and thus to think politics solely within what G.

Deleuze has called a “common [or pure] plane of immanence” (2003: 164; cf. Caillois 322-323).

What Spinoza’s realist political theory militates against is thus the notion that right is a standard independent of the real acts it would help guide, and whose justice or injustice it would serve to appraise. As W. Montag explains, to conceive of right as “entirely immanent” within the

absolutely free”. For a thorough analysis of the minor variations between Spinoza’s different versions of the argument for the co-extensiveness of right and power, see: Curley (1996; 2001). 25 actuality of actions means that right “cannot be the cause of a given relationship (of forces) which it would somehow guarantee or institute because there can be no right prior to this relationship.

Rather, right is an effect of the disposition of forces, entirely dependent upon and subordinate to it” (1989: 100).

Within Spinoza’s immanentist conceptual framework, the question of the foundations, nature, and proper limits of political authority thus ceases to have anything to do with the abstract rights of individual persons, groups, and/or impersonal institutions – abstract in the sense that the rights of the latter would not be a function of their real power. Rather, it becomes a purely quantitative question regarding the distribution and circulation of force/power within the total network of forces/powers that constitutes the State. Spinoza’s political immanentism thus entails that the political authority of person or group x over person or group y is grounded in – and is indeed nothing other than – the various means by which x is able to induce obedience in y.

According to Spinoza’s realist/immanentist analysis of politics, this is the very essence of political authority or obligation. And the degree of efficacity of the means by which person or group x secures the obedience of y – such that the power of y becomes part of the very power, or means of securing obedience, of x – is the ‘rightful’ limit of x’s authority.

0.3. Spinoza’s Political Realism and the Question of Political Resistance

Given what I have just said about Spinoza’s professed political realism and his equation of right with power, it is reasonable to expect that the question of political resistance in Spinoza’s political philosophy should be examined through this lens. And if one accordingly begins with the assumption that right is indeed co-extensive with power, the obvious consequence is that one must abandon what I will call the ‘juridical model’ of resistance (which is perhaps best exemplified by Locke’s Second Treatise on Government), according to which resistance may be 26 justified by pointing to a right to do so that transcends the relations of power one wishes to contest. It may thus seem as though the only justification for resistance available to a Spinozist

(i.e., consistent with Spinoza’s treatment of right as co-extensive with power) would be a de facto and post factum argument, whereby the brute act of resistance translates into a right to do so wherever the act of resistance proves successful (i.e., wherever it has the strength to overcome whatever obstacles are put in its way, and to achieve whatever goals its agents had set out to achieve by its means).16 When the issue is approached from the vantage point of Spinoza’s political realism/immanentism or his attempt to develop a geometrical science of politics – i.e., to understand humans and the State as “parts of Nature”, subject to its immutable laws – it seems all

Spinoza can say about resistance is that it is the necessary outcome of certain social, political, and economic conditions, given the regular and knowable laws governing human nature. Hence, when he approaches the question of resistance in this mode, he treats it as morally neutral: in itself neither good nor evil, it is simply an empirically observable fact, which can in principle be deduced from the general laws of (human) nature. And, crucially, the sole criterion for the

‘legitimacy’ (if it is even appropriate to continue using this term) of an act of resistance appears to be its ‘efficacity’ – the fact that it has effectively been carried out, and overcome whatever forces stood in its way.

0.4. Spinoza’s Ethico-Rational Politics

However, as I mentioned earlier, there is another facet to Spinoza’s political philosophy, one that it is important not to overlook or underplay, and which may or may not be in tension with the first. This second mode of analysis can be called Spinoza’s ethico-rational politics.

When Spinoza takes up political questions from this alternate standpoint, he at times appears to

16 Cf.: Rosenthal (1999: 123); Klever (1984: 99); Zac (1985B: 123). 27 relax his own prescription of descriptive realism and moral neutrality, in favour of a normative inquiry into the manner in which a State ought to be governed such as to conform to the “dictates of reason”, or how the “wise” or “free man” – i.e., the person who lives and acts under the guidance of reason – ought to behave in a political context. Thus, while Spinoza’s philosophy rids the analysis of politics of a certain type of normative judgement, it does not leave us bereft of any normative resources for political action and/or intellectual critique.

I will elucidate what is meant by ‘imperatives of reason’ or ‘normative resources’ in

Spinoza’s ethical theory more fully in chapter 2 of this dissertation. But in order to minimize the potential for confusion, it is worth repeating that Spinoza’s conflation of right and power, i.e., his radical immanentism, entails the rejection of the conception of norms as external impositions or standards, binding upon the will, by reference to which its inclinations might be oriented and/or judged. Spinoza’s Deus sive Natura does not require anything of us in the strong sense of a moral obligation; there is nothing God wants from us, and nothing we are supposed to do or be by

Nature (again in the strong, Kantian sense of a moral obligation independent of our desires).

This being so, Spinoza nonetheless believes, as I will demonstrate in detail in chapter 2 of this dissertation, that reason is capable of distinguishing between better and worse ways to live, where the criterion for such judgements is what is actually advantageous to us, what really furthers our interests. In Spinoza’s view, reason presents us with an objective account of the good life – where this is understood as a way of life that optimally promotes and fulfils our interests – as well as the means of its attainment, in the form of the ‘dictates of reason’. The latter are thus prudential imperatives of the sort that run: ‘If you truly want to maximize your self-interest, then you ought to do x’.

0.5. Spinoza’s Ethico-Rational Politics and the Question of Political Resistance

When commentators have taken up the question of the status of resistance in Spinoza’s political philosophy, they have almost invariably approached the question from the perspective of

Spinoza’s political realism. By contrast, my purpose in this dissertation is to determine the status of resistance in the rational politics of Spinoza’s “wise man”. Thus, I want to ask: Is resistance ethico-rationally justifiable, according to Spinoza? If so, then under what conditions does it agree with the dictates of reason? And what kinds of political resistance does Spinoza think are sanctioned by reason? Hence, stated negatively, what I will demonstrate in this dissertation is that it is not the case for Spinoza that an act of resistance can only be justified de facto and post facto; success is not his sole criterion of justification.17

Where scholars have studied Spinoza’s political philosophy along normative lines (or more precisely: as an extension of his ethics), they have typically answered questions regarding the ethico-rational legitimacy of resistance in the negative.18 As I will show in chapter 3 of this dissertation, there are solid textual grounds for a ‘conservative’ interpretation of Spinoza’s ethico-rational politics, according to which reason always commands strict obedience to whatever political authorities happen to be in place, no matter how absurd or irrational their orders might

17 Make no mistake: even if my hypothesis is correct, it remains the case for Spinoza that the only thing which grants one the right to resist is one’s ability to do so. Spinoza’s ethico-rational politics don’t contravene this basic teaching of his realist politics: i.e., the equivalence of right and power. As was intimated earlier, reason does not give one the right to do what it dictates, unless it also grants one the power: “the natural right of every man is determined not by sound reason, but by his desire and his power” (TTP XVI.3). Hence, it should be borne in mind throughout this dissertation that asking about the legitimacy of resistance for the “wise man”, or examining the question of resistance from the perspective of what Spinoza takes to be the dictates of reason emphatically does not amount to asking whether the rational person has the right to resist. This is why there may in fact ultimately be a tension or contradiction in Spinoza’s political philosophy between its realist and ethico-rational strands/modes. For it may be the case that reason commands what one (absolutely, or under the circumstances) does not have the power – and hence the right – to do. As will be made evident in chapter 2 of this dissertation, in which I will provide a synopsis of the ethics of the Ethics, ‘ought’ most certainly does not always entail ‘can’ for Spinoza, which is why he introduces his ideal ‘free’ or ‘wise man’ in that part of the Ethics which deals with man’s lack of power or bondage to the passions (viz., part IV). 18 Cf.: Smith (1997: 51, 127-129); Feuer (1958: 97-98); McShea (1988: 193); Belaief (1971: 84); Haddad-Chamakh (1984: 48, 52). 29 prove. In fact, as I will explain in chapter 3, according to this plausible conservative reading, not only is it the case that reason prohibits resistance, but it is also the case that the fulfilment of reason in the amor intellectualis Dei renders any political resistance completely useless and, hence, undesirable to the free/wise person.

This reading of Spinoza’s ethico-rational politics, according to which reason demands strict political obedience, is not without textual warrant and thus partially valid. However, the most important – and most original – claim I want to make in this dissertation, and which I will defend in chapters 4 and 5, is that no less forceful arguments can be constructed, on the basis of some of the core principles of Spinoza’s ethical theory, for the claim that, in Spinoza’s view, reason does command (or at least sanction) political resistance as long as these acts of resistance meet certain conditions.

As I will explain in chapter 4, the ultimate criterion for the ethico-rational validation of an act of resistance is the empowerment of its agent(s). Since one’s true empowerment is, in

Spinoza’s view, inextricably related to the empowerment of all those with whom one’s life is intertwined, and the chief source of personal empowerment is the rational understanding of nature’s causal order, it follows that any act of resistance ought to contribute to an increase in the cognitive powers of the greatest number (including, ideally, those against whom it is directed).

In chapter 6, I will go on to demonstrate that, by Spinoza’s own reckoning, the philosophical critique of prejudices through the development of adequate ideas regarding their constitution can serve to undermine the disempowering forms of rule that depend upon them.

Assuming this to be the case in chapters 4 and 5, I will there contend that the critique of prejudices is the ethico-rationally justified form of resistance par excellence. Thus, a State is only organized rationally if it secures institutional ‘spaces’ for the exercise of this form of resistance as part of its normal functioning. In addition, chapters 4 and 5 make the case that 30 active civil disobedience subverting a political regime that prohibits the continuous exercise of resistance-as-critique is not only justified but is akin to a duty if individuals are to live up to

Spinoza’s paradigm of rationality, the “wise” or “free” person.

0.6. Need for the Dissertation: Survey of the Secondary Literature

As I have already intimated, the question of the justification of political resistance in

Spinoza’s political philosophy has not received much attention in the secondary literature. This

is likely because scholars have mistakenly regarded Spinoza’s realist/immanentist lens as the

only lens through which Spinoza analyzes politics, and thus taken Spinoza’s conflation of right

and power as obviating the need for any lengthy study of the issue of the ‘legitimacy’ of political

resistance: within Spinoza’s realist/immanentist mode of analysis, resistance is simply the

inevitable outcome of certain socio-political conditions, given the invariable laws of human

nature, and the degree to which an act of resistance is justified is simply the degree to which it

has the power to be effectively carried out – end of story.19 Hence, what I am alleging is that

there is a broad tendency among Spinoza’s commentators to overlook or downright exclude the

possibility of an ethical justification for political resistance in Spinoza’s philosophical writings.

For example, among the myriad French scholars who have devoted books and/or articles

to Spinoza’s politics, only three have studied the issue of political resistance in Spinoza’s works

in any detail: M. Francès (1958); F. Haddad-Chamakh (1980); and more recently L. Bove (1996).

All three end up focussing almost exclusively on Spinoza’s realist – i.e., morally neutral –

analysis of political resistance as simply the necessary result of certain oppressive political

conditions, given the regular and knowable laws of human behaviour. However, they do so in a

19 In other words, if it really is the case that Spinoza approaches the study of politics from an exclusively realist/immanentist perspective, just about all one can say about resistance in Spinoza’s political philosophy has already been covered – in nuce, to be sure – in section 2 of this introduction. 31

way that is often terminologically and conceptually confused, precisely because they admit

aspects of the properly ethico-rational justification I have outlined in the preceding section, without having explicitly identified it as such and clearly demarcated it from the realist/immanentist ‘justification’ – or sometimes even despite having denied its existence.

Thus, in “La liberté politique selon Spinoza”, Francès rightfully discerns in Spinoza’s writings a “droit d’insurrection populaire” (320). In properly Spinozist fashion, she treats this

‘right to revolt’ as a function of the multitude’s actual power to revolt. Moreover, she follows

Spinoza’s realist analysis in demonstrating such revolt to be ineluctable under certain conditions.

Though she passes the possibility of a distinctly ethico-rational justification of political resistance over in silence, she nevertheless asserts that, to Spinoza, there are types of political abuses

“contre lesquels la révolte des citoyens est fondée [i.e., is justified]” (Ibid.; Italics mine). This suggests more than a merely realist/de facto ‘justification’ of resistance; it implies that there are forms of political abuse that it is illegitimate – on some set of criteria left unspecified in Francès’ article, but which can only be ethico-rational – to resist.

Haddad-Chamakh gets into similar difficulties in her book Philosophie systématique et système de philosophie politique chez Spinoza. She states in no uncertain terms that “Spinoza, ne concevant pas la science comme une ‘science morale’, ne conçoit certainement pas le droit à l’insurrection comme une exigence morale: l’insurrection est la conséquence nécessaire de la mauvaise gestion des affaires de l’État” (1980: 263).20 She thus explicitly rejects both the

general possibility of the existence of an ‘ethical science’ of politics in Spinoza’s writings, and

the specific possibility that such a Spinozist ‘ethical science’ of politics might endorse political

resistance. And yet elsewhere in the same book she declares that:

20 A little further on the same page Haddad-Chamakh adds: “(…) il nous paraît incompatible avec le caractère propre de la méthode de recherche et d’analyse préconisée par Spinoza au début du Traité Politique ainsi qu’avec son réalisme politique d’attribuer à Spinoza la conception d’un droit – moral – à l’insurrection” (1980: 263). 32

Il peut arriver qu’il soit raisonnable, c’est-à-dire conforme à l’intérêt de l’individu ou de l’ensemble du corps social, de s’opposer aux détenteurs de fait du pouvoir, pour la raison qu’ils font obstacle ou s’opposent même, activement, au but spécifique de l’État, qui consiste à assurer à tous sécurité, paix, et la vie bonne (256).

Granted, nothing in this passage necessarily falls outside of Spinoza’s realist analysis of the

question of resistance. But it does hint strongly at the possibility of the kind of ethico-rational

justification for political resistance at least the fundamental principles of which, I want to argue,

may be gleaned from Spinoza’s writings, and which hinges on the fact that it is sometimes in our

interest to resist disempowering forms of rule (i.e., those that would prevent us from leading “la

vie bonne” by eliminating what is not only an essential means to its obtainment, but also one of

its integral components: viz., the free exchange of ideas with others). However, another passage,

in which Haddad-Chamakh now explains how revolt can never be in our interest, undeniably

operates on the level of Spinoza’s ethico-rational analysis of the question of political resistance:

“Si rien ne justifie la révolte, si tout exige et justifie l’obéissance, c’est que pour Spinoza, les

hommes ne sont hommes que dans la société politique (…)” (1980: 233). For here Haddad-

Chamakh speaks explicitly of interests justifying a certain course of action (even if such action is

not taken), and any such talk necessarily exceeds the jurisdiction of Spinoza’s

realist/immanentist analysis. The latter cannot ‘demand’ or ‘recommend’, and thus ‘justify’ or

‘validate’ anything on the grounds that a given course of action (e.g., obedience or resistance)

would cater to one’s true interests – only Spinoza’s ethico-rational analysis may do so. In other

words, the justification of either obedience or resistance on the grounds that one or the other

would serve one’s true interests belongs essentially and exclusively to Spinoza’s ethico-rational

study of politics. Haddad-Chamakh fails to recognize this. Thus, while she denies the existence

of a Spinozist ‘ethical science’ of politics, and, for the most part, examines the question of the

‘right of resistance’ in Spinoza’s political thought from the perspective of his realism and 33

immanentism, she nonetheless unwittingly makes use of concepts properly belonging to such an

‘ethical science’ of politics – what I have called Spinoza’s ethico-rational political discourse.

As I will make plain where appropriate, my reading of Spinoza’s political thought (and

especially of chapter XX of the TTP) bears many points in common with Bove’s interpretation,

as put forward in La stratégie du conatus: affirmation et résistance chez Spinoza.21 Suffice it to say that I would agree with almost all of the points Bove makes in his book pertaining to the question of the justification of political resistance in Spinoza’s philosophy, if they could somehow be extricated from the larger argument or interpretation into which they are set.

Ultimately, the problem in Bove’s case is much the same as that of Francès and Haddad-

Chamakh: Bove’s notable insights concerning the positive status of resistance in Spinoza’s political thought are cast in an overarching conceptual framework that is inadequate, in part because it is at odds with the very nature of Bove’s own insights. It is as if, while Bove is able to find many of the same things I find in Spinoza’s TTP about the importance of perpetual resistance in the form of rational critique, or about the validity of open revolt against the

Sovereign under specific conditions, he lacks the hermeneutic ‘key’ to be able to appreciate the full significance of his own discoveries, or to present them as what they truly are. Thus, in his examination of the question of resistance in Spinoza’s political thought, Bove affirms that in the

TTP Spinoza puts forward “une éthique de la résistance” (1996: 275). Just prior to doing so,

Bove writes:

Ainsi, s’agit-il moins pour la philosophie, comme pour une libre République, de produire des sujets de l’obéissance parfaitement adaptés à une société donnée, que de former des hommes qui soient au contraire capables de résister à la contrainte que vont exercer sur leur esprit, aussi bien l’État que les différentes sectes qui visent l’hégémonie; des hommes capables de résister aux pouvoirs. L’éducation doit ainsi

21 In particular, my argument in section 5 of chapter 4 will bear many points of agreement with that of Bove in the section of his book entitled “C’est la résistance qui fait le citoyen” (264-278). I will make all of these explicit in due course. 34

à la fois prolonger la fonction de l’État et fournir aux citoyens la force de s’en défendre (1996: 273; Italics mine).

As will be evident from my own argument in chapter 4 of this dissertation, I completely concur

with these isolated remarks. But when they are reinserted into their larger context in Bove’s

book, they become rather puzzling – perhaps downright unintelligible. For much like Francès

and Haddad-Chamakh, Bove only ever explicitly or formally treats the question of resistance in

Spinoza’s thought from the perspective of the latter’s realist/immanentist understanding of

politics. The following excerpt is representative of this dominant tendency in Bove’s work:

[La logique tyrannique du roi] se comprend selon les seules lois des conditions matérielles et des affects (des désirs et des volontés) qu’elles déterminent; soit la logique de l’ambition de domination qui, dans son déploiement (et le nécessaire aveuglement qu’elle enveloppe), tend à entraîner le souverain au-delà de la limite physique de ce qui pour les sujets est présentement supportable du fait, chez eux aussi, de leurs propres manières d’être affectés, des lois de la nature humaine en général, mais aussi des préjugés spécifiques à une nation, de l’attachement particulier à certaines règles, à certaines valeurs, etc… (1996: 286).

Bove brings this characteristic passage to a close by asserting that “La nécessité physique ou

logique est donc bien, pour Spinoza, la caractéristique objective et amorale du procès de

résistance” (Ibid.; Italics mine). And from this realist/immanentist and thus morally neutral standpoint, it becomes very difficult to grasp what Bove might mean by an “ethic of resistance”, or what the value of the ‘must’ in the above-cited passage from p. 273 might be (“L’éducation doit ainsi à la fois prolonger la fonction de l’État et fournir aux citoyens la force de s’en

défendre”). As I explained in my discussion of Haddad-Chamakh’s work, Spinoza’s

realist/immanentist study of politics cannot, in and of itself, make recommendations as to how

one ought to behave politically in order to maximize one’s power (i.e., in order to live in

accordance with the dictates of reason, and thus with Spinoza’s ethical teachings); it tells us only

what does, as a simple matter of fact, occur in various circumstances, given the immutable laws

of human nature. Only Spinoza’s ethico-rational analysis of politics can deliver imperatives (i.e., 35 prudential counsels) regarding how one should behave in a political context such as to maximize one’s potentia existendi, and thus also serve to ‘justify’ or ‘validate’ – from the perspective of the dictates of reason – a certain course of action (e.g., either obedience or disobedience). Bove’s book undeniably contains elements belonging to the properly ethico-rational study of the question of the validity of political resistance. Unfortunately, these elements are not explicitly treated as such and in their own right, but confusedly, as an incongruous part of a sustained and often brilliant realist/immanentist study of the question of resistance.

The situation is no better in the English secondary literature. Among the number of

English-language commentaries on Spinoza’s politics of which I am aware, only two appear to go any distance towards arguing that Spinoza’s ethical teachings may have led him to look favourably upon political resistance, under certain conditions: R. McShea’s The Political

Philosophy of Spinoza, and L.S. Feuer’s Spinoza and the Rise of Liberalism. But even these do not contain much in the way of a rigorous and sustained argument to this effect. Thus, although

McShea notes that, to Spinoza, reason can supply “the justification for disobedience” (185), he doesn’t do much to elucidate what he means by this. He only suggests (a little later) that Spinoza

“[points] to the right of revolution” (191) by distinguishing between particular sovereigns and sovereignty itself. Since no one ought to wish to return to the state of nature, it would be irrational “to oppose the existence of sovereignty” (192). But McShea insists that Spinoza believed that “it might at times (…) be reasonable to oppose the actual holder of sovereign power, on the ground that he hinders or defeats the aim of sovereignty itself” (Ibid.). Thus,

McShea contends that those passages in which (as we shall see) Spinoza claims that obedience is always rational go “beyond the spirit of his own thought” (193). All of the preceding suggests that McShea glimpsed, but did not thoroughly explore, the possibility that Spinoza’s writings 36

might offer what I am calling an ethico-rational justification of political resistance. This is

confirmed in a footnote:

There is no moral ‘right’ of revolution for Spinoza, of course. For a rational man, revolution is justified by sufficient reason and good chance of success – success, meaning not only victory but a better government following the one against which he revolts (195, fn. 68; Italics mine).

McShea is correct to say that Spinoza’s ethico-rational justification of resistance does not operate

on the basis of ‘rights’. Furthermore, it is clear that by a “sufficient reason” that would ‘justify’

political resistance, McShea means a rational calculation of our interests – i.e., the fact that such

resistance can be foreseen to maximize our potentia existendi. And this is more or less all I mean

by an ethico-rational justification of political resistance in Spinoza’s philosophy. Be it noted in

closing, however, that I disagree with McShea’s suggestion that an estimation of “a good chance

of success” is central to the ethico-rational validity of resistance, according to Spinoza. For as

we shall see in chapter 4, it can be argued that Spinoza believed that resistance to the threat of

tyranny is a rational imperative, even when the prospects of success (as McShea defines it) for

such acts of resistance are dim. This is because what matters in the ethico-rational justification

of resistance to tyranny isn’t merely the possibility of improving one’s political environment –

i.e., of establishing a more empowering regime – but also the refusal to allow one’s virtue or

perfection to be compromised. And this, as we shall see, leads Spinoza to the ethico-rational

justification of what can be described as philosophical martyrdom in the defence of libertas

philosophandi – a ‘martyrdom’ that, as I will explain in chapters 4 and 5, and as McShea himself

is one of the very few scholars to have recognized (cf. McShea 66; 169), does not contradict

Spinoza’s fundamental doctrine of the conatus essendi.

As mentioned earlier, the other English-language study of Spinoza’s political thought to have ascribed revolutionary sympathies to Spinoza is Feuer’s Spinoza and the Rise of Liberalism. 37

However, Feuer’s book does even less than McShea’s to flesh out the precise nature of these sympathies through a close reading of Spinoza’s writings. In fact, Feuer regards Spinoza’s revolutionary leanings as youthful caprice, of which one would be hard-pressed to find anything more than the odd vestige in Spinoza’s principal philosophical writings. Feuer’s depiction of the young Spinoza as a democratic revolutionary is a highly conjectural reconstruction based on the presumed ideological leanings of the types of people Spinoza is thought to have associated with in the time shortly before and after his excommunication, as well as on biographical anecdotes like the one about Spinoza’s self-portrait in the guise of Masaniello (for more on which, see chapter 6, section 6, of this dissertation). When Feuer turns to Spinoza’s ‘mature’ philosophical writings (the Ethics, TTP, and TP) with the question of the legitimacy of political resistance in mind, almost all he sees are arguments for its irrationality. In short, Feuer is not much help to anyone looking to establish – on the basis of a reading of Spinoza’s major philosophical works – that Spinoza regarded political resistance as conforming to the dictates of reason.

0.7. Methodology and Outline of the Dissertation

This is a dissertation in the history of political ideas. As such, its objective is not to prove

Spinoza right or wrong, to criticize or refute this or that aspect of Spinoza’s thought (e.g., by identifying points of inconsistency or tension within it – though I will not, for that matter, shy away from doing so either), but rather, to shed light on a dimension of Spinoza’s political theory that has gone largely uncharted. In other words, its aim is historical in character: to enable a new understanding of an important, but widely overlooked aspect of Spinoza’s political philosophy.

This dissertation will therefore be heavily exegetical in character. There is simply no way around it: if one wishes to study any given subject in the history of philosophy, one must tarry with the relevant texts, reading them closely and in their original language. 38

However, the predominantly exegetical nature of this dissertation will not exclude a significant amount of interpretative reconstruction. For ultimately my claim is not that Spinoza himself developed, on the basis of his ethical teachings, a thoroughgoing and explicit account of the validity of political resistance under certain circumstances. My contention, properly speaking, is that a systematic and general, ethico-rational justification for the validity of political resistance under certain conditions can be derived from Spinoza’s ethics, as well as his own attempts to apply the findings of his ethical science to the domain of politics. In other words, while Spinoza’s own ethico-rational analyses of politics contain evidence that he himself glimpsed the possibility of constructing a full-fledged theory of resistance on the basis of his ethical doctrine, many aspects of this theory – as it will be presented in this dissertation – remain extrapolations grounded in (but no more than grounded in) Spinoza’s writings.

Finally, although I have already given a sense of the content of each of the chapters of this dissertation in the preceding, the reader may find a brief synopsis of the plan of this dissertation helpful at this point.

This dissertation is devoted to the question of the justification of political resistance in

Spinoza’s philosophy. More precisely, its purpose is to ascertain what Spinoza’s ethical teachings might have to say, or might entail, regarding the validity of political resistance. Do they condemn any and all acts of political resistance? Or do they allow for certain forms of political resistance, under certain conditions?

Strictly speaking, the question of the ethical legitimacy of political resistance is dealt with in chapters 3 through 5 of this dissertation. These chapters thus represent this dissertation’s argumentative core. But the examination of this question must be preceded by a general exposition of Spinoza’s ethical doctrine itself. We obviously cannot answer the question of the legitimacy of political resistance from the standpoint of Spinoza’s ethics without a proper 39 understanding of the latter’s foundations and principal tenets. It is the task of chapters 1 and 2, then, to provide a detailed overview of Spinoza’s ethics.

More specifically, chapter 1 begins by laying bare the metaphysical and anthropological foundations of Spinoza’s ethical theory. In the rest of the chapter, I present the evidence in favour of a radically subjectivist and politico-conventionalist interpretation of Spinoza’s ethical and meta-ethical theory. According to this reading, which I have labelled ‘proto-Nietzschean’, it is Spinoza’s belief that all morally evaluative concepts (e.g., good and evil, or perfection and imperfection) are sheer fictions – “beings of the imagination” or symptoms of our incapacity to think perfectly rationally. They have no objective basis in the nature of things, as they are merely the product of, or entirely relative to, our subjective dispositions and passions (which, to Spinoza, is once again to say that they are mere testimony to the defects of our knowledge). This means that they cannot form the basis for any real and enduring consensus among human beings. In fact, they are almost inevitably sources of strife. Yet consensus is indispensable to us, as even our mere survival depends upon our ability to cooperate, to see eye-to-eye. Hence, according to this reading, Spinoza’s ethical theory would be inseparable from his politics, for the reason that moral values are the result of convention, of political artifice: good and evil, just and unjust, and so on, are what the Sovereign decrees them to be, as the Sovereign is precisely that person or group of persons having been granted the power, by convention, to settle such questions.

It should be stressed that no scholar of Spinoza’s philosophy of which I am aware has put forward such a reading point-for-point. However, one frequently comes across many of its key elements in the secondary literature on Spinoza. As I will make plain, this is because this reading rests upon a great deal of at least prima facie textual support: i.e., there are important strands in

Spinoza’s writings that, at the very least, appear to authorize such an interpretation. In other words, the proto-Nietzschean reading of Spinoza’s ethical doctrine I put forward in chapter 1 40 makes starker, by connecting to each other, and drawing out the furthest possible implications of, certain tendencies both in the secondary literature on Spinoza and in Spinoza’s writings themselves – potential, radically subjectivist and conventionalist ramifications, the full extent of which neither Spinoza, nor even the commentators in question, likely recognized, let alone intended or endorsed. It is imperative that this reading should be given a scrupulous exposition and fair hearing, for if it proves to be either the only possible, or simply the most cogent, reading of Spinoza’s ethical theory, then the principal arguments of this dissertation (as presented in chapters 3 through 5) do not even get off the ground. Indeed, the very questions this dissertation is meant to address lose their meaning.

In chapter 2, I present a very different account of Spinoza’s ethical and meta-ethical theory, one that is meant, if not to utterly refute, at the very least to heavily qualify and partially reject the claims of the proto-Nietzschean reading. I demonstrate that, in Spinoza’s view, it is in fact possible to achieve rational and thus certain moral knowledge – i.e., (as he would put it)

“adequate knowledge” regarding the condition, activity, or mode of life that is maximally empowering, and that therefore optimally fulfils our interests (in short: that represents the highest good for human beings). Indeed, as I show, the Ethics itself, Spinoza’s magnum opus, is an attempt to develop such a ‘geometrical science’ of ethics: i.e., to produce an objective, systematic account of the good life (at least in general terms), as well as the means to its attainment, that is valid for all human beings without exception. Furthermore, I make the claim that the “true knowledge of good and evil”, which I argue is encapsulated in the enigmatic exemplar humanae naturae introduced in the Preface to part IV of the Ethics, is rooted in a grasp of the “laws of our own nature” – i.e., of the rational nature which all humans share qua human. As I make plain, it is because it is deduced from the adequate knowledge of that which all humans share qua human

(viz., reason) that the “true knowledge of good and evil” must remain abstract or formal, issuing 41 only universal prudential imperatives and leaving unspecified the wealth of detail involved in particular actions (which alone are the proper object of experimentation). But it is this same abstract generality that also makes it the grounds for consensus among humans, identifying as it does only what is of common interest to the whole of humanity: a summum bonum that is shared both in the sense of a goal that is, in principle, common to each individual, but also in the sense that all can, in principle, participate in it equally (which we know because this summum bonum is

“deduced from the very essence of man, insofar as that essence is defined by reason”).

Drawing upon the introductory expositions of chapters 1 and 2, chapter 3 takes up the central question of this dissertation: viz., the question regarding what I have called the ethico- rational legitimacy of political resistance. In it, I present a comprehensive overview of the various argumentative strategies that may be discerned in Spinoza’s writings in support of the ethico-rational necessity of unconditional obedience to political authority. These ethico-rational argumentative strategies are quite diverse. Some are purely pragmatic or prudential in nature.22

Other arguments are based upon the ethico-rational assessment of the motives or, in Spinoza’s technical language, the affects behind political resistance. Yet another simply consists in showing how the maxim of political resistance cannot withstand a kind of quasi-Kantian ‘test of universalization’. The final argumentative strategy to be gleaned from Spinoza’s works involves showing that the fulfilment of reason (and thus the fulfilment of our highest good) in the knowledge of God entails political quietism – i.e., an indifference to political matters and a passive acceptance of the given state of affairs.

22 The first of these moves from a negative theoretical account of life in the absence of State-power (i.e., in the so- called ‘state of nature’) based on Spinoza’s ‘scientific’ analysis of the passional mechanisms that govern human behaviour, to the conclusion that obedience to the commands of political authorities – no matter how absurd or objectionable – is always the lesser of two evils. The second draws prudential conclusions from a study of historical examples. 42

In chapter 4, I put forward an original argument, based on textual evidence no less compelling than that which is marshalled in chapter 3 in support of the claim that only strict obedience to the commands of the Sovereign is ever in accordance with the dictates of reason, but this time in support of the claim that Spinoza may be said to have regarded political resistance as itself commanded by reason: (1) perpetually/normally in the form of rational critique; and (2) exceptionally/temporarily as the struggle – violent if need be – against any attempt to suppress freedom of thought and speech (and thus to prohibit the first form of rationally-sanctioned resistance). In fact, I go one step further, arguing that the same ethical and epistemological principles that justify resistance to any effort to abolish libertas philosophandi (freedom to philosophize) also justify resistance to any effort to impose bodily conditions demonstrably detrimental (within Spinoza’s system of thought) to our power of understanding.23 The conditions for the ethico-rational justification of resistance I am able to derive from Spinoza’s writings, coupled with the distinction Spinoza upholds in (much of) the TTP between an almost unlimited freedom of thought and speech on the one hand, and, on the other hand, an unconditional imperative to obey the dictates of the Sovereign in one’s actions, serve to minimize apparent tensions between the two strands in Spinoza’s thinking on the question of political obligation which are the focus of chapters 3 and 4 respectively. But as chapter 4 makes clear, this tension cannot be completely eliminated: it is impossible to reconcile all of what Spinoza has

23 However, I am forced to concede that this further political ramification of the basic tenets of Spinoza’s ethics is not one that Spinoza ever points to explicitly, nor is it a claim that Spinoza himself would likely have been comfortable making (given what chapter 3 reveals to have been the highly conservative character of much of his ethico-rational analysis of political obligation), even though it is really not far at all from the claim that, from an ethico-rational standpoint, every attempt to suppress the freedom of thought and/or the freedom of speech ought to be resisted. 43 to say, or all of what follows from Spinoza’s ethics and ethico-rational analysis of politics, pertaining to the issue of the ethico-rational validity of political resistance.24

Chapter 5 addresses, and ultimately defuses, three major objections that might foreseeably be brought against the claim, defended in chapter 4, that Spinoza did indeed regard political resistance as ethico-rationally justified under certain conditions (or at least that such an ethico- rational justification could easily be inferred from his ethics and ethico-rational analysis of politics generally). The first objection is based on proposition 72 of part IV of the Ethics, according to which the rational person ought never to break faith. The second objection makes a machine de guerre out of Spinoza’s many, allegedly disparaging remarks regarding the moral character of the masses. Finally, the third objection has to do with Spinoza’s repeated statements regarding the ineradicable uncertainty of all ethical/political action.

Finally, the purpose of chapter 6 is to demonstrate that which, for the sake of my argument, is merely assumed in chapter 4 (and 5): viz., that the rational critique of prejudices, i.e., the development of adequate ideas, can constitute a form of political resistance. Its goal is thus to show that the formation of what Spinoza labels adequate ideas can serve to undermine the authority of particular institutions, classes, or persons by uncovering and thus neutralizing the often dubious and surreptitious physical, economic, and psychological-ideological means through which their power is exercised. I do so by looking to Spinoza’s own writings for an example of such a politically subversive use of adequate ideas. Specifically, I argue that such an example is to be found in two pivotal sections in the Ethics (viz., the Appendix to part I and the Preface to part IV), read in conjunction with the Preface to Spinoza’s TTP. In these texts, as I make plain,

24 For, as I show in chapters 3 and 4, sitting alongside passages in which Spinoza asserts an unconditional ethico- rational imperative of obedience are passages that argue in favour of the conditional validity of even the second form of resistance listed above: viz., resistance by whatever means necessary when the fundamental personal freedoms of thought and speech are put in peril, either by the Sovereign-turned-tyrant, or by some group of individuals within the State, from whose oppressive agenda the Sovereign cannot or will not protect the rest of the citizenry. 44

Spinoza uncovers the causes lying behind, and, hence, enables his readers to arrive at an adequate understanding of, the “supreme mystery of despotism” – i.e., how rulers can induce ostensibly voluntary slavery through the cultivation of sad affects and (hence) the disempowering of their subjects. My contention is that if, as Spinoza explicitly asserts, the causes of willing subjugation must remain secret to be effective, then Spinoza’s effort to disclose them is, by his own account, a subversive act with respect to the political regimes or forces whose success is predicated upon their being kept out of sight. 45

Chapter 1

“Cognitio boni & mali”: Spinoza’s Ethical Theory (I)

1.1. Introduction

In this dissertation, I have set out to examine the question of the justification of political resistance in Spinoza’s philosophy. In my introduction, I briefly took up the question of the status of resistance in Spinoza’s political philosophy from the perspective of Spinoza’s political realism and immanentism – i.e., his morally neutral, “geometrical science” of politics, and his treatment of right and power as coextensive. Spinoza often presents his study of politics as an attempt to gain an objective understanding of the natural mechanisms that determine human behaviour. As Spinoza casts it, such a study requires the bracketing of all morally evaluative categories; its object is not to judge the moral value of human conduct, but merely to exhibit and comprehend its causes.

However, Spinoza regularly compromises the professed purity of what I have called his

‘realist/immanentist’ mode of analysis by re-introducing an ethical frame of reference into his study of politics. Such departures from the strictures of his realist/immanentist mode of analysis are so frequent that one can justifiably speak of a second theoretical lens through which Spinoza analyzes politics. The analyses Spinoza carries out within this second mode of inquiry – which I have labelled ‘ethico-rational’ – address the following types of questions: What political behaviour is most consistent with the fundamental principles of ethics? How ought one to behave politically, if one wishes to realize one’s full potential and thus live up to the model of human nature?

My overarching aim is to ascertain whether or not Spinoza regards political resistance as ethico-rationally justified. Accordingly, the question I mean to answer is whether political 46 resistance is ever demanded by, or at least in harmony with, Spinoza’s ethical principles. If it is, then what kind(s) of political resistance might Spinoza’s ethical doctrine underwrite, and under what conditions? Obviously, these questions can only be answered on the basis of a proper understanding of Spinoza’s ethical teachings. Hence, this chapter and the next are intended to provide a detailed reading of Spinoza’s ethical and meta-ethical theory.

More specifically, the object of the present chapter is twofold. First, I want to lay bare the metaphysical and anthropological foundations of Spinoza’s ethical and meta-ethical thought.

Second, I want to map out a possible, radically subjectivist and politico-conventionalist reading of Spinoza’s meta-ethics. Although none of Spinoza’s commentators have, to my knowledge, put forward such a reading point-for-point, many if not all of the key elements of this interpretation are to be found in the secondary literature on Spinoza. This is no doubt because, as I will show, they are supported by quite a bit of at least prima facie textual evidence. I will thus merely incorporate many of these various elements of interpretation already discernible in the works of certain commentators into a consistent and far-reaching interpretation that draws out the furthest, radically subjectivist and conventionalist implications of at least certain tendencies in Spinoza’s writings – implications that neither Spinoza himself, nor even the commentators who have pointed to these tendencies, likely recognized, let alone intended or endorsed.

This interpretation casts Spinoza as a kind of proto-Nietzschean, pronouncing the gods

(i.e., all objective moral values) dead from his rational vantage point jenseits von güt und böse.

According to this interpretation, Spinoza’s meta-ethical doctrine would boil down to the claim that all knowledge of good and evil must be considered inadequate since it is grounded in – or more precisely, reducible to – the passive affects of joy and sadness themselves. To think adequately, rationally, scientifically, would thus be to understand that such moral categories are 47 fictions – figments of the imagination – that have no footing in the nature of things.25 In the next chapter I will present a comprehensive alternative to this line of interpretation.

1.2. Metaphysical and Anthropological Foundations

Spinoza’s Ethics is, as its title suggests, a book about ethics. But if this is the case, why does Spinoza relegate the presentation of his ethical doctrine to its last two parts (viz., parts IV and V)? Like many of his contemporaries, Spinoza subscribed to a view of ethics inherited from

Ancient Greek philosophy, according to which ethics is that philosophical discipline of which the proper object of reflection is the nature of the good or happy life, as well as the means to its obtainment.26 Furthermore, and again like many of his contemporaries, Spinoza believed the answer to these questions presupposed knowledge of the nature of the world, as well as of our place in it (i.e., of our own nature). In other words, Spinoza, like most of his contemporaries – certainly the bulk of Descartes’ disciples, both faithful and heterodox – regarded his ethics as resting upon his metaphysics/ontology, epistemology, physics, and anthropology (cf. Ep 27).27

Hence, parts I through III of the Ethics – part I being devoted to metaphysics, part II to epistemology and physics, and part III to anthropology conceived as a theory of the passions – lay the groundwork for the ethical doctrine Spinoza puts forward in parts IV and V (Garrett 1996:

268).

25 As we shall see, one finds versions or aspects of this position articulated in the works of, e.g.: Taylor (1937); Wolfson (1961); Caillois (1972); Curley (1973); Groen (1978); Yovel (1985); Kashap (1987); Hampshire (1988); Lermond (1988); Boss (1992); and Walther (1992). 26 Hence, Spinoza’s Ethica could just as well have been called De Vita Bona or De Vita Beata. 27 The foundational text for this common hierarchical view of the sciences within the Cartesian tradition (broadly construed) is, of course, the Preface to the French edition of Descartes’ Principes, in which he writes: “Ainsi toute la Philosophie est comme un arbre, dont les racines sont la Métaphysique, le tronc est la Physique, & les branches qui sortent de ce tronc sont toutes les autres sciences, qui se réduisent à trois principales, à savoir la Médecine, la Mécanique & la Morale, j’entends la plus haute et la plus parfaite Morale, qui, présupposant une entière connaissance des autres sciences, est le dernier degré de la Sagesse. Or comme ce n’est pas des racines, ni du tronc des arbres, qu’on cueille les fruits, mais seulement des extrémités de leurs branches, ainsi la principale utilité de la Philosophie dépend de celles de ses parties qu’on ne peut apprendre que les dernières”(AT IX, 14-15; Italics mine). 48

The most important concept introduced in these earlier stages of the Ethics with respect to

Spinoza’s ethical teachings is that of the conatus essendi (Garrett 1996: 271). At bottom, the latter consists in the claim that: “Each thing, as far as it can by its own power (quantum in se est),28 strives to persevere in its being (in suo esse perseverare conatur)” (E IIIP6). In part I of the Ethics, Spinoza shows how all individuals in Nature are mere modifications or ‘modes’ expressing God’s infinite attributes (e.g., Thought and Extension) – and thus the absolutely infinite power by which God acts and exists (E IP34) – in “a certain and determinate way” (E

IP25C). Singular beings in Nature have no existence ‘outside’ of God; they do no exist in se, but only as determinate or limited aspects of God’s absolute (i.e., unlimited, unconditioned) being.

All individuals in Nature are ontologically derivative: they are but diverse ways in and through which God’s power is expressed (i.e., effects of which God is the immanent, not transitive/external, cause; cf. E IP18 & Ep 73). This fact, coupled with the interconnected facts that “no thing has anything in itself by which it can be destroyed, or (sive) which takes its existence away (existentiam tollat)” (E IIIP4), but rather, each thing is “opposed to everything which can take its existence away” (E IIIP5), entails that each thing – considered per se, or simply insofar as it is the thing it is – strives to affirm itself or persist in its existence as that thing.29 In other words, as Spinoza makes clear in Ethics IIIP7, considered in itself (i.e., in isolation from all other things), “the striving by which each thing strives to persevere in being is nothing but the actual essence of the thing”. The essence of x, where x is any thing in Nature, is

28 E. Curley’s translation of “quantum in se est” (which I have just quoted), while by no means inappropriate, is a bit loose. R.H.M. Elwes’ more literal translation of the phrase is “insofar as it is in itself”, and this literal sense should be kept in mind in what follows. Incidentally, it is curious that Curley should have opted not to maintain Elwes’ phrasing since, in a paper written in 1968 and published in 1973 – and thus predating the publication of his translation by over two decades – he himself declares Elwes’ rendering “fundamentally right” (1973: 367) and “basically right in spirit” (368). 29 In this manner, Spinoza’s conatus-doctrine represents the ontologization of a logical truth: viz., the principle of non-contradiction. Its validity thus rests upon what one might call the guiding intuition or fundamental postulate of Spinoza’s philosophy: viz., that being is at once rationally intelligible and an inherent power of self-expression or self-affirmation. 49 inherently a tendency to affirm, posit, or ‘actualize’ the existence of x – i.e., to do all of those things which follow from its nature, and which are conducive to its realization and perseverence in being.30 Another name Spinoza employs to refer to the conatus – and, hence, to the very essence – of any individual insofar as this striving applies to both mind and body, and insofar as the individual is aware of it, is “desire (cupiditas)”. “Appetite (appetitus)”, by contrast, is

Spinoza’s term for the very same striving involving both mind and body, minus the self- consciousness. As Spinoza makes clear, when applied to human beings this doctrine entails that

“appetite (…) is nothing but the very essence of man (nihil aliud est, quam ipsa hominis essentia), from whose nature there necessarily follow those things that promote his preservation; and so man is determined to do those things” (E IIIP9S).31

30 For the sake of simplicity, I am, for the time being, making no distinction between a thing’s essence tout court and its “actual essence” – a distinction that in any event is never formally introduced by Spinoza, and which, consequently, is not universally recognized by commentators. 31 There is a clear sense in which, given what Spinoza has just argued in propositions 4 through 9 of Ethics part III about the striving to persevere in being of all things, and given that Spinoza has shown in part II that all things are endowed with minds of a degree of complexity exactly corresponding to the complexity of their bodies, Spinoza does not, in the passage I have just quoted, mean to define “the essence of man” through appetite (as Garrett, among others, makes it seem: cf. 1996: 271, 276), but rather to define an appetite that is distinctly human as reducible (in principle) to the “essence of man itself”. For if all other beings strive to persevere in being in both mind and body no less than human beings, appetite cannot be what defines humans qua human (or a human qua individual) – only a specific type of appetite may do so. This is why Spinoza could, with equal validity, have written that: “appetite (…) is nothing but the very essence of rhinoceros, tree, or rock”. However, the passage in question is ambiguous in two ways, both of which may be taken to encapsulate the principal difficulties for anyone wishing to gain an accurate understanding of Spinoza’s ethical thought. The first ambiguity was just alluded to: the absence of definite articles in Latin means that the passage may be construed such as to be equating appetite with the essence of a man, or with the essence of man in general (as a species). As we shall see shortly, a great deal hinges upon whether Spinoza should be regarded as a strict nominalist, or as granting the real existence of universal essences (i.e., not simply as abstractions of the mind). The second ambiguity is that there remains a sense in which Spinoza may, on the one hand, be defining the appetite of (a) man in terms of the essence of (a) man, but also be reducing the essence of (a) man to appetite. I will return to this ambiguity in much greater detail in what follows. For now, suffice it to say that while appetite can be reducible to essence in the abstract – i.e., by considering the inherent drive to exist of any particular essence taken in isolation – the essence of any finite mode is always determined or itself modified/affected by its interactions with other modes. As we shall see, these determinations of the essence in its concrete existence – what Spinoza sometimes calls the ‘actual essence’ – aid or restrain its striving to persevere in being, and, hence, are or involve appetite. Spinoza sometimes writes as though these modifications of the essence actually belong to and define it. To the extent that this is the case, it is fair to say that essence is reducible to, or may be defined through, appetite. One of the major objectives of this chapter and the next is to try to reconcile these two possible readings, and/or to determine which one predominates in Spinoza’s ethical thought. 50

Now, Spinoza maintains that something is only ever truly active or free, to the extent that it is auto-kinetic or self-determining: i.e., able to produce effects that can be understood to follow from its nature alone, without the assistance of any external causes. Another way of putting this

– one that appropriately echoes Spinoza’s very formulation of the general conatus-doctrine at

Ethics IIIP6 – is that a thing is only ever truly active or free quantum in se est: i.e., to the extent that (quantum) it produces effects through itself while remaining entirely in itself (in se est; cf. E

ID7). When something is the complete or perfect cause of an effect – either internal or external to it – then it is, in Spinoza’s language, the “adequate cause” of that effect (E IIID2). At times,

Spinoza also characterizes a thing as active when it is sui juris. This, roughly translated, means that insofar as something is active, it is ‘under its own law, right, or control’ – that it is, according to the strict etymological sense of the word, autonomous (auto-nomos; cf. Ethics IV Preface). On the other hand, Spinoza maintains that a thing is passive, acted upon, or constrained to the extent that the effects it produces – both within it and outside of it – cannot be understood to follow from its nature alone (Ibid.). In other words, a thing is passive when it is in another (self- alienated; in alio est), through the power of which it is compelled to act as it does. One might call such instances of hetero-kinesis, in which an individual is only the partial cause of an effect

(internal or external), ‘inadequate causality’.

Considered abstractly or in isolation, the conatus essendi of finite modes like us is – as a limited manifestation of God’s absolute auto-productive power – a force of auto-kinesis or adequate causality, through which all of the effects following from our nature, and thus contributing to our realization and perseverance in being, are produced. But while this may be the case in principle, Spinoza thinks that, as finite modes, we are always born into a regime of hetero-kinesis, from which we can never fully escape. To Spinoza, it is axiomatic that for any finite mode in Nature, there is always given another, more powerful finite mode, by which the 51 power of the first may be overcome (and, hence, by which it may be destroyed) (E IVA1). As finite parts of Nature, our power to act, our striving to persevere in being, is thus extremely limited. It may be deflected, stunted, or altogether eclipsed by any number of other finite modes, as the whole of Nature has not been providentially ordered such as to perfectly accord with and further our striving, and the Cartesian dream of becoming absolute “maîtres et possesseurs de la nature” (AT IV, 62), such that it would always cater to and never hinder our desire is, in

Spinoza’s view, precisely that: a dream (E IVP4Dem). Absolute self-determination is only possible for God, i.e., Nature taken as an infinitely powerful matrix of generation (what Spinoza calls Natura naturans). The striving of God’s finite modes to persevere in being – i.e., to be active, to be adequate causes – necessarily always faces potential threats or obstacles.

In sum, one can say that there are two ways that finite modes are not in se. By definition, modes or modifications exist in and are conceived through something else: viz., Substance or

Being (E ID5). They are not self-subsistent, but “live and move and have [their] being” in God.32

This ‘vertical’ sense of ontological dependence of the modification or mode upon that which it is a modification or mode of – viz., Substance – is absolutely irremediable. But this form of dependence is of secondary importance when the issue is the freedom of finite modes, for the essence or intrinsic power of finite modes just is the immanent but determinate (and thus limited) expression of the power of God/Nature. When the issue is the activity or passivity of finite modes, the pressing concern is the ‘horizontal’ dependence of finite modes upon other finite modes (which is still a form of dependence upon God, but this time insofar as God’s power is expressed through other finite modes). As we have just seen, finite modes can never altogether

32 The quote is from The Acts of the Apostles (17:28), where it is attributed to Paul in his address to the Athenians. Spinoza explicitly approves of Paul’s famous dictum in a letter to H. Oldenburg (Ep 73). Although in the Acts Paul is said to ascribe this saying to “some of your own poets” (possibly the Stoic Cleanthes, author of the Hymn to Zeus), Spinoza suggests that this dictum may encapsulate the teachings of “all ancient philosophers, though expressed in a different way”, and even “all the ancient Hebrews” (Ibid.). 52 avoid such dependence. The good news, however, is that the ‘horizontal’ sense of ontological dependence is always a matter of degree. It is possible to lessen the extent of one’s dependence upon the nexus of modes in which one is constitutively situated. Finite modes are susceptible to increases and decreases in their degree of dependence; their power to act, to be self-determining or auto-kinetic, can always be promoted or hindered.

On this basis, it can be understood what the primary affects of joy and sadness are. To

Spinoza, an individual’s affects are the modifications of its body – and the ideas it necessarily has of these modifications33 – insofar as they involve a lived passage to a greater or lesser degree of perfection (i.e., an increase or decrease in its capacity to act or its conatus essendi). An affect will be joyful if the passage implied in the idea of the modification of our body is lived as an increase in our capacity to act or our degree of perfection; it will be sad if the passage implied is lived as a decrease in our capacity to act or our degree of perfection. Since a sad affect is one that signals a hindrance of our capacity to act, it can never be active: it is always a passion (i.e., something that happens to us, of which we are only a partial cause) (E IIIP59). By contrast, a joyful affect can, according to Spinoza, be either passive or active, depending on whether we are its exclusive, or only partial, cause.

33 In part I of the Ethics, Spinoza demonstrates that there can only be one substance (though this substance can be known by many names: God, Nature, Being) comprehended under various attributes (the two known to us being Thought and Extension). In part II of the Ethics he deduces from the uniqueness of substance (monism) the identity of modes within different attributes: “a mode of extension and the idea of that mode are one and the same thing, but expressed in two ways” (E IIP7S). On the basis of this ‘parallelism’ (Leibniz’s term), he then goes on to prove that “the object of the idea constituting the human mind is the body”. This is why, while an individual may not be conscious of its affects, its mind necessarily comprises the ideas of these affects. 53

1.3. Moral Values as Entia Imaginationis

Spinoza’s views on the nature of moral values like good or perfection as well as on the possibility and character of our knowledge thereof34 are complex and ambiguous (if not inconsistent). The biggest problem, however, is that this ambiguity is easily overlooked.

Spinoza may at first glance appear to be a straightforward and full-blooded moral subjectivist, projectivist, or relativist. What’s more, he may be taken to offer a simple, political – i.e., conventionalist – solution to the very socio-political problems entailed by the (supposed) absence of all objective moral values. As I will show in this section and the next, these impressions are not textually unfounded, which is why many of Spinoza’s commentators have been led to conclude that Spinoza regarded moral values or laws as imaginary/political constructs.35 In the following chapter, however, I will argue that such interpretations of Spinoza’s meta-ethics must ultimately be rejected, as they fail to account for certain crucial elements of Spinoza’s overall argument, both in the Ethics and elsewhere.

Spinoza deals explicitly with meta-ethical questions in the Appendix to part I of the

Ethics. He also evokes some of the ethical implications of his doctrine regarding the identity of will and intellect (i.e., his refutation of the belief in the faculty of free will) in the long concluding scholium to part II. Nevertheless, I will start my exposition of the ‘proto-Nietzschean’ interpretation of Spinoza’s views on the nature of (our concepts of) moral values by citing a very important passage from the scholium to proposition 9 of Ethics part III. In an apparent attempt to invert the traditional, Platonic and Aristotelian-Scholastic order between moral judgement and desire, Spinoza writes: “we neither strive for, nor will, neither want, nor desire anything because

34 Following Curley (1973: 354), Frankena (1977: ubique), and Eisenberg (1977: 107), I will refer to these views with the shorthand ‘meta-ethics’, a contemporary term that Spinoza himself never used. 35 See (e.g.): Caillois 323, 325-326; Boss ubique; Yovel 1985: 310; Walther 214, 216; Hampshire 110-115; Lermond 38; Kashap 111, 131; Groen 113-115; Wolfson Vol. I, 438; Taylor 1937: 281-282. 54 we judge it to be good; on the contrary, we judge something to be good because we strive for it, will it, and desire it” (Italics mine). Spinoza’s bold claim in this passage appears to be that moral categories like good and evil are not inherent in rerum natura. The will is not oriented or constrained by an objective, external standard, by reference to which the intellect might distinguish between better and worse inclinations. Rather, good and evil are a function of desire: i.e., they are values produced by desire; subjective notions we project upon things. Interpreted in this manner, this passage from the scholium to Ethics III P9 squares well with the critique of teleology Spinoza undertakes in the Appendix to part I, which I will examine in detail in chapter

6.36 Teleological thinking, i.e., the notion that individuals in Nature, or even Nature as a whole, might have or serve a purpose, stands or falls with the objectivity of moral properties like the good. For if the will does not desire objects or states of being because goodness is somehow one of their objective properties, if on the contrary desire is in fact the source of the goodness of things or states of being, then there is nothing we ought to desire to be or possess because it would be good to be or possess such a thing. To proclaim the ontological priority of desire over the good is to rid Nature of teloi: i.e., of a condition or activity proper to each natural being, and which each would thus be supposed to attain or realize as its goal.

The moral subjectivism and projectivism apparently entailed by the scholium to Ethics III

P9 would seem to be confirmed by much of what Spinoza has to say in the Preface to part IV, the most illuminating passage of which is no doubt the following:

As far as good and evil are concerned, they also indicate nothing positive in things (nihil etiam positivum in rebus), considered in themselves, nor are they anything other than modes of thinking (cogitandi modos), or notions we form (quas

36 In this chapter, I will touch upon certain elements of the Appendix to part I as well as the Preface to part IV of the Ethics, but only to the extent required to present an accurate account of the possible reading of Spinoza’s ethics and meta-ethics I have labelled ‘proto-Nietzschean’. A more complete exegesis of these famous sections of Spinoza’s magnum opus will be carried out in chapter 6 of this dissertation in order to demonstrate how, according to Spinoza, the development of adequate ideas can sometimes function as a means of political resistance. 55

formamus), because we compare things to one another. For one and the same thing can, at the same time, be good, and bad, and also indifferent. For example, music is good for one who is melancholy, bad for one who is mourning, and neither good nor bad to one who is deaf.

In this passage, Spinoza lumps the notions of good and evil in with the other morally evaluative categories he has already analyzed both in the Appendix to part I and earlier in the Preface to part

IV (hence Spinoza’s writing that good and evil “also indicate…”). These include: the beautiful and the ugly; the orderly and the disorderly; and the perfect and the imperfect. I am most interested in what Spinoza might mean when he denies that the concepts of good and evil denote anything “positive in things”. But it will be helpful to concentrate for some time on what

Spinoza has to say in the same Preface and Appendix about the last pair of morally evaluative terms I just listed: viz., perfection and imperfection.

In the Preface to part IV of the Ethics, Spinoza explains that perfection and imperfection are mere “modes [modi: ways] of thinking”. In the Appendix to part I of the Ethics, Spinoza is more explicit about what type of thinking such concepts are mere ‘modes’ of, for he there writes that perfection and imperfection are “only modes of imagining”, which “do not indicate the nature of anything, only the constitution of the imagination”. If we are to understand what it means for such notions as perfection and imperfection not to indicate anything “positive in things”, we must therefore call to mind at least the most pertinent elements of Spinoza’s account of that form of knowledge that relies upon the imagination: viz., knowledge of the first kind, as

Spinoza calls it (E IIP40S2).37

37 It is worth stressing once again that my purpose at this juncture is not to embark upon a detailed exposition for its own sake of Spinoza’s conception of the imagination and the form of cognition associated with it. I intend merely to touch upon those few features that shed light most directly on the topic at hand. A slightly more detailed treatment of Spinoza’s understanding of the imagination may be found in chapter 6, although the question of the imagination is one that will inevitably appear throughout. 56

By ‘imagination’, Spinoza means the mind’s power to represent external bodies as present to it through the ideas it has of the affections of the body. These ideas correspond to physical

“images of things (rerum imagines)”, which are “traces (vestigia)” imprinted upon our bodies by the bodies that affect it. Because the manner in which a body is affected depends just as much on the body affected as on the body affecting, the ideas based upon the affections of the body are not clear and distinct, but confused. These ideas (and the images they correspond to) are the product of the mixture of my body with another. As perceptual representations – i.e., in their ‘objective’ reality, as Spinoza puts it, following Descartes and the Scholastics – imaginary ideas therefore provide insight into the nature or constitution of neither my body, nor the bodies it comes into contact with and is affected by. It is not that this form of cognition is inherently false: a sensory image in its ‘formal’ reality – i.e., as an existing mode engendered by other modes – is simply the effect of the impinging of an external body, or of our own body taken as ‘external’ object, upon our sensory apparatus. But it is essentially confused. As such, it is all-too-easily the source of error. For the sensory image – which, to repeat, is in itself merely the result of the interaction of my sensory apparatus with its object – carries an affirmative force of its own, such that, if considered by itself, it will inevitably be taken to be a faithful representation of the existence of its object (indeed, to simply be that object for the naïve consciousness) (E IIP49). It will continue to be taken as such as long as no other ideas forcefully counteract this tendency by revealing the alterations that the body as sensory ‘instrument’ exert in the construction of this image, such that it cannot be regarded as a pure reflection of some external reality (as the latter exists independently of our perception). In other words, the imagination may all-too-easily be associated with erroneous judgements, as it is all-too-easy to overlook the contribution made by the perceiving subject’s bodily constitution to the perceived image. 57

Another feature that characterizes knowledge of the first kind is its order: ideas stemming from the imagination are derived “according to the order and connection of the affections of the human body”. They are acquired according to whatever chance encounters (occursi) we happen to make, as we are externally determined by the common order of Nature. Knowledge based on the imagination is thus the fruit of purely “random experience (experientia vaga)” (E IIP40S2); it reflects only the accidents and idiosyncrasies of one’s biography, as organized by the laws of psychological association or habit.38 This brings us to the type of imaginary and, hence, confused ideas that are most relevant to the present discussion: viz., universal ideas.

The place to turn in the Ethics for Spinoza’s most scathing critique of the belief in the existence of universals in re, rather than merely post rem (i.e., in the mind alone), is the first scholium to proposition 40 of part II. This scholium is perhaps the single most important source of evidence for all nominalist interpretations of Spinoza.39 In it, Spinoza begins by launching an assault on what the medieval philosophers had called “Transcendental” notions. These properties got their name from the fact that in being supposed to be applicable to all genera, all categories of being, they thereby had to be supposed to ‘transcend’ them.40 Opinions differed over their exact number. While Spinoza mentions “Being, Thing, and Something (Ens, Res, aliquid)”, the

Scholastics also frequently added Unity, Good, Truth, and Beauty to the list.41 As far as Spinoza is concerned – at least at this juncture of the Ethics – these notions are confused to the highest

38 This is in contrast to the order of the intellect, which, as I will explain in the following chapter, “is the same in all men” (E IIP18S). 39 Proponents of the nominalist reading in some shape or form include (among others): Eisenberg 113, 117-118, 128-129; Harris 1978: 135 fn. 6.; Hampshire 93; Zac 1985B: 123; and (perhaps most emphatically) Rice 1991: ubique. 40 John Duns Scotus puts the doctrine of the Transcendentals as follows: “Whatever pertains to ‘being’, then, in so far as it remains indifferent to finite and infinite, or as proper to the Infinite Being [i.e., God], does not belong to it as determined to a genus, but prior to any such determination, and therefore as transcendental and outside any genus. (…) They belong to ‘being’, then, prior to the division into the ten genera. Anything of this kind, consequently, is transcendental” (2). Although Scotus’ discussion complicates things somewhat, medieval philosophers typically regarded the Transcendentals as “convertible” or “coextensive” (convertibile). 41 Cf. Question I, Article 1, of Thomas Aquinas’ Quaestiones Disputatae de Veritate. 58 degree.42 According to Spinoza, they come about when the body’s capacity to form distinct images is surpassed, causing all the images to bleed into one another, and resulting in one indistinct image.43 Slightly less confused – because less encompassing in their scope – are universal notions such as “Man, Horse, Dog, and the like”. These have “arisen from similar causes, namely, because so many images (e.g., of men) are formed at one time in the human body that they surpass the power of imagining – not entirely, of course, but still to the point where the mind can imagine neither slight differences of the singular [men] (…) nor their determinate number, and imagines distinctly only what they all agree in, insofar as they affect the body”(E

IIP40S1; Italics mine). Universals thus appear to be a kind of mental crutch or imaginary defence-mechanism, insofar as they allow us to make sense of the plethora of sensory information that would otherwise overwhelm the imagination. Extrapolating somewhat, the quasi-Nietzschean story could go something like this. The imagination acquaints us with a dazzling multiplicity of particular individuals that it is not equipped to process, or – more precisely – which cannot be made sense of through the first kind of knowing. And yet, for the purposes even of mere biological survival, we must be able to think through or make sense of the data of the senses. Hence, the imagination creates the convenient – i.e., biologically useful – fiction of universal notions, under which we can classify (and thus think and talk about) the individuals presented to us by the senses.

Spinoza also takes pains to highlight the great divergence in the way we form these universals: they “vary from one to another, in accordance with what the body has more often

42 One might suppose that Spinoza omitted Unity, Good, Truth, and Beauty from his list of Transcendentals because he felt it wasn’t as immediately obvious (i.e., without being versed in medieval philosophy) how Good or Beauty (etc.) are no less vacuously abstract/general than the other supremely abstract/general notions, Being, Thing, and Something. But this would be to assume that he was thinking of the Transcendentals from within the mindset of the Scholastics. From the perspective of the critique of universals one gets at Ethics IIP40S1, the most plausible answer might be that these notions are not equally abstract/general products of the imagination. 43 By analogy, we may think of the white on white of an overexposed photograph. 59 been affected by, and what the mind imagines or recollects more easily”. Many regard this as a striking and definitive statement of Spinoza’s nominalism: universals are fictions of the imagination – mere “beings of the imagination (entia imaginationis)” – that are relative to the disposition (ingenium), education, and general life-experience of the individual who forms them

(cf. Hampshire 108). Thus, Rabelais characterized man as “an animal capable of laughter” (E

IIP40S1),44 Plato’s Eleatic Stranger classified man as a “featherless biped” (Ibid.; cf. Statesman,

266e), and Aristotle defined man as a “rational animal” (Ibid.; cf. Nicomachean Ethics, 1098a3-5;

Politics, 1259b27-28),45 because these are the common traits that their experiences and particular dispositions led them to retain – their imaginations being unable to retain the image of the singular traits of each individual.

Having reviewed the principal characteristics of the form of knowledge that is rooted in the imagination, we are now better able to grasp what Spinoza means when he calls perfection and imperfection “ways of imagining” or – because the latter “have names, as if they were

[notions] of beings existing outside the imagination” – “beings of imagination” (E I App.). By calling these notions “ways of imagining”, Spinoza is alleging that they are notions we are

“accustomed to feign (or ‘forge’: fingere)” on the basis of a comparison we perform of how well individuals we regard as belonging to the same species conform to the universal model or generic concept that we have constructed on the basis of our own particular, subjective dispositions and experiences. In other words, when we think under the sway of the imagination, we elevate the universal notions that we happen to have constructed on the basis of our “random experiences”,

44 Gargantua opens with a Notice to the Reader in which Rabelais asserts that “rire est le propre de l’homme”. Rabelais himself was simply paraphrasing a passage in Aristotle’s On the Parts of Animals (III, 10), in which The Stagirite observes that: “man alone among the animals is capable of laughter” (673a6-7). Spinoza’s “animal risibile” is probably an allusion to Aristotle, not to Rabelais, whose work he most likely did not know. 45 As an aside, it is interesting to note the strict accuracy of Rabelais’ paraphrase of Aristotle. For, to Aristotle, “rational animal” is the essential definition of humans, while the capacity to laugh remains a mere property (i.e., a trait that belongs to us thanks to our essential nature, but which therefore does not constitute our essential nature). 60 so as to be able to make sense of and classify the individuals encountered therein, to the status of archetypes. To the degree that the individuals we meet with conform to the universal models or archetypes we take them to be instantiations of, they are deemed perfect, and to the degree that they deviate from this norm, they are deemed imperfect (‘aberrations’, ‘monstrosities’, ‘failures’).

What’s more, when we think according to the first form of knowledge, we come to believe that the degree to which an individual approximates the universal notion we have formed and classified it under corresponds to the degree to which the same individual may be considered to exist. For, according to this line of ‘imaginary thinking’, if the essence of x is a universal notion, then x may be considered to be x only to the extent that it perfectly realizes that universal notion.

If x is a toaster, and to be a toaster is to perform the essential function that defines all toasters

(viz., the activity of toasting), then x exists – qua toaster – only to the extent that it executes this essential/defining function well (or perfectly; Aristotle would say ‘virtuously’ or ‘with excellence’). Hence, to think by means of such imaginary constructs as perfection and imperfection is to impose the way we think in terms of universal notions (at least when thinking according to the first form of knowledge) as a standard by which to judge Nature – or, more precisely, the individuals it contains. This, Spinoza warns, is to make two mistakes. First, it is to treat Nature as if it had a goal in mind when engendering a given individual, one which it could somehow fail to achieve: viz., its correspondence to, or realization of, a pre-existing archetype or eidos (Platonic Form). Secondly, and of more importance to me at present, it is to conceal the fact that Nature is populated by singular beings, which are not mere instantiations of an abstract universal, and cannot be subsumed under such a universal notion without doing them violence – without equalizing the non-equal.

We have seen how certain passages in the Appendix to part I and the Preface to part IV, as well as much of the first scholium to proposition 40 of part II of the Ethics support the claim that 61

Spinoza is a nominalist – i.e., that he believes universals exist only post rem, as abstractions produced by the imagination. This is extremely significant in the context of an attempt to determine the character of Spinoza’s meta-ethics. For if the concept of perfection is inextricably related to universal notions – something which, as we have seen, Spinoza certainly appears to believe – and the latter are proven to be nothing but imaginary fictions, it seems we must also abandon the morally evaluative concept of perfection as a fiction having no grounding in rerum natura. It is therefore worth examining the few other passages from the Ethics and elsewhere that lend credibility to this view.

For example, reinforcement is to be found in the scholium to proposition 48 of Ethics part

II. Having argued that there is no such thing as “absolute, or free, will”, Spinoza observes that, by the same argument, he has “also demonstrated that there is in the mind no absolute faculty of understanding, desire, loving, and the like”. It is what Spinoza says next that really concerns us at present, as he remarks that such faculties are therefore:

(…) Either complete fictions or nothing but metaphysical beings, or universals (entia Metaphysica, sive universalia), which we are in the habit of forming (formare solemus) from particulars. So intellect and will are to this or that idea, or to this or that volition as ‘stone-ness’ is to this or that stone, or man to Peter or Paul (Italics mine).

Taken on its own, this passage is, of course, inconclusive. Everything depends upon whether or not it is legitimate to equate the ‘entia Metaphysica’ of this passage with entia imaginationis. If it is – and the generally pejorative tone of Spinoza’s treatment of universals in this passage inclines me to say it is (pace Lermond 55) – then this passage is a bold statement of Spinoza’s nominalism with respect, specifically, to the real existence of a universal human nature (an essence that would define humans qua human).

Another passage from the Ethics that casts considerable doubt on the reality of universals

– particularly on the reality of a universal human nature – is to be found in the scholium to 62 proposition 57 of part III. In this proposition, Spinoza proves that “each affect of each individual differs from the affect of another as much as the essence of the one from the essence of the other”. This simply follows from the fact that, as Spinoza defines it in the scholium to proposition 9 of part III, “desire is the very nature, or (seu) essence, of each [individual]”, and the primary affects of “joy and sadness [of which all other affects are but species] are the desire, or

(sive) appetite,46 itself insofar as it is increased or diminished, aided or restrained, by an external cause” (IIIP57Dem). At the outset of the scholium to this proposition, Spinoza has this to say:

From this it follows that the affects of the animals which are called irrational (…) differ from men’s affects as much as their nature differs from human nature. Both the horse and the man are driven by a lust to procreate; but the one is driven by an equine lust, the other by a human lust.

Far from undermining the belief in a universal human essence, the scholium thus far appears to posit precisely such a distinctly human ‘species-form’. But the rest of the scholium appears to serve to correct this initial impression. For after remarking that “the [affect of] gladness47 of the one [individual] differs from the gladness of the other [individual] as much as the essence of the one differs from the essence of the other”, Spinoza concludes: “it follows that there is no small difference between the gladness by which a drunk is led and the gladness of a philosopher”. To many commentators (e.g., Rice 1991: 300 fn. 39; Hampshire 108), the only way the latter can

“follow” is if the essences of individual human beings really do differ, such that the notion of a universal human nature or ‘species-form’ is – as we have seen Spinoza characterize it elsewhere

– a mere fiction or “being of the imagination”.

Further textual confirmation of Spinoza’s nominalism – especially concerning the reality of a specifically human nature – is to be found in his correspondence with William Van

46 Remember that Spinoza defines appetite (appetitus) as desire (cupiditas), minus self-consciousness. 47 Spinoza defines gladness (gaudium) as “a joy, accompanied by the idea of a past thing which has turned out better than we had hoped” (E III Def. Affs. XVI) 63

Blyenbergh.48 The latter first wrote to Spinoza in December 1664 with questions based on

Spinoza’s recently published précis of the first two parts (and some of the third) of Descartes’

Principia, as well as on the Appendix to that work – Spinoza’s Cogitata Metaphysica. What troubles Blyenbergh the most is how, if God must be said to be the cause of all things, we can avoid imputing responsibility to Him for the evils that occur in the world. In light of what we have seen thus far, Spinoza’s answer will come as no surprise: “For my own part, I cannot concede that sin and evil are anything positive” (Ep 19). Evil, explains Spinoza, is merely a privation of a more perfect state. As such, evil is nothing – or at least nothing other than a

“construct of the mind or a mode of thinking” born of the comparison we perform of one object with another (Ep 21). What needs to be presupposed to make such a comparison legitimate is that the objects compared share the same essence, which determines their natural potential, and may thus be used as a common standard to gauge their perfection (or reality) – failures to actualize this potential, or deviations from this norm, being counted as evil, as imperfections.

Spinoza puts all of this as follows:

Now it is certain that privation is not something positive, and is so termed in respect of our intellect, not God’s intellect. This is due to the fact that we express by one and the same definition all the individual instances of the same genus – for instance, all that have the outward appearance of men – and we therefore deem them all equally capable of the highest degree of perfection that can be inferred from that particular definition. Now when we find one thing whose actions are at variance with that perfection, we consider that it is deprived of that perfection and is astray from its own nature. This we would not do if we had not referred the individual to that particular definition and ascribed to it such a [universal] nature (Italics mine).

It is because a belief in universal notions or ‘species forms’ is one very important possible foundation for moral judgements of the kind that Spinoza begins his first letter to Blyenbergh (Ep

48 Blyenbergh was a wealthy grain merchant from Dordrecht who dabbled in philosophy. While he is best known for his correspondence with Spinoza, intellectual historians also know him as the author of one of the first published refutations of Spinoza’s TTP. 64

19) by rejecting that Spinoza goes on to firmly assert that each finite mode has, as Spinoza puts it in letter 21, a “particular nature”:

(…) God does not know things in abstraction, nor does he formulate general definitions (…), and things possess no more reality than that with which God’s intellect and potency have endowed them, and which he has assigned to them in actual fact. From this it clearly follows that the privation in question is a term applicable in respect of our intellect only, and not of God’s (Ep 19).

In the corollary to proposition 7 of Ethics part II, Spinoza argues that: “all ideas which are in God agree entirely with their objects” (E IIP32Dem). By axiom 6 of part I this makes them all true. If this is the case, then to say the mind of God contains no universals – no “general definitions” – is to say that universal notions and the morally evaluative concepts of perfection and imperfection that derive from them are fictions having no objective correlate in the nature of things.

While the belief in universals is commonly regarded as a necessary condition for the possibility of moral judgements, the latter are still possible even if there exists only singular essences. Everything depends upon one’s conception of what belongs to such essences. Singular essences can still act as the foundation for moral judgements, provided there is some amount of

‘transcendence’ of the singular essence over the actual existence of the being of which it is the essence – i.e., provided the two aren’t absolutely identical (cf. Ramond 1995: 229). If the two are not absolutely identical, then the essence can define what it is possible for that singular being to become, and can be used as a standard for moral judgements regarding that singular being’s actual existence. The ethical project under such circumstances remains largely the same, mutatis mutandis, as when the essence is conceived as a universal: viz., to become what one already

(potentially and most essentially) is, as defined, in this case, by one’s singular nature; to actualize one’s natural potential.

Spinoza thus places his meta-ethical theory most squarely beyond good and evil when, in his most radically nominalist and, I am tempted to say, ‘Nietzschean’ moments, he excludes even 65 the theoretical possibility sketched in the preceding paragraph. This radical, meta-ethical position is implicit in the passage quoted above from letter 19, as it is intimately connected to the argument he is making at that point about the imaginary nature of universals and moral values

(e.g., perfection and imperfection). But it is formulated more explicitly in Spinoza’s next letter to

Blyenbergh, as Blyenbergh’s bewilderment compels Spinoza to make all of his teachings that much bolder. Although Spinoza demonstrates as much in part I of the Ethics, he takes it as granted by Blyenbergh that all things follow from God’s nature with the same necessity with which he exists. On the basis of this crucial presupposition, he analyses a seemingly obvious case of privation: viz., that of a man who has been deprived of sight. Spinoza’s conclusion is that it actually makes as little sense to consider this man – as long as he remains blind – to be deprived of sight, as it does to say that a stone is deprived of sight, “since nothing more pertains to that man, and is his, than that which God’s intellect and will has assigned to him” (Ep 21).

Spinoza argues that our conclusion ought to be the same even if we introduce a moral component to the hypothetical scenario, by comparing the “present desire” of a viciously lustful man with that of a “good man, or with the desire he [the now vicious man] once had”. For if we take into account the necessity of “the decree and intellect of God”, it follows that “the better desire pertains to [the vicious] man’s nature [i.e., essence] at that point of time no more than to the nature of the Devil or of a stone”. Spinoza makes the moral significance of this doctrine of what

‘belongs’ to essences clear by reference to the Judeo-Christian account of Original Sin

(humanity’s Fall from an originally perfect condition, through the disobedience to God of our common ancestor): “Adam’s desire for earthly things was evil only in respect to our intellect, not

God’s intellect”. We regard it as evil because we mistakenly believe that Adam ‘fell away’ or

‘departed from’ his nature – i.e., that in giving in to his base desires, he deprived himself of a perfection that belonged to his nature. In reality, Adam’s desiring otherwise – his desiring ‘well’ 66

– simply did not belong to his nature at that time: it was merely a negation, tantamount to a stone’s not being able to see or walk.

Many passages of the Ethics appear to stake out this metaphysical position regarding the

‘contents’ of essences (i.e., what ‘belongs’ to them). The passage that most readily comes to mind is, of course, the very definition of essence that Spinoza puts forward at the outset of part II.

According to this definition, it does not suffice to say that a property (loosely speaking) belongs to the essence of a thing if that thing “can neither be nor be conceived” without it. This alone is far too abstract, as it would, according to Spinoza’s metaphysics, make God part of the essence of any and all modes. Rather, one must also say that the essence itself “can neither be nor be conceived without the thing” (E IID2; cf. E IIP10S). And this, it seems, is to posit an absolute identity between the essence of a thing and the thing itself, even as it exists in time or “endures”

(cf. Ramond 1995: 182-185, 228). To rephrase this crucial point: Spinoza’s definition of essence appears to abolish all transcendence of the (singular) essence over the (singular) thing of which it is the essence, such that, as Blyenbergh takes such an identity to imply: “nothing else pertains to an essence than that which it possesses at the moment it is perceived” (Ep 22).49

As we saw in the previous section of this chapter, Spinoza defines appetite as the striving to persevere in being of “mind and body together”. As such, by Ethics III P7, it is “therefore (…) nothing but the very essence of man” (E IIIP9S).50 As we have also seen, this definition can be interpreted to mean that the essence of a finite mode itself (e.g., a particular man) contains

“something positive”, in virtue of which it, by its very nature, is a drive to exist, a striving to

49 I agree with C. Ramond when he takes the passage to which this footnote is appended as proof that Blyenbergh had in fact (pace Deleuze 1968: 231; cf. Walther 1992: 213-214) “fort bien compris” the most radical ontological and ethical implications of Spinoza’s doctrine of essences (as expounded in the letters Blyenbergh had thus far received), and that Spinoza’s next letter “ne cède en rien sur l’instantanéité de la détermination des essences de choses singulières”, fully embracing “avec un humour noir terriblement incisif” the moral implications Blyenbergh had singled out in horror (Ramond 1995: 229-230). 50 Recall that, because of the absence of definite articles in Latin, the last part of this passage may also be rendered as: “the very essence of a man (ipsa hominis essentia)”. 67 affirm itself in existence. But, as I intimated in footnote 7, this definition can also be construed to ascribe to the “essence of [a] man” – or better, identify the latter with – whatever affections this essence of a finite mode is subject to as a result of its encounters with other finite modes, as these encounters are determined according to the “common order of nature”. For insofar as these affections either promote or deplete that man’s conatus essendi, they involve or, better, are his appetite itself (i.e., the striving to persevere in being of that finite mode with respect to both his mind and body), manifesting itself as a drive to encourage those affections that bolster his conatus essendi, and to discourage those that do not. This reading of the scholium to Ethics IIIP9 gains strength when the latter is read in light of Spinoza’s very definition of essence as that which

“can neither be nor be conceived without the thing [of which it is the essence]”. It gains even more plausibility in light of what Spinoza has to say about what “belongs” to the essence of any given finite mode in the Preface to part IV of the Ethics. For in it he asserts that: “nothing belongs to the nature [= essence] of anything except what follows from the necessity of the nature of the efficient cause” (cf. E IP11S; Ep 60).

In this same Preface, Spinoza makes explicit the radical, meta-ethical ramifications of this metaphysical doctrine regarding the content of essences, just as he had in his letters to

Blyenbergh. Thus, in a very similar way, he argues that this doctrine implies that it is impossible for anything to fall short of itself (i.e., of its essence), to lack what it ought to have according to its nature – in short, to not be what it is, or as it should be. Hence, there is no such thing as sin, imperfection, or evil in Nature, if Nature and the individuals it contains are considered objectively, as they are in themselves.

In my effort to present a detailed portrait of the proto-Nietzschean interpretation of

Spinoza’s meta-ethics I have, thus far, been concentrating primarily on the things Spinoza has to say about such morally evaluative terms as ‘perfection’ and ‘imperfection’. I have referred to 68

Spinoza’s thoughts on the nature of good and evil as well, though somewhat loosely, without explicitly introducing Spinoza’s formal definition of the latter. Doing so now will reveal another, closely related way in which Spinoza believes that moral values are merely relative. For if it is true to say that, according to Spinoza, we judge objects to be more or less perfect on the basis of a comparison of the way these objects affect us, this is even more clearly the case with judgements concerning good and evil. In the demonstration to proposition 8 of Ethics part IV,

Spinoza defines as good or evil “what is useful to, or harmful to, preserving our being (…), that is, (…) what increases or diminishes, aids or restrains, our power of acting”. Thus, according to

Spinoza’s very definition of good and evil, nothing is good or evil in itself. Rather, something may only be good or evil in relation to us. In fact, as we shall see in a moment, it is – according to the same proposition – better to say that something is good or evil insofar as it gives us the feeling that our power to act has been enhanced or sapped.

There is an undeniable element of subjectivism and relativism in Spinoza’s account of the nature of good and evil, as well as of our knowledge thereof. But what needs to be determined is the extent of the relativity or subjectivity that characterizes (our knowledge of) good and evil. Is it so radical, so pervasive, that consensus among humans about moral values must be declared impossible? Is it so radical, so pervasive, that certain, a priori, and objective knowledge of what is good and evil, beneficial or harmful, for human beings (or for any particular human being) must be declared impossible?

It is possible to answer these questions in the affirmative.51 In defence of this claim, one might begin by citing the rest of the demonstration to proposition 8 from Ethics part IV (i.e., the part not cited above), in which Spinoza establishes that since, as we have seen, joy is an affect indicating an increase in our potentia agendi or existendi, and evil is the opposite, it follows that

51 Indeed, at least two scholars of Spinoza’s meta-ethics have done so: cf. Boss 222-224 and Hampshire 113-114. 69

“the knowledge of good and evil is nothing but an affect of joy or sadness, insofar as we are conscious of it” (Italics mine). In other words, as Spinoza puts it in the scholium to proposition

39 of Ethics part III – in which Spinoza introduces, somewhat less formally, the view of the nature of (our knowledge of) good and evil that we have just seen Spinoza demonstrate more geometrico at IVP8 – “each one, from his own affect, judges, or evaluates, what is good and what is bad, what is better and what is worse, and finally, what is best and what is worst”.52 In this scholium, Spinoza lays even more stress on the subjectivity and relativity of our judgements regarding good and evil by explaining how the proposition that we judge good and evil according to our subjective dispositions (ingenia) or affects is already implicit in the claim, argued for in the scholium to Ethics IIIP9, that “we desire nothing because we judge it to be good, but on the contrary, we call it good because we desire it”.

Taken on their own (i.e., outside of their broader argumentative context), these passages draw attention to the relativity and subjectivity of moral judgements while still leaving room for the possibility of moral consensus among humans. For if it is true that “the greedy man judges an abundance of money best, and poverty worst”, while “the ambitious man desires nothing so much as esteem and dreads nothing so much as shame” (E IIIP39S), it is, by the same token, true that we would all agree in our judgements regarding good and evil if we all shared the same affects

(or, more precisely, if we were all affected by the same objects in the same way). But belief in the possibility of such a consensus of affects and, hence, moral judgements, is proven to be untenable by much of what Spinoza has to say about the natural workings and powers of the affects in parts III and IV. I will present a detailed analysis of the passional mechanisms that, according to Spinoza, almost inevitably lead humans into conflicts of values with both each other

52 At IIIP39S, Spinoza formulates his definition of good and evil thusly: “By good here I understand every kind of joy, and whatever leads to it, and especially what satisfies any kind of longing, whatever that may be. And by evil [I understand here] every kind of sadness, and especially what frustrates longing”. 70 and themselves in section 2.2 of chapter 3 of this dissertation. For now, a very brief summary of one or two aspects of this analysis will suffice.

One of the propositions that most forcefully asserts the variety and variability of our affects, and thus also of our judgements regarding good and evil, is proposition 51 of Ethics part

III. In it, Spinoza reminds us that the manner in which a body is affected is a function of both the nature of the body affected and the nature of the body affecting. Furthermore, he stresses that

“individuals composing the human body, and consequently, the human body itself, are affected by external bodies in very many ways” (E IIPost.3), both because of its complexity (E IIPost.1 &

2), and because of its mutability (E II Post. 4 & 5). On the basis of the preceding, Spinoza argues that it is reasonable to expect that “one and the same object” will often fail to affect different people in the same way, and that it is always possible for the same person to “be affected differently at different times by one and the same object”. As the scholium to this proposition points out, this virtually guarantees a great multiplicity of conflicting value-judgements, not only among those cast by different people, but even among those cast by one and the same person at different times. The spectre of complete instability in one’s moral judgements is made even more real by Spinoza’s analysis of the psychological phenomenon he calls: “fluctuatio animi”(E

IIIP17S). As we have seen, Spinoza believes the ideas we have are associated with other ideas largely as a result of our random experiences or chance encounters. Since this is the case, anything can, in principle, come be considered either good or evil (E IIIP15 & 16) – sometimes simultaneously and by the same person (E IIIP17). Consider the following hypothetical scenario:

I can come to regard as evil (and thus, according to the logic of the affects, hate) anyone wearing, say, a particular style of hat, because I associate it with some traumatic experience. If I subsequently have a positive experience of equal affective force that by pure coincidence happens to involve such a hat, I will be torn by an equally strong but opposing affect regarding people 71 who wear such hats. The vacillation in affects I will experience will correspond to an inconstancy in my judgements regarding the value of such hats – i.e., whether they are good or evil. Thus, because of our susceptibility to affective vacillation, the problem isn’t just (or even primarily) reaching consensus with others; it is the dissensus characterizing our own moral judgements.

The foregoing, cursory account of the unstable and conflictual nature of our knowledge of good and evil should be related to the claim, made repeatedly by Spinoza, that the knowledge of evil – and perhaps also the knowledge of good – is always inadequate. For the inconstancy and discord that characterizes our moral knowledge is a function of its inadequacy. To put it as succinctly as possible, one can say that our knowledge is inadequate when it is incomplete: i.e., when we do not comprehend the entire nexus of ideas (or causes) related to the idea(s) which we have. It is thus fragmentary or mutilated knowledge, like a conclusion without the premises that support it, account for it, and thus validate it (E IIP28Dem.). Inadequate knowledge is, in this manner, very close to what the Greeks called doxa or an ungrounded opinion (cf. Plato’s Meno

97b-98b). When inadequate ideas are true – i.e., when they happen to correspond to a fact of the matter in the world (E IA6) – their truth is a kind of accidental property, extrinsic to the nature of the ideas themselves (E IID4).

Spinoza associates inadequate ideas exclusively with the imagination, or what he calls the

“first kind of cognition”; only the imagination is a source of inadequate ideas. As we saw earlier, the ideas supplied by the imagination are mental correlates of the physical traces of the way our body has been affected by bodies impinging upon it, which Spinoza calls “images of things” (E

IIP17S). Two features of this type of cognition through images need to be stressed at this point.

First, it is important to remember that imaginary ideas are received according to the

“common order of Nature” – i.e., according to whatever “chance encounters” the body makes 72 with things “so long as it is determined externally” (E IIP29S). Imaginary ideas are the fruit of totally “random experience”. Having been acquired in this haphazard manner, they are always idiosyncratic, personal: my perception of, say, a natural landscape will differ from the perception of my travelling companion’s, as a result of our different physical positions in relation to it (the light might be striking her retina differently than mine; she may be able to spot features I cannot from my angle, etc.), our different bodily constitutions (I may be colour-blind, she may not be), our different dispositions (ingenia) and life-experiences (she may be inclined to focus on the fauna, I may be inclined to focus on the flora), etc. If these perceptions are unique and private, then so too will the judgements formed on their basis. Consensus, in the strict etymological sense of a ‘sensing-together’ (a shared or common view), cannot be achieved by their means. By contrast, adequate knowledge – knowledge obtained by means of the intellect – is “the same in all men” (E IIP18S); it is the only reliable vehicle for consensus among humans.

Second, as we also saw earlier, the modifications of the body, as well as the ideas thereof, always imply a certain agreement or disagreement with the objects encountered – they always involve a lived passage from one degree of power to another, which Spinoza calls “affects” (E III

D3). The crucial thing, for our present purposes, is that the imaginary ideas of (or better, corresponding to) these modifications are fragmentary, and therefore inadequate, insofar as they involve only the brute awareness of this agreement or disagreement, without the knowledge of why the foreign body affecting ours does or does not concord with it, so as to increase or decrease our power of acting. Such imaginary ideas of the modifications of our body, which merely register the fact that these modifications bring with them an increase or decrease in our potentia existendi, are what Spinoza qualifies as passive affects – affects that are passions – since, in his view, it is only insofar as our ideas are mutilated or inadequate that we are subject to passions at all (E IIIP3). 73

We have seen how, to Spinoza, our knowledge of good and evil is reducible to the affects of joy and sadness themselves, provided we are conscious of them. Insofar as these affects are passions, the knowledge so derived is thus bound to be inadequate. As we have also seen, sad affects must always be passions. Hence, the knowledge of evil which is concomitant with – indeed, nothing other than – these sad affects is always inadequate (E IVP64), and were the mind to form only adequate ideas, it would form no notion of evil (E IVP64C). Spinoza comes to the very same conclusion in the TP: “(…) if something in nature appears to us as ridiculous, absurd, or evil, this is due to the fact that our knowledge is only partial, that we are for the most part ignorant of the order and coherence of Nature as a whole, and that we want all things to be directed as our reason prescribes” (II.8; cf. TTP XVI; E IVP73S).

At times, Spinoza goes so far as to draw the more radical conclusion that all evaluative judgements, no matter whether they are of good, or of evil, and no matter what their source – i.e., regardless of whether they are associated with passive or active affects – are inadequate. Thus, at

IVP68, Spinoza contends that: “If men were born free [read: led by reason alone] they would form no concept of good and evil so long as they remained free”. Spinoza’s argument for this is basically to remind his reader that insofar as the mind forms adequate ideas, it has no concept of evil (IVP64C), and that “since good and evil are correlates” the person whose ideas are all adequate (i.e., the “free man”) will therefore have “no concept of good” (IVP68Dem.).

In his quest to destroy the illusions that keep us in shackles, that prevent us from becoming “free men”, it seems Spinoza the proto-Nietzschean has rung the death knell of all moral values. Good and evil appear to be inadequate notions having no correlate in rerum natura. Insofar as they are inadequate, insofar as they are tied to the imagination, these notions are both the subject and source of strife between human beings. Thus, according to the ‘proto-

Nietzschean’ line of interpretation I have presented in considerable detail in this chapter, the 74 relativism and subjectivism of Spinoza’s meta-ethics is so extreme that he can be said to deny the very possibility of moral consensus – both because of the type of thinking involved in moral judgements (i.e., for reasons having to do with the subject of such judgements), and because of the amorality of Nature considered as a whole and in itself (i.e., for reasons having to do with the object of such judgements).

1.4. Moral Values as Entia Civitatis

However, as we will see in chapter 3, consensus regarding moral values and rules (or at least conformity to common values and rules in one’s actions) is absolutely vital to life in society, which, in turn, is not only vital to our individual survival, but also to our flourishing – to the maximization of our potentia existendi. As many commentators have noted,53 Spinoza occasionally appears to put forward what one might call a ‘politico-conventionalist’ solution to the problem of the inadequacy of moral knowledge – or, more specifically, to the problem of the dissensus communis regarding moral values that is the foreseeable result of the fact that such values are, at bottom, nothing but imaginary constructs. According to this solution, consensus is to be achieved through political artifice, such that good and evil, just and unjust, sin and merit, are nothing but what the Sovereign decrees them to be, the latter having (in principle, and perhaps even by definition, according to Spinoza) the power to enforce adherence to this decree.

The second scholium to proposition 37 of Ethics part IV contains Spinoza’s most lucid exposition of this politico-conventionalist solution (cf. TP II.18-19). The scholium operates on the basis of a distinction that will become especially important to us as of the third chapter of this dissertation: viz., that between the state of nature (status naturali) and the civil state (status civilis). The important thing as far as we are presently concerned is that humans in statu naturali

53 See, e.g.: Caillois 323, 332; Yovel 1985: 310; Rosenthal 122; Groen 114. 75 are the same as humans in statu civilis. It will be recalled from my brief treatment of Spinoza’s political immanentism in the introduction to this dissertation that, according to Spinoza,

“everyone exists by the highest right of Nature” and, by the same right, “does those things which follow from the necessity of his own nature”. It is therefore by “the highest right of Nature” that everyone “judges what is good and what is evil (…) according to his own temperament (ex suo ingenio)”. “In the state of nature” – which may be defined as the condition humans find themselves in, in the absence of any overarching authority capable of settling conflicts that may arise between them and strong enough to enforce its decrees upon them – “everyone (…) considers only his own advantage (utilitati), and decides what is good and evil from his own temperament (ex suo ingenio), and only insofar as he takes account of his own advantage

(utilitatis)”. As Spinoza explains, the problem with this status naturalis, which is simply the

‘human condition’ considered in abstraction from all political authority, is that because all, in making moral judgements, are guided by their own affects, their own particular dispositions,

“there is nothing in the state of nature which, by the agreement of all (ex omnium consensus), is good or evil” (Emphasis mine). As we have seen, and as Spinoza suggests in this scholium, it is because moral values are “extrinsic notions, not attributes which explain the nature of the mind”

– i.e., because they are inadequate ideas, rooted in the imagination – that no consensus concerning them is attainable. But if humans are to “live harmoniously and be of assistance to one another” – as they must, not only to live well, but even just to survive (as we shall see in chapter 3) – such a consensus must be achieved. It is achieved through the artifice of a transfer of right,54 through which the State “appropriates to itself the right”, most notably, “of judging concerning good and evil”. While, according to this line of reasoning, there simply is no such

54 For more on the nature and mechanisms of this transfer according to Spinoza, see chapter 3 (especially section 2.3). 76 thing, objectively speaking, as good and evil, sin and merit, and justice and injustice in both the natural and civil states, the difference between the two is that in the latter “it is decided by common agreement (ex communi consensu) what is good or what is evil”. This “common agreement” or “consensus” is not the result of a spontaneous ‘meeting of minds’, but rather of the artifice of Sovereign power, where the decree of the majority, of the ruling class, or of an authorized individual (depending on the form of the State) is conventionally accepted as if it were an absolute moral truth. Hence, according to this interpretation of Spinoza’s meta-ethics, if moral values are entia imaginationis, they are also entia civitatis.

1.5. Conclusion

Stated most broadly, my objective in this dissertation is to determine the status of political resistance from the perspective of Spinoza’s ethical doctrine. Chapters 3 through 5 will tackle this question directly and therefore constitute the argumentative core of this work. However, the examination of the question of the ethical legitimacy of political resistance in Spinoza’s philosophy, as carried out in the later chapters of my thesis, must be grounded in a proper understanding of the fundamental principles, concepts, and claims of Spinoza’s ethical and meta- ethical thought. It is thus the common objective of both this chapter and the next to provide an accurate and thorough account of the latter.

With this general aim in view, two important tasks were carried out in this chapter. First, this chapter introduced the metaphysical and anthropological foundations of Spinoza’s ethical and meta-ethical theory. Second, it made a robust case in favour of a possible interpretation of

Spinoza’s ethics and meta-ethics I have labelled ‘proto-Nietzschean’. According to this proto-

Nietzschean interpretation – many key elements of which have found a number of proponents among Spinoza’s commentators – the development of adequate knowledge would, in Spinoza’s 77 estimation, reveal Nature as it is in itself, stripped of the illusion of objective moral values.

Moral categories like good and evil are – again, according to this reading of Spinoza’s moral philosophy – mere imaginary constructs, and moral judgements are to be referred, not to anything real in rerum natura, but to the idiosyncrasies, the singular dispositions, of each judging subject.

It is because moral categories have no objective basis or referent in rerum natura that what they are actually taken to mean (i.e., that which is deemed to fall under each of these categories) can differ so widely from one person to the next, from one culture to the next, and from one historical period to the next – indeed even from one moment to the next for the same person.

As we have seen, a further claim can be, and often is, associated with the claim that

Spinoza regarded all morally evaluative concepts as entia imaginationis: viz., that he also regarded them as entia civitatis. On this reading, it is Spinoza’s belief that the only viable basis for moral consensus given the irremediably subjective and imaginary nature of moral concepts is the artifice of Sovereign power. Moral categories like good and evil only exist within the State, as they are the product of the Sovereign’s completely arbitrary decree, as well as the power at his disposal to enforce this decree. In other words, the contention is that, to Spinoza, good and evil

(and all other morally evaluative concepts) are nothing else than what the Sovereign declares them to be: they have no existence or grounding independent of the Sovereign’s will and power, and hence cannot in principle be appealed to as a standard by which to judge the Sovereign’s decrees.

As I hope to have made clear in this chapter, this reading is not without a great deal of textual support; it fits well with the most markedly nominalist and ethically relativistic tendencies in Spinoza’s writings. But as I will argue in the next chapter, it is far too one-sided to be considered a faithful presentation of Spinoza’s ethical and meta-ethical views. There are, undeniably, nominalist, subjectivist, and political-conventionalist strands in Spinoza’s ethical 78 thought. What the interpretation I have presented in this chapter does is focus on these strands exclusively, drawing out their fullest implications, such as to yield a ‘purified’ or ‘simplified’ portrait of Spinoza’s ethical and meta-ethical thought as a perfectly consistent and radical nominalist, subjectivist, and politico-conventionalist. But as I will show in the next chapter, the fact of the matter is that Spinoza was neither a thoroughgoing nominalist, nor a radical ethical subjectivist, nor for that matter a complete politico-conventionalist, and the cost of maintaining the proto-Nietzschean interpretation outlined in this chapter is to render unintelligible certain, ultimately more important strands in Spinoza’s ethical and meta-ethical thought – indeed, perhaps Spinoza’s ethico-philosophical project as a whole. In other words, the purpose of the next chapter will, in part, be to demonstrate how this reading fails to capture many of the most crucial elements of Spinoza’s overarching argument in the Ethics. Stated more positively, its aim will be to present a contrasting, ‘objectivist’ (or at least not radically subjectivist) and

‘universalist’ reading of Spinoza’s ethics and meta-ethics – one that will prove more congruent with the nature of Spinoza’s general ethico-philosophical project, yet also be able to account for many of the passages that in this chapter were construed as lending support to the proto-

Nietzschean reading. 79

Chapter 2

“Vera boni & mali cognitio”: Spinoza’s Ethical Theory (II)

2.1. Introduction

As I portrayed it in the previous chapter, Spinoza’s meta-ethical position seems to be that all our knowledge of good and evil is inadequate, and that the sole basis for our moral judgements is our consciousness of our own passive affects of joy and sadness. According to such an interpretation, Spinoza would thus be a radical subjectivist or sceptical relativist with respect to moral values: what is called good or evil varies drastically from one person to the next

– indeed even for one person, from one moment to the next – and there are no grounds upon which an ‘objective’ (i.e., universally valid) account of moral values could be generated. This reading of Spinoza’s meta-ethics can, as we have seen, be associated with the claim that Spinoza proposed a politico-conventionalist antidote to the problematic repercussions of the radical subjectivity of moral values.

This reading of Spinoza’s meta-ethics has a great deal of prima facie plausibility. What I will show in this chapter, however, is that this interpretation is, at best, fragmentary: it focuses upon, and draws out the implications from, only certain aspects of Spinoza’s meta-ethical doctrine as if these represented the whole of what Spinoza has to say on the matter. In what follows, I will present a very different portrait of Spinoza’s ethics and meta-ethics, one that, in my view, enables us to better understand Spinoza’s overarching philosophical project in the

Ethics. Stated more positively, what I will demonstrate in this chapter is thus that there is a distinction to be made in Spinoza’s ethics, though he himself never formally introduces it, between the “knowledge of good and evil” which is based on the imagination and hence inadequate, and the “true knowledge of good and evil” which is adequate, because, as C. Jaquet 80 puts it, “(…) il se fonde sur des notions communes et relève de la connaissance du second genre”

(2005: 87; cf. TTP VII.4).55 Hence, I will seek to demonstrate that, according to Spinoza, reason can furnish us with a set of general guidelines that, if adhered to, will allow us to lead a life that optimally tracks our interests. It is vital that I do so since my ultimate aim is to determine what these rational precepts have to tell us regarding the question of the validity of political resistance.

2.2. “Vera cognitio boni & mali”: On the Possibility of Adequate Ethical Knowledge

With this end in mind, I’ll begin by returning to the Preface to part IV of the Ethics.

Immediately after the passage, by now familiar to us, in which Spinoza asserts that morally evaluative terms like perfection and imperfection, or good and evil, denote “nothing positive

(nihil… positivum)” with respect to the objective order of Nature as a whole, he declares that it will nevertheless be “useful to us (nobis ex usu erit) to retain these same words (vocabula) with the meaning I have indicated”.56 Spinoza explains that we must do so because “we desire to form

(formare) an idea of man (ideam hominis), as a model of human nature (tanquam naturae humanae exemplar) which we may look to (quod intueamur)”. This passage can be made to fit the proto-Nietzschean reading of Spinoza’s meta-ethics outlined in the previous chapter if one takes Spinoza to be making a concession therein to human finitude or, more precisely, to the natural (i.e., law-governed) workings of the imagination and the passive affects that depend upon

55 I will explain what the terms “common notion” and “knowledge of the second kind” mean in Spinoza’s system in what follows. The argument of this chapter owes a great deal to Jaquet’s short paper, “La positivité des notions du bien et du mal” in Les expressions de la puissance d’agir chez Spinoza (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2005), 77-90. I will acknowledge specific debts as I proceed. In general, however, it may be said that this chapter – at least in many important respects – represents an effort to develop and substantiate claims that remain rather embryonic in Jaquet’s insightful but far-too-brief article. While Jaquet’s article is the most important source of inspiration in the secondary literature for the argument of this chapter, aspects of this argument also draw upon and/or find confirmation in the works of: Curley (1973); Dufour-Kowalska (1973); Frankena (1977); Jarrett (2002); and Della Rocca (2008). These aspects will also be indicated in due course. 56 What Spinoza means by the qualifying phrase “with the meaning I have indicated” is not self-evident. I will present the interpretation consistent with the proto-Nietzschean reading of Spinoza’s meta-ethics, as well as my own reading of this enigmatic phrase, in what follows. 81 it. Thus, according to this reading, what Spinoza is getting at in this passage is that it is simply an incontestable and unchangeable fact about our finite physical and mental constitution – about how nature ‘makes’ us and the limited powers it ‘grants’ us – that we strive, even for the sake of mere biological survival, to make sense of the bewildering array of images we receive via the senses, and that our imagination does so by means of the useful fiction of universal notions (cf. E

IIP40S1). It is, furthermore, simply a fact about our physical and mental constitution that we are naturally inclined: (1) to regard the “universal ideas” that “we are accustomed to forge (fingere)” or “form (formare)” as though (veluti) they were “models of things (rerum… exemplaria)”; and

(2), to believe that Nature “looks to (intueri)” these universal ideas and “sets them before itself as models (sibique exemplaria proponere)” when it produces a particular being (E IV Preface).

In other words, it is possible to understand the passage in question to be an acknowledgement on Spinoza’s part that the theoretical rigour of the realist and immanentist study of Nature that he has carried out in the three first parts of the Ethics must be compromised to allow for the provisional introduction of the useful fictions of moral categories and the universal ideas to which they are tied – i.e., of universal paradigms to be used as standards in order to appraise the actions of individual human beings.57 Provisional recourse to the fiction of such a universal model of human nature – in itself a symptom of our lack of power or continued bondage to the imagination and passions58 – is, it is claimed, empowering because the particular

‘provisional morality’ or ‘model’ articulated by Spinoza in part IV is self-overcoming: its very realization would represent the demise of all thinking in terms of universal ideas or models, by which the actions of individual finite modes could be judged (cf. Matheron 1985: 354). For the human being who, per impossibile (as we shall see), managed to perfectly live up to this model

57 This is more or less the reading put forward by: Boss (219-224); Sévérac (2005: 322-327); and Temkine (438- 439). 58 Hence the title of part IV of the Ethics: De Servitute Humana (Of Human Bondage). 82 would fully comprehend, and thus fully acquiesce to, the ineluctability of Nature’s causal order, thereby ceasing to cast judgement on what is (a practice that presupposes, absurdly, that what is could have been otherwise, and that Nature could somehow fail to realize its full potential). The imaginary model proposed by Spinoza is an anti-model that is therefore in accordance with reason (cf. E VP10S), insofar as it proposes as ideal an absolutely consistent thinking in terms of the immanence of Nature’s archai (its causes, principles, or origins), and thus of Nature’s innocence: the model requires that Nature no longer be approached in terms of moral categories, of anything transcending its necessary and all-encompassing causal order (cf. Sévérac 2005:

327).59

As I will make plain, there is a great deal of truth to this last suggestion. Furthermore, it seems to make perfect sense to suppose that when Spinoza writes in the Preface to part IV that we should “retain” moral terms such as good and evil “with the meaning I have indicated” (Italics mine), he is referring to the meaning he has ascribed to these terms earlier in the same Preface, where he divests these terms of all meaning except as entirely subjective, mental constructs, which we erroneously but almost inevitably project upon things and judge things by. The fact that Spinoza’s language in these earlier parts of the Preface closely parallels the language employed in the passage in question would seem to lend credence to this supposition, and thus to this general reading.60 Finally, the general reading of this passage I have just sketched has the virtue of harmonizing well with what, as we saw last chapter, and as will be seen in even greater

59 In the last scholium to part IV of the Ethics, Spinoza writes of the “free man” – i.e., as I will explain shortly, the very exemplar humanae naturae that, on the proto-Nietzschean reading, is an imaginary and provisional moral ideal – that he “considers this most of all, that all things follow from the necessity of the divine nature, and hence, that whatever he thinks is troublesome and evil, and moreover, whatever seems immoral, dreadful, unjust, and dishonourable, arises from the fact that he conceives the things themselves in a way which is disordered, mutilated, and confused. For this reason, he strives most of all to conceive things as they are in themselves, and to remove the obstacles to true knowledge (…)”. 60 These linguistic parallels are unmistakable: just as we “forge” universal ideas that we then take to be “models of things”, which Nature “looks to” or “places before itself” when it creates particular beings, Spinoza writes that we “desire to form” a “model of human nature” that we might “look to”. 83 detail in chapter 6, Spinoza has to say both in the sections of the Preface to part IV that lead up to this passage, and in the Appendix to part I, about our natural susceptibility to this kind of imaginary thinking, which sees individuals in Nature as ordered to ends (e.g., the realization of their universal forms) that are ultimately nothing more than mental fictions.

However, if one accepts the interpretation I just outlined of this crucial passage from the

Preface to part IV of the Ethics – and, specifically, of that part of this passage in which Spinoza insists that we must “retain” moral terms such as good and evil “with the meaning [he has] indicated” – it becomes hard to explain how Spinoza could immediately add to the passage in question: “In what follows, therefore, I shall understand by good what we know certainly is a means (certo scimus medium esse) by which we may approach nearer and nearer to the model of human nature we set before ourselves (ut ad exemplar humanae naturae, quod nobis proponimus, magis magisque accedamus). By evil, what we certainly know (certo scimus) prevents us from becoming like that model” (Italics mine). The significance of this passage for me at this juncture lies, first of all, in the fact that it equates the good with what we know indubitably to enable us to realize – or at least in some measure approximate – a paradigm of human nature, and evil what we know indubitably to hamper such an endeavour.

This passage cannot be taken lightly, as a casual or isolated remark made while speaking loosely in a preface, for Spinoza formally defines the good at the very outset of the demonstrative chain of part IV as “what we certainly know (certo scimus) to be useful (esse utile) to us” (E

IVD1; Italics mine) – i.e., to increase or aid “our power of acting” (E IVP8) – and it is evident that he intends this definition to be a reformulation of the passage I have just quoted from the

Preface. In fact, in both the Ethics and elsewhere (most notably, the TTP), Spinoza regularly characterizes at least some of our judgements concerning good and evil as “certain” or, what amounts to the same thing from his Cartesian perspective, as “clear and distinct”. To cite only 84 one of the other unambiguous passages from the Ethics on this score, Spinoza declares in proposition 27 of part IV that: “we know nothing to be certainly good or evil, except what really leads to understanding or what can prevent us from understanding” (Italics mine; Frankena 34).61

Now, as was mentioned in the last chapter, the nature of imaginary or inadequate ideas is such that, “unlike every clear and distinct idea”, they never carry certainty (TTP II.3). As we have seen, imaginary or inadequate ideas are like “conclusions without premises” (E IIP28Dem.): they are beliefs about the world that, in the words of Plato’s Meno, have not been “tied down” by systematic, rational justification. They can be described as ‘free-floating’ or ‘mutilated’ in the sense that their epistemic value, their truth or falsity, cannot be determined solely on the basis of an examination of these ideas themselves; qua inadequate, these ideas have no inextricable or inherent relation to a complete system of ideas that supports and entails them. The truth of such inadequate ideas or opinions depends upon (or must be validated by) a standard external to them: viz., the fact, which cannot be determined on the basis of a consideration of these ideas alone, that they happen to accurately reflect an objective state of affairs beyond them. This is what it means to say that imaginary or inadequate ideas are devoid of “the properties or intrinsic denominations of a true idea” (E IID4).

By contrast, the truth of adequate ideas is its own “norm” (E IIP43S) or “sign” (TIE §36), such that “he who has an adequate idea, or (…) who knows a thing truly, must at the same time have an adequate idea, or true knowledge of his own knowledge. That is (as is manifest through itself), he must at the same time be certain”(E IIP43Dem.; Italics mine). This is because adequate ideas are, by definition, “absolute” or “perfect” (E IIP34): they include within them all

61 Cf. the demonstrations to propositions 50 and 62 of Ethics part IV. The certainty of (at least some of) our knowledge of good and evil is also clearly implied in the demonstrations to propositions 15 and 70, and the scholium to proposition 66 of Ethics part IV, to cite only a few other examples. While the certainty or “clarity and distinctness” of at least some of our moral knowledge is implied by numerous passages throughout the TTP, it is affirmed most explicitly at IV.6 and again at V.16. 85 of the ideas from which they are derived, the complete system of ideas that supports and entails them. The small but vital point I wish to make in reminding the reader that there exists in

Spinoza’s view a bi-conditional relation between the adequacy of an idea and the certainty of its truth, is that to speak of the possibility of certain knowledge regarding good and evil – as I have shown Spinoza to do – is ipso facto to allow for the possibility of adequate knowledge about the same.62 Conversely, since, as Spinoza explains in the second scholium to proposition 40 of

Ethics part II, “to knowledge of the first kind [i.e., the imagination] pertain all those ideas [and only those ideas; cf. E IVP27Dem.] which are inadequate and confused”, whereas “to knowledge of the second and third kinds [i.e., to reason and intuition] pertain those [and only those ideas] which are adequate”, it follows that Spinoza must be taken to have excluded imagination and passive affects (which simply are inadequate ideas insofar as these involve a variation in our potentia existendi) from forming the basis of at least some moral judgements. For, as Spinoza writes in the scholium to proposition 50 of Ethics part IV, “from affects” – and it is clear from the

62 I have claimed that there exists a bi-conditional relation in Spinoza’s thought between adequacy and certainty, and that therefore to speak of certain moral judgements is ipso facto to speak of adequate moral knowledge. As an objection to this claim, it might be pointed out that, in the TTP, Spinoza speaks of a type of certainty – viz., “moral certainty” – which is, by his own reckoning, not adequate (II.3-5). But this objection would fall wide of the mark, as it is based on an equivocation. As Spinoza stresses in the TTP, moral certainty differs toto coelo from, and is indeed inferior to (TTP II.3), “mathematical” or “geometrical” certainty – i.e., the kind of certainty necessarily involved in adequate understanding. Indeed, the difference between the two is almost as great as the difference between “the dog that is a heavenly constellation and the dog that is a barking animal” (E IP17S): they agree in little other than the name (‘certainty’). “Mathematical” certainty is synonymous with systematicity and self-evidence. To be certain of x in this sense is to know that it cannot possibly be the case that not-x, because one has deduced it from indubitable first principles, using only logically valid rules of inference (i.e., rules that are themselves indubitable). One needn’t rely on anything external to this chain of ideas to justify or ground one’s certainty: it is inherent in it. On the other hand, the “moral” certainty of one’s judgement that x is the case requires validation from ideas completely external (i.e., having no inherent, logical relation) to (one’s idea of) x. The morally certain judgement is validated, in other words, by a non sequitur that the subject making the judgement takes to be a sign of its truth. Thus, a prophet may be morally certain regarding what s/he has prophesied only because s/he has received a sign – having no intrinsic bearing upon his/her prophesy – that s/he takes to be confirmation of its truth. Now, it is patent in every instance in the Ethics in which Spinoza uses the terms ‘certain’ and ‘certainty’ with reference to moral judgements that he means to imply that this knowledge is “certain” in the “mathematical” sense: i.e., that its certainty is inextricably related to its adequacy. Hence, the ambiguity upon which the objection in question is based may be removed from my claim if it is restated as follows: there exists a bi-conditional relation in Spinoza’s thought between adequacy and mathematical certainty. To speak of certain moral judgements – where the context makes clear that what is meant is mathematically certain moral judgements – is thus ipso facto to speak of adequate moral knowledge. 86 context of this passage that Spinoza means passive affects, which are a function of the imagination and which Spinoza elsewhere equates with unfounded “opinion” and ignorance of that which is “most important in life (in vita prima)” (E IVP66S) – “we do nothing which we certainly know to be good (quod certo scimus bonum esse)” (Italics mine).

This leaves only reason and intuition, or knowledge of the second kind and knowledge of the third kind, as possible sources for the “true knowledge of good and evil” – the latter being the expression Spinoza usually employs to designate certain or adequate moral knowledge, as opposed to “knowledge of good and evil”, which is the more general expression that Spinoza sometimes uses to talk about adequate moral knowledge, but always uses when referring to the inadequate moral judgements rooted in the imagination.63 The exact nature of Spinoza’s scientia intuitiva is enigmatic. In the Ethics, Spinoza first describes this “form of knowing” rather laconically as proceeding “from an adequate idea of the formal essence of certain attributes of

God to the adequate knowledge of the [formal] essence of things” (E IIP40S2). In the scholium to proposition 36 of Ethics part V Spinoza contrasts the second and third forms of knowledge in terms of their objects: whereas intuitive knowledge is “the knowledge of singular things”, reason or the “knowledge of the second kind” is characterized as “universal knowledge (cognitione universali)”. I take Spinoza’s reference in this scholium to his previous discussion of these forms of knowledge at Ethics IIP40S2 to be an indication that the “things” one comes to know the

“essences” of through intuition are singular, while reason does not enable one to grasp the

63 Thus, whereas “the knowledge of good and evil (cognitio boni, & mali)” tout court is reduced to (nihil aliud est quam) “an affect of joy or sadness insofar as we are conscious of it” (E IVP8), the “true knowledge of good and evil (vera boni, & mali cognitio)” – while it can of course be considered “an affect” (quatenus haec affectus est; E IVP15Dem.) – may also be considered to consist (quatenus vera: E IVP14) in the “true understanding” of good and evil, which “follows in us insofar as we act (by IIID2)” (E IVP15Dem). According to Ethics IIIP3, “the actions of the mind arise from adequate ideas alone”. Hence, Spinoza’s presentation of vera boni et mali cognitio in propositions 14 and 15 of Ethics part IV directly implies that it is an adequate form of knowledge. To my knowledge, the only commentators to have paid any attention to this terminological distinction (though their respective accounts of its significance sometimes differ from mine) are: Jaquet (2005: 87); Frankena (30); Nadler (2001: 69); and Miller (2005:167 fn. 30). 87 essence of any particular entity, only properties shared by many individuals: i.e., common notions.

I will elaborate upon the nature of both of these forms of knowledge – especially reason – in what follows. What is of immediate importance is that, in the scholium to proposition 62 of

Ethics part IV, Spinoza states explicitly that “the true knowledge we have of good and evil is only abstract or universal”(non nisi abstracta, sive universalis sit”), where the context of this passage makes it clear that with the phrase ‘true knowledge of good and evil’ Spinoza means to designate that knowledge of good and evil that is adequate/certain (the possibility of which we have already seen Spinoza affirm in the Ethics). If it is granted that the exclusive object of intuitive knowledge is singular, as the passage quoted above from Ethics VP36S asserts unequivocally, and retrospectively presents as the teaching of IIP40S2,64 then it follows that the

64 The second scholium to proposition 40 of part II is one of the very few passages of the Ethics in which the nature of scientia intuitiva is ever addressed. I say that at Ethics VP36S Spinoza “retrospectively presents” the teaching of Ethics IIP40S2 to be that intuitive knowledge is only ever of singular objects because it is far from clear, on the basis of a reading of that scholium alone (i.e., IIP40S2), that this is Spinoza’s view of the matter. Granted, this doctrine about the singularity of the objects of intuitive knowledge does seem to be implied by the fact that Spinoza begins the second scholium to Ethics IIP40 by tidily and exhaustively summarizing the various sources of “universal notions”. Having identified a first source – viz., the imagination – Spinoza writes that “finally”, reason is another such source. He then goes on to describe “another, third kind [of knowledge]”, intuition, only as comprising an “adequate knowledge of the essence of things”. The “finally” that Spinoza places before his treatment of reason would seem to indicate that it, and not intuition, is the only other source of knowledge pertaining to “universals” besides the imagination – i.e., in other words, that intuition is only concerned with the “essence of [singular] things”. This seems right. But a serious interpretative problem remains: viz., the fact that Spinoza goes on to illustrate the specificity of each of these forms of knowledge through their bearing on one and the same object of knowledge: viz., the same mathematical puzzle of proportional numbers. How can this be if Spinoza maintains at Ethics VP36S that reason yields universal knowledge, whereas intuition relates to singular things, and that this is the very doctrine he had put forward at Ethics IIP40S2? The solution, I suggest, is that the identity (i.e., sameness) of the epistemic object in the example of Ethics IIP40S2 is more apparent than real. Of course, in one sense the ‘object’ is the same: the fourth proportional number (x) in the series 1,2,3, x – whether it is known via the imagination, reason, or intuition – is, ‘objectively’ speaking (i.e., in terms of the unchanging answer to this puzzle), always 6. But insofar as the answer ‘6’ is the object of knowledge, it varies toto coelo depending on the form of knowledge it is apprehended by. For, according to Spinoza’s treatment of this example, what is known through the imagination is actually a universal procedure, learned by rote, for arriving at the correct answer – i.e., without being able to explain (to provide the causa or ratio) why this ‘mechanical’ procedure is valid. As Spinoza puts it: “Merchants do not hesitate to multiply the second by the third, and divide the product by the first, because they have not yet forgotten what they heard from their teacher without demonstration” (Italics mine). Reason, on the other hand, only knows the correct answer ‘6’ insofar as it is an instantiation of a universal arithmetical law arrived at by a series of valid inferences from general axioms (Spinoza’s acknowledged model here being Euclid’s geometrical reasoning). In other words, the answer ‘6’ is only known through reason as an exemplification of, or as it is derived from, “the common property of 88 exclusive source of adequate or certain knowledge of good and evil is the second form of knowledge: viz., reason (cf. Frankena 38).

The fact that Spinoza regards reason as constituting such a source, which I have thus far merely inferred, is, in fact, directly attested to by myriad passages in both the Ethics and the political treatises (especially the TTP). To cite only the three most eloquent examples from the

Ethics, it is shown in proposition 26 of part IV that “the mind, insofar as it uses reason (quatenus ratione utitur), cannot conceive anything to be good for itself except what leads to understanding”. In proposition 35 of part IV, Spinoza argues, on the basis of E IIP41 (in which, it is worth noting, Spinoza argues that “knowledge of the first kind is the only cause of falsity, whereas knowledge of the second and of the third kind is necessarily true”), that: “what we judge to be good or evil when we follow the dictate of reason must be good or evil” (Italics mine). And in the demonstration to proposition 50 of part IV, Spinoza declares that “it is only under the dictates of reason that we are able to do something that we know with certainty to be good (nisi ex solo rationis dictamine aliquid, quod certo scimus bonum esse, agere possum)”.65

Confirmation is even more plentiful in the TTP. Thus, by way of example, in chapter IV Spinoza writes that “the natural light of reason requires nothing that this light itself does not reach; it requires only what carries the clearest evidence of being a good or (sive) a means to our

proportionals”. In the end, it is only through intuition that the answer ‘6’ is grasped immediately, in its singularity, as being the fourth proportional in the particular aforementioned numeric series, rather than through the mediation of an abstract universal principle or rule. 65 By contrast, as Spinoza makes plain in the scholium to this proposition, it is impossible to do anything that we know with certainty to be good when acting ex affectu alone. To the three passages cited above may be added the demonstration of proposition 15 of part IV, the scholium to proposition 17 of part IV (in which Spinoza strongly suggests that “the true knowledge of good and evil” is obtained through or simply synonymous with “true reason”), as well as the demonstration to P70 of part IV. In the latter, Spinoza clearly draws a connection between reason and knowledge of the good in writing that the “free man” – i.e., the person who leads “himself and others by the free judgement of reason”– does “only those things which he himself knows to be most excellent (quae ipse prima esse novit)” (Italics mine; cf. IVP66S). 89 happiness” (§6).66 And in paragraph 5 of chapter XVI, having asserted in paragraph 4 that

“reason declares [certain things] to be evil” – i.e., contrary to our interests – Spinoza writes: “no one can doubt how much more beneficial it is for men to live according to the laws and certain dictates of reason, which (…) aim at nothing but men’s true interests” (cf. TP II.8; see also: KV

II.xiv.1).

Such abundant textual support for the claim that Spinoza considers at least some moral knowledge to be grounded in reason and thus adequate should come as no surprise, for the overarching goal of the Ethics is nothing other or less than the rational determination of what is of ultimate and common interest to all human beings, and thus to lead its readers “as if by the hand (quasi manu), to the knowledge of the human mind and its supreme beatitude” (E II

Preface).67 Its purpose, in other words, is to achieve “universal knowledge” (knowledge of the second kind), by proceeding more geometrico from self-evident first principles to propositions derived from these according to no-less transparent logical procedures, concerning those things which are of “utmost importance (or ‘first’: prima) in life”. As Spinoza explains in the TTP, the mandate of a “universal ethics” is to rationally ascertain the highest human good (summum nostrum bonum), as well as the “means” to its attainment, or the “rule of life required by this end

(ratio vivendi, quam hic finis exigit)” (IV.4). In the Ethics, this is indicated by Spinoza when, for example, in the scholium to IVP18, he signals his intention to devote the remainder of part IV to

66 To be exact, Spinoza’s Latin text only reads “lumen naturale”, the “of reason” being an interpolation in M. Silverthorne and J. Israel’s translation of this passage. It is, however, a perfectly legitimate interpolation, since in another passage relevant to the present discussion, Spinoza writes: “I do not intend at this point formally to refute the opinion of those who are convinced that the natural light [Silverthorne and Israel add: of reason] can yield no sound teaching about what relates to salvation”, and then immediately goes on to equate this “natural light” with reason, claiming that those “who insist that there is no sound reason in them” aren’t even worth refuting, since the untenability of their claim is patent. Granting the legitimacy of this interpolation, it is also worth consulting §16 of chapter V. 67 M. Blondel captures this very nicely: “The primum movens of Spinoza’s investigation [in the Ethics] was the intention of resolving the problem of human happiness, and to resolve that problem solely by means of human reason” (quoted in McNeill 17). Cp. Boss 222-224. 90 the systematic demonstration of the “dictates of reason”: i.e., the prudential imperatives issued by reason with respect to what “is really useful (revera utile est)” to us, and what will “really

(revera) lead a man to greater perfection” (Italics mine).68 In the same scholium, Spinoza maintains that the propositions deduced in this manner will be “as necessarily true as that the whole is greater than its part” (Italics mine). One could rephrase what I have just said regarding

Spinoza’s intentions in parts IV and V of the Ethics by saying that Spinoza’s central aim in these parts of the Ethics is to arrive at “certain” knowledge regarding both the content of the “model” of human nature we have seen Spinoza introduce in the Preface to Ethics IV, and the means to its actualization (cf. Jaquet 2005: 83; Garrett 287). For, as we shall see, the realization of that model is the highest human good (that which optimally fulfils our interests); all things are good or evil only insofar as they help us or prevent us from realizing this model, and we are perfect or imperfect to the degree that we realize or fall short of this model.

The explanation of the nature and workings of this knowledge – its foundations, its conditions, and its ‘logic’ – will take us to the very core of Spinoza’s meta-ethics, where the latter meets and passes over into his ethical theory proper. The “true knowledge of good and evil”, or of “perfection and imperfection”, which Spinoza sets out to achieve in parts IV and V of the

Ethics, is rooted in “common notions” pertaining to human nature in general and logical inferences based on these notions (Jaquet 2005: 87). In other words, it is deduced from the “laws of human nature” (TTP I.2; III.5): from the essential traits which all humans share qua human.

To see how this is the case, we must start with what Spinoza has to say at the end of the

Appendix to part I of the Ethics. In this Appendix, Spinoza carries out a thoroughgoing critique of the imaginary understanding of Nature in terms of how it affects us – such that (e.g.) an apple

68 Spinoza has dedicated the bulk of the preceding propositions in part IV to an analysis of the causes of human bondage – i.e., our lack of power over the passions. 91 is ‘perfect’ when it tastes best to us, and the weather is ‘perfect’ when it allows our crops to grow.69 But at the very end of this Appendix, Spinoza introduces an amended conception of perfection, one that is impervious to the critique Spinoza has just levelled at the imaginary anthropocentric or subjective conception of perfection. Thus, Spinoza declares: “the perfection of things is to be judged solely from their nature (ex sola earum natura) and power”. In other words, if one’s moral judgements are to be objective, rather than a mere figment of the imagination, they must be grounded in an objective understanding of the essence or nature of things.70 As I will show, many of the most crucial sections of Spinoza’s argument in part IV of the Ethics are simply unintelligible unless one acknowledges that, according to Spinoza: (1) individuals in Nature can share a universal nature or essence; and (2) this universal nature or essence is the foundation for rational moral judgements (“true knowledge of good and evil” or

“perfection and imperfection”).71

I will examine the evidence for this in the Ethics shortly. But before I do, I want to turn to what Spinoza has to say about the nature, foundation, and ‘method’ of rational moral knowledge

69 For a detailed exegesis of this Appendix, see chapter 6. 70 M. Della Rocca presents a compelling argument for this claim in chapter 3 of his Spinoza (London: Routledge, 2008), 179-182. Having read Della Rocca’s book only after having completed a draft of this chapter, I was pleased to find support in it for this claim. The point is made more concisely, though no less convincingly, by C. Jarrett (167-169), who refers to it as the “type-relativity” of moral evaluation. Finally, it is suggested (though usually quite indirectly, and thus, a fortiori, without being argued for in any detail) by: Ramond 1995: 100; Ansaldi 2001: 744; Haserot 65; and Temkine 444-446. 71 It should be kept in mind as we proceed that the aim of this chapter is to provide a reading of Spinoza’s ethical and meta-ethical theory that is, in some respects, an important supplement to the reading put forward last chapter, and in other respects – i.e., in many cases where the two readings conflict – simply an alternative to be preferred to it. As such, the rest of this chapter will mainly be concerned with the examination and elucidation of: (1) the nature of that which Spinoza concludes is the highest good for human beings; as well as (2) the structure of the argument through which this conclusion is attained. Now, as I indicated in the paragraph to which this footnote is appended, the question of whether Spinoza believes there is such a thing as a universal human nature, and, if so, what content he ascribes to such a universal human nature, will prove absolutely central to this study. But, once again given the aims of this study, I will, for the most part, limit myself in what follows to establishing: (1) that Spinoza does indeed believe in the existence of a universal human nature; and (2) what Spinoza takes this universal human essence to be (i.e., its content). This being said, however, an attempt to determine the precise, ontological status of the universal human nature within Spinoza’s own philosophical system – i.e., to answer the question: What does it mean, in terms of his own ontology, for Spinoza to say that something constitutes our universal essence – will be made as an appendix to this chapter. 92 in the TTP, as the latter is even more transparent than the Ethics on this subject. Chapter IV of the TTP is Spinoza’s exposition of what he refers to as the “divine natural law”, which “pertains only to our highest good”. Spinoza calls it a natural divine law because it prescribes a certain way or rule of living, and because we can derive it through the autonomous use of our rational powers. The “natural divine law” – as well as the “rules of living” it entails – are exactly what in the Ethics Spinoza calls “dictates of reason”: viz., our rationally obtained knowledge of what is best in life. More specifically, the most noteworthy thing Spinoza tells us about the nature and foundation of the natural divine law – at least as far as we are presently concerned – is that it is

“universal or common to all men (universalem sive omnibus hominibus communem)” as it is

“deduced from universal human nature (ex universali humana natura)” (TTP IV.6).72 Spinoza restates all of this even more forcefully at the outset of chapter V, writing:

We showed in the previous chapter that the divine law which makes men truly happy and teaches the true life, is universal to all men. We also deduced that law from human nature in such a way that it must be deemed innate to the human mind and, so to speak, inscribed upon it (cf. I.4; IV.10).

How must one define the “universal human nature”, and what (more precisely) is the content of the “natural divine law” that is to be derived from it? It is easy to see what Spinoza’s answer to these questions is in the TTP. For he tells us that the natural divine law is to be deduced from the “universal human nature”, and in the actual argument in which Spinoza deduces the content of the natural divine law, the latter is inferred from the fact that the “better part of us (melior pars nostri) is the understanding (intellectus: a term Spinoza uses interchangeably in the TTP with ‘ratio’ and ‘lumen naturale’)”. It is the ability to reason – i.e., to achieve certain or self-reflexive knowledge – that defines us as humans, that is shared

72 A few lines later, Spinoza adds that: “since the natural divine law is inferred from the consideration of human nature alone, it is certain that we can conceive it in Adam as much as in any other man” (IV.6). Spinoza’s belief that a “universal human nature” is more than a figment of the imagination is apparent throughout the TTP. Vide: III.5 and IV.1 (inter alia). 93

(“universalem sive communem”) by all humans qua human. As Spinoza tells us, it is from this

“common notion” regarding our nature, grasped by reason, that our summum bonum may be ascertained. Hence, on the basis of the fact that reason is our shared nature, Spinoza writes: “it is certain that, if we truly want to seek our own interest, we should try above all things to perfect

[the understanding] as much as possible; for our highest good ought to consist in its perfection”

(TTP IV.4). Spinoza’s assumption here is that, as we have already seen him state explicitly in the

Ethics, a thing’s perfection is predicated of its nature. If our nature is to understand, our perfection is to understand well, to deploy our rational faculties to the fullest. Now it follows rather straightforwardly from Spinoza’s ontology, which identifies God with the whole of Nature

(“Deus sive Natura”), that the ultimate object of all knowledge is God. Hence, our supreme good or highest perfection is the knowledge of God (Ibid.).73

The preceding account of the foundation, nature, and ‘method’ of true moral knowledge, which I have culled from the TTP, is rather schematic. But precisely as such, it will help to keep it in mind as we return to the account of the same provided in the Ethics, which, for being much more detailed and comprehensive, is correspondingly less obvious in its general contours. We have already seen how Spinoza concludes the Appendix to part I of the Ethics by pointing towards an objective basis for morally evaluative judgements (in that specific case: judgements regarding perfection and imperfection), in contrast to the subjective basis he has just finished excoriating (and will target again in the Preface to part IV). “The perfection of things”, writes

Spinoza, “is to be judged solely from their nature and power” (E I Appendix). A condition for the possibility of an objective judgement regarding the perfection or imperfection of x is to know what x is – its nature or essence. Now, a proponent of the proto-Nietzschean reading of

73 Much more will have to be said in due time about this highest human good. But the details of the “intellectual love of god” need not keep us at present. 94

Spinoza’s meta-ethics could claim that this is merely a circuitous way of saying that the distinction between perfection and imperfection is illusory, as the essence of each individual being in Nature is singular, and there belongs to this essence, at any particular moment, only what its efficient cause has made it, according to the necessary laws of Nature. In other words, since each individual thing is absolutely identical to its essence, its perfection is nothing other than its reality or existence; each thing is always perfect, just as it exists, for there is no standard external to this existence by which it might be appraised.

Serious doubt is cast upon this interpretation, or at least upon any claim such an interpretation might have to providing a complete picture of Spinoza’s ethical thought, by what we have just seen to be the teachings of the TTP on the nature and foundation of moral knowledge. As I will now demonstrate, it is equally flawed as a reading of Spinoza’s Ethics, since it is, at best, only partially true. Accordingly, what needs to be established first is that, in the Ethics just as in the TTP, the precondition of rational moral knowledge is a grasp of our universal human nature – i.e., our coming to possess a “common notion” regarding that which all humans share qua human.

Spinoza’s belief in a universal human nature is attested to by a number of passages in the

Ethics. The first of these is to be found in the second scholium to proposition 8 of part I

(Ramond 1995: 249; Haserot 53). In this scholium, Spinoza offers an alternate proof for the claim, already substantiated in proposition 5, that there can only ever exist one Substance of the same nature. The specifics of Spinoza’s alternate proof need not detain us. For our purposes, it suffices to note that its intermediary conclusion is that if a “certain number of individuals” of the same nature exist, not only “must there be a cause why those individuals, and why neither more nor fewer, exist”, but that cause cannot be inherent in the “very nature” of those individuals.

What is of utmost relevance to my argument is the example Spinoza provides to clarify this 95 intermediary conclusion. For he goes on to explain that “if twenty men exist in Nature”, the cause of their existence as individual human beings cannot be located “in human nature itself (in ipsa natura humana)” or in “human nature in general (in genere)”, since the “true definition of man (vera hominis definitio) does not involve the number 20”, just like the true definition of a triangle “expresses nothing but the simple nature (simplicem naturam) of the triangle, and not any certain number of triangles”. Rather, as Spinoza brings his treatment of this example to a close by remarking, the cause of the existence of the individual instantiations of human nature must be

“outside each of them” – i.e., an “external cause”.

There is nothing in this scholium to suggest that Spinoza considers this generic or universal human nature, which according to the same scholium may be captured by a “true definition”, to be a fiction of the imagination or inadequate idea. On the contrary, Spinoza gives every indication of regarding the “true definition of man” as analogous to – i.e., as epistemologically on a par with – the idea or “true definition” of the “simple nature of the triangle”. Since Spinoza everywhere treats “true definitions” of geometrical figures as examples of what he means by an adequate idea, the implication here is that the “true definition of man” is no less adequate. It might, however, be objected that in this scholium Spinoza is building an argument on the basis of an hypothesis – viz., the existence of a plurality of individuals instantiating some universal nature, and corresponding to some universal definition – granted by his adversaries, but that he will later (viz., in part II of the Ethics, or so it might be alleged) demonstrate to be unfounded. We should therefore, it might be claimed, be wary of pointing to it as evidence that Spinoza believed in a universal human nature. I find nothing in the text of the scholium in question that could lead one to believe that in it Spinoza is making such a counterfactual argument. But the objection still casts enough doubt upon this passage to make it 96 imprudent to rely upon it exclusively as proof of Spinoza’s ‘essentialism’ with respect to human nature.

Nor do we need to. For some of the central tenets of Spinoza’s ethical doctrine, argued for in a series of propositions roughly half way through part IV of the Ethics, are simply unintelligible if one denies that Spinoza recognized the existence of a universal human nature. In

Spinoza’s own words, the scholium to proposition 18 of Ethics part IV marks a transition in the argument of part IV from an examination of the “causes of man’s lack of power and inconstancy, and why men do not observe the precepts of reason”, to a demonstration of “what reason prescribes to us”. More specifically, it provides a tidy, preliminary overview of the most general of the general propositions Spinoza intends to prove to be “precepts of reason”. What I wish to highlight at present is the fact that among the things Spinoza promises to demonstrate to be

“precepts of reason” is the proposition that, out of all the things in nature that are useful to us – i.e., that help us increase our power – none are “more excellent than those which agree entirely with our nature (cum nostra natura prorsus conveniunt)”. Spinoza immediately explains (in language reminiscent of the passage we have just seen from Ethics IP8S2) that this is because “if

(…) two individuals of entirely the same nature (ejusdem prorsus naturae) are joined to one another, they compose an individual twice as powerful as each one”. Making explicit what he no doubt expected his reader to have already gathered at this point, Spinoza then adds: “To man, then, there is nothing more useful than man”. Thus, if Spinoza’s provisional summary of his ethical teachings in the scholium to proposition 18 of part IV does not categorically assert that at least one of the principal tenets of his ethical doctrine presupposes the existence of a shared human nature, an underlying essential identity among humans, it certainly raises such a possibility. 97

This possibility is confirmed by a close reading of the series of propositions in which

Spinoza goes on to demonstrate what we have just seen him assert in the scholium to proposition

18. Propositions 30 and 31 argue, respectively, that “no thing can be evil through what it has in common with our nature”, and “insofar as a thing agrees with our nature, it is necessarily good”.

Spinoza’s proof for the first of these claims rests on the fact that, according to proposition 4 of

Ethics III, “no thing can be destroyed except through an external cause”, and something is evil if it tends towards our destruction (i.e., if it decreases or inhibits our power to exist; cf. E IVD2 &

P8Dem.). In other words, from Spinoza’s definition of evil, coupled with his conatus-doctrine, it follows that nothing can be evil for us – i.e., diminish or impede our capacity to act – “through what it has in common with us”. To maintain otherwise would be absurd, as it would entail that our nature, or at least that aspect of our nature that we share with another individual, would be self-negating (i.e., could be said to seek its own destruction).

It should be noted, on the basis of the preceding, how strong Spinoza’s sense of what it means to ‘have something in common’ with another being is. Insofar as two or more things share a certain defining characteristic or set of characteristics, they are not merely similar to one other

(pace Rice 1991: 299-301), but may be said to be as one – the relation is not merely one of resemblance, but of identity-in-otherness (such that the relation to the other, with respect to that common characteristic or set thereof, is also, or is at the same time, a self-relation). In French,

Spinoza’s radical understanding of the ‘commonality’ or ‘community’ of traits might be rendered by the following wordplay: « Ce que deux choses ont en commun les rend comme-un (as one) ».

Indeed, following D. Steinberg, we may go so far as to say that insofar as two or more things share exactly the same qualities, they are in fact one and the same: i.e., “absolutely identical”; not even “numerically distinct” (1984: 309). For, as Steinberg has shown, no other interpretation of what it means for x to possess something in common with the nature of y will allow us to make 98 sense of Spinoza’s claim in proposition 30 that x and y cannot be harmful to one another insofar as they share a common trait A. Even if this commonality of traits were interpreted along

Platonic lines (let alone nominalist lines: cf. Steinberg 1984: 308), such that x’s and y’s holding of trait A in common would mean that they hold “numerically distinct” instances of A, it could not be understood how x’s hypothetically harming y through A would be absurd (as Spinoza argues on the basis of Ethics IIIP4) because it is a trait internal to y. For on this reading, x’s A would not be absolutely the same as y’s A (or would not, strictly speaking, be internal to y).

More recently, M. Della Rocca has arrived at much the same conclusion, though by means of a much simpler and, thus, perhaps, more compelling process of reasoning: Spinoza’s explicit adherence to the principle of sufficient reason (cf. E IA3) entails his acceptance of the principle of the identity of indiscernibles, for what the latter asserts is that because no reason can be cited for calling two hypothetically distinct entities sharing exactly the same characteristics or set of traits actually distinct, they must be identical. Thus, according to the principle of the identity of indiscernibles, if two or more things hold all of their traits in common, their “minds and bodies” must be said to “form, as it were, one mind and one body”(E IVP18S; Della Rocca 196).

The demonstration of proposition 31 opens with an extremely significant rephrasing of proposition 30. The latter had declared “no thing” to be evil “through what it has in common with our nature (quod cum nostra natura commune habet)”, and the former begins by reformulating this as: “Insofar as a thing agrees with our nature (cum nostra natura convenit), it cannot be evil”. Spinoza will employ this second formulation almost exclusively in subsequent propositions. It is therefore important to keep in mind the strong sense the expression ‘to agree with’ acquires as a reformulation of ‘to have something in common with’. As we shall see, for something to agree (convenire) with our nature means that it ‘accords’, ‘harmonizes’, or literally

‘comes together with’ it, such as to aid our striving to persevere in being by contributing its own 99 power to this endeavour. But this meaning of the expression is derivative of, or at least inextricably tied to, the meaning it receives as an explicit reformulation of what in proposition 30 is meant by ‘to have something in common’. Hence, for something to agree with our nature is, in the first place, for that thing to be the same as us, to be identical to us, at least with respect to that aspect of its nature which it holds in common with us. This is in fact the sense in which Spinoza has already used the verb convenire in the scholium to proposition 17 of part I (pace Rice 1994:

30), where he writes that “with respect to their essence” – which he calls an “eternal truth” – two human beings “are able to agree entirely (secundum essentiam prorsus convenire possunt)”, so much so that “if the essence of one could be destroyed, and become false, the other’s essence would also be destroyed”.

The rest of the demonstration of proposition 31 is fairly straightforward. A thing must

“necessarily” be good insofar as it agrees with our nature, because “each thing, insofar as it can by its own power, strives to persevere in its being” – i.e., to bring about all those things that are good for it – whereas for anything not to be useful to us insofar as it is identical to us (agrees with us) would imply that those aspects of our own nature which we share with it would not strive to persevere in being (i.e., endeavour to give rise to that which benefits us). And this, to Spinoza, is absurd.74

74 It might be wondered how the claim that humans must be of mutual assistance insofar as they share the same nature squares with the fact that Spinoza occasionally declares humans to be “by nature enemies” (TP II.14) – i.e., to be, by nature, “contrary to one another” (E IV App. Ch. X) or able to do each other harm. The answer, in brief, is that the conflict between the two statements is only apparent. As Spinoza is quick to explain whenever he says anything to the effect that “men are (…) by nature enemies”, they are only such in a loose sense, insofar as they are “by nature” finite modes necessarily prey to passive affects which are the real cause, stricto sensu, of their being enemies. The power of finite modes is limited and can easily be overcome by the power of an infinite number of other finite modes (E IVA1). Indeed, as “parts of Nature”, it is simply “impossible (…) that [humans] should be able to undergo no changes except those which can be understood through [their] own nature alone” (E IVP4). Positively stated, this means that insofar as humans are by nature finite modes or “parts of Nature”, they are necessarily subject to passions – a passion being, by definition, an affect that cannot be understood exclusively on the basis of, or as an expression of, the nature of the individual whose affect it is (but, rather, on the basis of the force of an external mode in relation to the force inherent in the nature of the affected individual). It is this natural susceptibility to passions that Spinoza is referring to when, speaking loosely, he says that humans, “by nature”, sometimes seek to harm each 100

So much for Spinoza’s proof of the general claim (first made at Ethics P18S) that all things of the same nature are of mutual assistance. But our discussion of Spinoza’s demonstrations of propositions 30 and 31 was merely a necessary propaedeutic to an understanding of proposition 35, which makes the specific claim that “only insofar as men live according to the guidance of reason, must they always agree in nature”, with the corollary (C1) that there is “no singular thing in Nature which is more useful to man than a man who lives according to the guidance of reason”. Spinoza’s demonstration of proposition 35 is of highest interest to us at this juncture as it contains some of the best support to be found in the Ethics for my contention that Spinoza did in fact think there was such a thing as a universal human nature.

Spinoza begins by reiterating the results of the two preceding propositions: viz., that

“insofar as men are torn by affects which are passions, they can be different in [or by] nature

(esse natura diversi) (by P33),75 and contrary to one another (invicem contrarii) (by P34)”. He then reminds his reader of what proposition 3 and definition 2 of part III have already established: respectively, “that men are said to act only insofar as they live under the guidance of reason”, and “hence, whatever follows from human nature, insofar as it is defined by reason, must be understood through human nature alone (…)”. Next, he refers to proposition 41 of part

II, in which it is shown that the imagination is the sole source of error whereas knowledge through reason is “necessarily true”, in order to buttress his claim that “what we judge to be good or evil when we follow the dictate of reason must be good or evil”. As a final premise, Spinoza other (i.e., hate, or are contrary to, each other). Properly speaking, it is not insofar as they share a common nature that humans are “enemies” seeking to harm each other, but only insofar as an extremely general property or nature they share – viz.: being finite modes – acts as the most general condition for the possibility of their differing from, or being contrary to, each other, by leaving them open to receiving contrary determinations from external forces (i.e., to passive affects), which are the real (i.e., proximate) causes of their enmity. To Spinoza, properly speaking, enmity between human beings is always rooted in a passion, and, thus, in a cause external to the nature they share in common. And when Spinoza asserts that humans are “by nature enemies”, he is speaking loosely/improperly: for to hate is to be subject to a passion, and hence to lack power, whereas “things which are said to agree in nature are understood to agree in power (by IIIP7), (…) not in lack of power, or negation” (E IVP32Dem.). 75 Cf. the previous footnote. 101 restates the findings of proposition 19: viz., that we necessarily want whatever we judge to be good, and try to avoid what we deem evil. From these premises, Spinoza believes it follows that to the extent “that men live according to the guidance of reason, they necessarily do only those things which are good for human nature, and hence, for each man (quae humanae naturae, & consequenter unicuique homini necessario bona sunt), that is (by P31C), those things which agree with the nature of each man (quae cum natura uniuscujusque hominis conveniunt)”.

Spinoza’s reasoning and wording in this demonstration leave us no choice but to ascribe to him a belief in the existence of a universal human nature. Spinoza’s argument simply cannot be understood otherwise. For after having stated in no uncertain terms that whatever we do through reason “is to be understood (debet intelligi) through [i.e., deduced from, or explained on the basis of] human nature alone (per solam humanam naturam)”, and that we necessarily do what we have determined with certainty through reason to be good (i.e., to lead to an increase in our potentia agendi), Spinoza concludes that whatever we do when acting under the guidance of reason must be good for human nature in general. We know Spinoza means that such actions will be good for human nature understood as a universal – i.e., as an essence that constitutes the core of what it is to be human; a defining characteristic or set of characteristics which all humans

“have in common” simply qua human – because he infers from the fact that such actions will necessarily be good for “human nature” that they will “therefore (consequenter)” be good for each individual human being.

Evidence that the wording and structure of argumentation of this demonstration are no mere accident is to be found in the Appendix to part IV, in which Spinoza offers a synopsis of his principal teachings in part IV concerning ethics or “the right way of living (de recta vivendi ratione)”. In his terse recapitulation of the results of the series of propositions we have been examining, Spinoza writes: “Nothing can agree (convenire) more with the nature of any thing 102 than other individuals of the same species (quam reliqua ejusdem speciei individua)” (Ch. IX).

From this, coupled with the fact that if “[man] lives among such individuals that agree with his nature, his power of acting will thereby be aided or encouraged” (Ch. VII), Spinoza concludes

(“adeoque”), that “nothing is more useful to man in preserving his being and enjoying a rational life than a man who is guided by reason”. In this remarkable passage, Spinoza, who as we saw last chapter is often regarded as a nominalist, starkly affirms that that with which humans “agree” most are other human beings because (again, the inference denoted by “adeoque” is to be underscored) they belong to the same species.76 Spinoza does not define this last term in the

Ethics. He must have known that, in the absence of such a formal definition, his readers would be inclined to interpret it in the common Scholastic sense of the ‘last’ or ‘closest’ generic category of being through which individuals may be known, and which constitutes their defining essence. In the appendix to this chapter, I will endeavour to determine the sense in which this interpretation does and/or does not fit Spinoza’s conception of the “universal human nature”.

Thus far, I have shown not only that Spinoza made use of the concept of a universal human essence, but also that some of the chief claims of his ethical doctrine – or, perhaps more

76 Spinoza’s appeal to the notion of a human “species” in the passage cited above is not an isolated occurrence. Indeed, it is instructive to read the above-cited passage alongside a no less striking passage from chapter III of the TTP. Spinoza’s ultimate aim in this chapter of the TTP is to show that the divine election of the Hebrews had to do exclusively with their bodily security and wellbeing, as provided for by their well-ordered State. What is relevant for our immediate purposes is that the means to obtaining the two other “honest” objects of desire listed by Spinoza in this passage – viz., (1) cognitio causarum and (2) the mastery of the passions through the development of virtue – are said to depend upon the “laws of human nature alone”. Hence, Spinoza concludes, “it may be categorically asserted that these gifts [i.e., the means to the fulfilment of these ‘honest’ desires] were never peculiar to any one nation but were always common to the entire human race”, and that to suppose otherwise would be “to delude ourselves that once upon a time nature created different species [or, perhaps more accurately: kinds/genera] of men (diversa hominum genera procreavisse)” (§5). Moreover, without specifically employing the terms ‘species’, ‘genera’, or ‘kinds’, many other passages either strongly suggest or explicitly uphold a species-distinction between human beings – i.e., animate, finite modes capable of reason (more on this shortly) – and all other animals (the lot of which are by nature incapable of reason). Thus, e.g., in §5 of chapter V of the TP, Spinoza writes of the distinctly “human life” that it is “characterized not just by the circulation of the blood and other features common to all animals, but above all by reason, the true virtue and life of the mind”. And in chapter XX, §6 of the TTP, Spinoza explains that the purpose of the state is not to transform humans, from the “rational beings” they are by nature, into “beasts [bruta: i.e., irrational animals] or automata, but rather to allow their minds and bodies to fulfil, in complete security, their proper functions [as defined by their essence], and to enable them to enjoy the free use of reason (…tuto suis functionibus fungantur et ipsi libera ratione utantur)” (TTP XX.6). 103 accurately, the arguments Spinoza marshals in their support – are unintelligible if the role this concept plays is unacknowledged. But of course it is not enough to prove that Spinoza made very significant use of the concept of a universal human nature in the argument of the Ethics. It must be determined what Spinoza took the universal human nature to be, what content he attributed to this concept.77 For, as we have seen Spinoza intimate at the very end of the

Appendix to part I of the Ethics, and as we discovered in our analysis of the nature and foundation of moral knowledge in the TTP, Spinoza believed that a necessary condition for the possibility of objective moral judgements was an objective – i.e., rational/adequate – grasp of the essence of the object of said moral judgements (e.g., in the case of moral judgements pertaining to humans, a rational understanding of our own nature). Indeed, Spinoza states unequivocally in the scholium to proposition 36 of part IV exactly what we have already seen him say in the TTP: viz., that the “highest human good (hominis summum bonum)” is to be “deduced from the human essence itself (ex ipsa humana essentia… deducitur)”.

I would like to argue that, just as in the TTP, so too in the Ethics, Spinoza maintains that reason, i.e., the capacity for certain, adequate, or self-reflexive knowledge, is the human essence

77 C. Ramond recognizes (on the basis of Ethics IP8S2 alone) that there exists: “‘une vraie définition de l’homme’, et par conséquent une essence spécifique humaine”. Yet he declares it impossible to determine what Spinoza regarded as the content of this essence: “Mais qu’enveloppe-t-elle alors? Autrement dit, quelle est, pour Spinoza, la ‘vraie définition’ de l’homme? Contrairement à toute attente, nous ne le saurons pas, car Spinoza ne la donnera jamais” (1995: 249; cf. 1999: 90; Harris 1978: 125). More precisely, of the ten “définitions spinozistes de l’essence de l’âme et de l’essence de l’homme” identified by M. Gueroult (II 547-551), Ramond retains only four for consideration – the only ones which, according to Ramond, are explicitly provided by Spinoza (1995: 250-251). These are: (1) Ethics IIP10C (“the essence of man is constituted by certain modifications of God’s attributes”); (2) Ethics IIIP9S & Def. Affs. I (respectively: “(…) Appetite, therefore, is nothing but the very essence of man, from whose nature there necessarily follow those things that promote his preservation” & “Desire is man’s very essence, insofar as it is conceived to be determined, from any given affection of it, to do something”); (3) Ethics IVD8 (“By virtue and power I understand the same thing, that is (by IIIP7), virtue, insofar as it is related to man, is the very essence, or nature, of man, insofar as he has the power of bringing about certain things, which can be understood through the laws of his nature alone”); (4) Ethics P35S (“(…) that definition which makes man a social animal has been quite pleasing to most” – Ramond affirms that “la suite du scolie indique clairement que Spinoza partage cette approbation générale”). However, Ramond concludes that the first three tell us nothing about the essence of man specifically (i.e., do nothing to distinguish humans from all other beings), while the fourth should be excluded as an adequate definition of the human essence for the same reason that Spinoza disqualified the definitions of man as “an animal capable of laughter” or “a featherless biped” in Ethics IIP40S1. 104

(or at least part of what constitutes our nature: cf. the appendix to this chapter).78 Evidence for this in the Ethics abounds. To begin our survey of this evidence, we needn’t look any further than proposition 35 of part IV, which we have just examined. Reformulating the findings of proposition 3 of part III, Spinoza, it will be recalled, observes that: “insofar as men live according to the guidance of reason, they are said only to act”.79 Now, as Spinoza also notes, according to definition 2 of part III, we may be said to act “when something happens, in us or outside us, of which we are the adequate causes, that is (by D1), when something in us or outside us follows from our nature, which can be clearly and distinctly understood through it alone” (Italics mine).

We act when effects can be “concluded” or “explained” exclusively on the basis of our essence, without the intervention of any “external causes” (external to our essence). It is the inference that

Spinoza draws from these premises that is revealing in the context of a study of his views on human nature: “Hence, whatever follows from human nature, insofar as it is defined by reason

(quatenus ratione definitur), must be understood through human nature alone”. In other words, to say that we act when we do anything “from reason (ex ratione)” (E IVP59Dem.), or when we know things through reason, is to say that we humans are, at least in part (“quatenus”), defined by reason – that reason belongs to our nature. This point comes across more clearly when, in proposition 59, Spinoza summarizes the section of the argument in proposition 35 we have just looked at in the following manner: “Acting from reason (ex ratione) is (by IIIP3 and D2) nothing other than doing those things which follow from the necessity of our nature, considered in itself alone (in se sola)”.

78 Quite a few scholars have already made this claim: e.g., Jaquet (2005: 85); Temkine (439, 444); Zac (1972: 47, 54, 56); Dufour-Kowalska (Part II, section ii, chapter 2); Lermond (64, 68); Jarrett (161-162); and Miller (2005: 164, 167 fn. 30, 170). However, though the bare claim may already have been made on numerous occasions, it has yet to receive the thorough textual substantiation it requires. Nor, for that matter, has the meaning of this claim in terms of Spinoza’s general metaphysics been satisfactorily elucidated (a task I will take on in the appendix to this chapter). 79 The text of Ethics IIIP3 reads: “The actions of the mind arise from adequate ideas alone (…)”. 105

The same conclusion (viz., that the nature of human beings is defined, at least in part, by reason) follows even more patently from much of what Spinoza has to say about the nature of human virtue. In definition 8 of part IV, Spinoza famously asserts that “by virtue and power I understand the same thing”, by which he means that “virtue, insofar as it is related to man, is the very essence, or nature, of man (est ipsa hominis essentia, seu natura), insofar as he has the power of bringing about certain things, which can be understood through the laws of his nature alone (quae per solas ipsius naturae leges possunt intelligi)”. But, as Spinoza makes plain in the demonstration to proposition 52, since, by proposition 3 of part III, we act only insofar as we understand (i.e., live “under the guidance of reason”), it follows that “man’s true power of acting, or virtue, is reason itself” (Italics mine; cf. PP 23 & 24). In other words, in this passage, Spinoza equates human virtue and power with reason.80 Since, as we just seen, Spinoza also identifies human virtue or power with “the very essence, or nature, of man” (to the extent that its inherent drive to persevere in being, and thus to autonomously bring about all those things that follow from it, is allowed to express itself without hindrances or distortions), it follows that reason must itself be identified with the “the very essence, or nature, of man” (cf. Dufour-Kowalska 207-

215).

We find more or less the same reasoning in, and may once again derive the conclusion that reason is (or is at least part of) the human essence from, proposition 61 of part IV, in which

Spinoza argues that: “a desire which arises from reason cannot be excessive”. Exactly what

Spinoza means by an “excessive” desire is a long story, the details of which needn’t concern us at present. It suffices, for the purpose of the specific point I wish to make, to say that a desire is excessive, even if it stems from an affect of joy, if it promotes the conatus essendi (i.e., the

80 Spinoza does the very same thing in chapter III of the Appendix to part IV, where he characterizes human actions as “those desires that are defined by man’s power, or reason (quae hominis potentia, seu ratione definiuntur)”. 106

‘interests’) of only one part of a complex individual (e.g., a human being), with no concern for, but rather to the detriment of, the conatus essendi or ‘interests’ of that individual as a whole. An excessive desire hinders the endeavour to persevere in being of the individual who has fallen prey to it, and may even be said to tend toward that individual’s destruction, because it isolates and

‘absolutizes’ the interest of one part of that individual, such that those interests are no longer weighed against, or held in equilibrium with, the vital interests of the other parts of that individual. One may think, for example, of the alcoholic’s immoderate (i.e., completely unbalanced) desire for alcohol. Now, in proposition 61, Spinoza explains that “a desire which arises from reason, that is (by IIIP3), which is generated in us insofar as we act is the very essence, or nature, of man, insofar as it is conceived to be determined to doing those things which are conceived adequately through man’s essence alone (by IIID2)”. Spinoza’s pivotal premise in the demonstration of proposition 61 of part IV is thus, in short, that reason is “the very essence, or nature, of man”. This is what allows him to take the next step in his demonstration, which is to assert that if a desire arising from reason could be excessive, this would imply that “human nature, considered in itself alone, could exceed itself, or could do more than it can” – i.e., could destroy itself – which is a “manifest contradiction”.

2.3. “Hominis summum bonum”: Its Nature and Implications

As we have noted on several occasions in this chapter, Spinoza believed that the ultimate foundation of adequate moral knowledge was the rational apprehension of our essence or nature.

Thus, in the Appendix to part I of the Ethics, Spinoza tells us that “the perfection of things is to be judged solely from their nature and power”, and in the scholium to proposition 36, that “man’s highest good (…) is deduced from the human essence itself”. We have just seen how, in

Spinoza’s estimation, reason is (or is at least partly constitutive of) the human essence itself. 107

Hence, in keeping with the order Spinoza himself prescribes for moral inquiry, we must now determine the character of the “highest human good” – or human “perfection” – that may be

“deduced” from this fact. Both the method and the results of this deduction will prove to be, in their grandes lignes, exactly the same in the Ethics as in the TTP.

In proposition 23, Spinoza first makes the claim that “a man” may only “be said absolutely to act from virtue (…) insofar as he is determined because he understands”. In the following proposition, he goes a step further, contending that: “acting absolutely from virtue is nothing else in us but acting, living, and preserving our being (these three signifying the same thing) by the guidance of reason (…)”. As should be clear by now, within Spinoza’s philosophical system, what Spinoza affirms in these propositions is tantamount to saying that reason is the human essence, since “the striving by which each thing strives to persevere in its being [i.e., a thing’s power or virtue] is defined by the thing’s essence alone”(E IVP25Dem;

Italics mine). Almost immediately after demonstrating these propositions, Spinoza gets to work on the deduction of the highest human good, which it will take him three propositions to complete (PP26-28). In proposition 26, we are told that reason simply is “our mind, insofar it understands clearly and distinctly” – i.e., insofar as it acts or is the adequate cause of the effects

(in this case: ideas) that follow from its nature alone. In other words, as is established in proposition 40 of part II, the “essence of the mind” (cf. E IVP37 & E VP36S) – what the mind just is an inherent striving to achieve – is understanding. Hence, “whatever we strive for from reason is nothing but understanding”. Since: (1) the striving to persevere in being that just is the essence of the mind is a striving for understanding; (2) “virtue is human power itself, which is defined by man’s essence alone” (E IVP20 Dem.); and (3) the striving of each thing to secure its own advantage and persevere in being is pursued for its own sake (E IVP25) and is the “first and only foundation of virtue” (i.e., the condition of all value; that which, by definition 1 of part IV, 108 accounts for the goodness of all good things), it follows that it is only insofar as something “leads to understanding” that it must be considered good (cf. E IV App. Ch. V). Knowledge is our highest good, to which all other goods are subordinate or intermediary – i.e., good only because they contribute in some way to bringing about our highest good.

But knowledge always has an object; knowledge is always knowledge of something. In proposition 27, Spinoza simply reminds his reader of the chief claim of part I of the Ethics: viz., that God is an absolutely infinite being (D6), “without which (by IP15) nothing can either be or be conceived”. Part I of Ethics shows that there is literally nothing other than or outside of God, who can therefore be equated with Nature or the absolute totality of being. There is therefore no possible other object of knowledge than God, taken either in his absolutely infinite being or power, or as his nature or power is expressed in an infinity of particular modes. Hence, knowledge of God – i.e., knowledge of Nature or the totality of being – is our “highest good” and

“greatest virtue”. In fact, because the “essence of man” is “defined by reason”, and knowledge or the deployment/actualization of our rational powers is necessarily the knowledge of God, it follows that “man could neither be nor be conceived if he did not have the power to enjoy this highest good” (E IVP61S; Italics mine).

Spinoza masterfully summarizes much of the preceding, in addition to providing further insight into what the knowledge of God actually comprises, in chapter IV of the Appendix to part

IV. Having just asserted in chapter III that all our actions – i.e., all “those desires which are defined by [our] power, or reason [or, one might add, virtue]” – are good, Spinoza writes:

In life, therefore, it is especially useful to perfect, as far as we can, our intellect, or reason. In this one thing consists man’s highest happiness, or blessedness (felicitas, seu beatitudo). (…) But perfecting the intellect is nothing but understanding God, his attributes, and his actions, which follow from the necessity of his nature. So the ultimate end of the man who is led by reason, that is, his highest desire, by which he strives to moderate all the others, is that by which he is led to conceive adequately both himself and all things which can fall under his understanding. 109

The perfection of the intellect/reason,81 or the enjoyment of our highest good, thus consists in our coming to understand “that from God’s supreme power, or infinite nature (…) all things have necessarily flowed, or always follow, by the same necessity and in the same way as from the nature of a triangle it follows, from eternity and to eternity, that its three angles are equal to two right angles” – i.e., as the properties of a geometrical figure follow from its essence, as a conclusion follows from a set of premises, or (which is all the same to Spinoza) as a set of effects is engendered by and explained through its causes. Because God exists necessarily (i.e., because his nature or essence is (E IP20), or necessarily involves (E IP7), existence), and God acts with the same necessity with which he exists (or is the cause of himself in the same way in which he is the cause of all things), it follows that “things could have been produced by God in no other way, and in no other order than they have been produced” (E IP33). Nature is an all-encompassing and absolutely necessary system of causes grounded in its first cause: God, whose causal power, existence, and essence are one and the same eternal truth. Since “God’s omnipotence [i.e., the causal power or essence from which all things follow] has been actual from eternity and will remain in the same actuality to eternity”, it follows that Nature’s causal order is itself eternal.

The perfection of the intellect is, accordingly, nothing but the rational understanding of this

81 I am here using, and will continue to use in much of what follows (unless otherwise noted), the terms ‘intellect’ and ‘reason’ (as well as ‘understanding’) interchangeably and in their broad sense – just as we have seen Spinoza do – to designate whatever ways the mind is able to conceive things adequately. As we have already seen, Spinoza contends that we are capable of two such forms of adequate cognition, or that there are two ‘modes’ of reason in this broad sense. Confusingly, Spinoza labels one of these ‘kinds’ of reason or adequate cognition “reason” (“knowledge of the second kind”). He calls the other “intuition” (or “knowledge of the third kind”). I have already outlined some of the differences between these two forms of adequate knowledge (or ‘reason’ in the broad sense). These differences are irrelevant to the point I wish to make here, which is simply that since both are sources of adequate knowledge (which, as we have seen, can only ever be knowledge of Deus sive Natura), it follows that the development of either one constitutes our highest good – or at least some degree of its realization. I will return shortly to the thorny question (hinted at in the previous sentence) of their relative worth according to Spinoza, although for our purposes in this chapter (indeed, in this dissertation as a whole) it is not crucial that we settle this question. It suffices that we gain a general understanding of what, according to Spinoza, “blessedness” or our “highest good” involves as it is to be found in either one of the two forms of adequate cognition (regardless of their relative standing – i.e., of whether the one allows for a greater realization of our highest good than the other). 110 eternal causal order as the necessary expression of “the necessity of God’s eternal nature”, and thus “under a certain species of eternity” (E IIP44C2 Dem.) – i.e., as a truth having “no relation to time”.

If one clings to the decidedly un-Spinozistic notion that human freedom is the capacity to be an absolutely unconditioned cause, to spontaneously will things into being, and that it is thus predicated upon the contingency of (at least some) events in Nature,82 one is likely to be repulsed by Spinoza’s conception of our highest good. For one is likely to see in it nothing less than the complete abolition of human freedom in the passive acceptance of what cannot be otherwise. But whatever one ultimately thinks of Spinoza’s ethical teachings, it is clear that Spinoza would reject the construal of his conception of the highest good as mere resignation to a fate that is external to us, or to forces alien to us, of which we would be the merely passive victims or slaves. For this is precisely the situation in which, to Spinoza, those who have not yet attained the highest good – viz., the knowledge of God – find themselves in, whereas those who have attained it also ipso facto enjoy perfect freedom.

To understand how this might be the case, we need to remember a few things about the nature of rational or adequate knowledge. According to Spinoza, the human mind is “part of the infinite intellect of God” – the idea Dei. The latter may be described as the infinite “order and connection of ideas” that follow from God’s absolutely infinite nature within the attribute of thought, but existing simultaneously (instead of successively in time) ‘within’ or, perhaps more accurately, ‘as’ the Divine Mind. The idea Dei, in other words, is the total system of ideas (or

“things”, since they have formal and not only objective reality) that an infinite intellect

82 Spinoza, on the other hand, considers this notion an anti-scientific prejudice (E IP17S; P33S1 & 2) because scientia est cognitio causarum and, as such, science is predicated upon the principle that nihil est sine ratione – a principle contradicted by the belief in free will (i.e., an un-necessitated or unconditioned cause). To Spinoza, even God is causa sui (and thus free) only because he “exists from the necessity of [his own] nature” (E ID7), not because he is without cause. 111 comprehends as following from God’s essence within the attribute of thought, and whose “order and connection” is identical to the “order and connection of things” within the infinity of other attributes (E IIP7; cf. E IIP9Dem.). Our mind, on the other hand, is nothing but the idea of a finite modification of the attribute of extension: viz., our body (E IIP13). It is thus comprehended within the idea Dei. As Spinoza explains, “when we say that the human mind perceives this or that, we are saying nothing but that God, not insofar as he is infinite, but insofar as he is explained through the nature of the human mind, or insofar as he constitutes the essence of the human mind, has this or that idea”. And an idea is adequate in us – i.e., we conceive something adequately – when God may be said to have that idea “only insofar as he constitutes the nature of the human mind” (E IIP11C; cf. P34Dem.). In other words, an adequate idea is derived from the internal resources of the mind (from a “given true idea”) by our powers alone. It is precisely because an adequate idea may be understood or ‘explained’ on the basis of our nature alone

(insofar as that nature is understood within the attribute of thought as a ‘mind’) – with no reference to any causes external to it – that we are said to act when we understand something adequately. Adequate knowledge, in other words, is the form that self-determination or auto- kinesis takes within the attribute of thought. And another word for self-determination or auto- kinesis, by the 7th definition of part I, is freedom.

Hence, to develop adequate and, thus, true (E IIP34) knowledge of Nature’s causal order is to cease to experience the events determined by that causal order as happening to us, as something to which we are subject or by which we are affected, and over which we have no power. On the contrary, to the precise extent that we understand that order adequately, it ceases to be foreign to us, but rather, becomes an autonomous expression of our own nature and power.

This is what is ultimately behind Spinoza’s claim that “an affect which is a passion ceases to be a passion as soon as we form a clear and distinct [i.e., adequate] idea of it” (E VP3); we are acted 112 on, or are subject to affects that are passions, only to the extent that we perceive the necessary causal order that gives rise to our affects confusedly or inadequately.

In fact, given Spinoza’s understanding of the ontological status, not only of ideas in general within the idea Dei, but specifically of our adequate ideas, it follows that what our mind conceives adequately is literally a part of our mind or the idea that constitutes us. Those things we adequately conceive are part of the idea that God thinks when he thinks of our nature and its properties (i.e., all those things that can be understood to follow from our nature or power).

Hence, to the extent that we achieve adequate knowledge of Nature and its necessary causal order, we become (or discover ourselves to always already have been) one with it, such that – to that same extent (and only to that extent) – we may be said to be its immanent causes, or may be said to cause it in the same sense in which we may be said to cause ourselves (since those things which we understand adequately may be understood to follow from our nature, and are so understood by God: cf. E IIP34Dem.; KV II, xxvi; cf. Ansaldi 2001: 747; Hampshire 126).

If virtue is “the very essence, or nature, of man, insofar as he has the power of bringing about certain things, which can be understood through the laws of his nature alone” (E IVD8), there can be no greater virtue, no greater source of power, than adequate knowledge. And if the good is defined as that which increases our power of acting, such that fewer things impede or constrain our striving to persevere in being, and more things may be understood as expressions of our own nature, it follows no less straightforwardly that the knowledge of God or Nature is our highest good. Furthermore, we see why, according to Spinoza, the enjoyment of our highest good – our “salvation or blessedness” – is synonymous with the attainment of “freedom” (E

VP36S), and why Spinoza often calls the person who has achieved such rational understanding both vir fortis and homo liber (a powerful man and a free man). Only the absolutely virtuous

(and hence powerful) person is “compelled by no one” (E IP17), “complies with no one’s wishes 113 but his own” (E IVP66S), and is “determined to act by [him/herself] alone”, such that all things may be said to follow with necessity from his/her own nature alone – which, of course, is the very definition of freedom (E ID7).83

The “highest human good” must also, in Spinoza’s view, be described as an “intellectual love of God (amor intellectualis Dei)” (E VP32; Italics mine). To Spinoza, “self-satisfaction

(acquiescentia in se ipso)”, which he also refers to as the “satisfaction of mind (acquiescentia mentis)” (E VP27), “is a joy born of the fact that man considers himself and his own power of acting” (E III Def. Affs. XXV). Now, as we have seen, “man’s true power of acting, or virtue, is reason itself”. And according to propositions 40, 42, and 43 of part II, reason is always (i.e., by definition) self-reflexive: when one conceives something adequately one also knows that one conceives that thing adequately. It follows that such acquiescentia in se ipso may arise from reason (E IVP52). Moreover, since humans have adequate knowledge of only that which follows from them insofar as they act – i.e., (by IIIP3) of that which follows from their “power of understanding” – it follows that the acquiescentia in se ipso that is rooted in reason is “the greatest there can be”.84

83 Thus, far from being incompatible, freedom and necessity must in fact be thought together. As Spinoza writes in a letter to Schuller “(…) I place freedom, not in free decision, but in free necessity”(non in libero decreto sed in libera necessitate)” (Ep 58; cf. TP II.11). 84 I must now revisit a point I made in a previous footnote (see footnote 27), to the effect that our “blessedness” or “highest good” can arise from either of the two forms of adequate knowledge at our disposal (i.e., from either the second or third forms of cognition; cf. Frankena 27). I must do so because I have just claimed that the “greatest” acquiescentia in se ipso can arise from reason in general – making no distinction between the two forms of adequate knowledge or reason (in the broad sense): viz., reason (in the narrow sense) and intuition. This is bound to strike some readers as a mistake. After all, Spinoza himself explicitly affirms in proposition 27 of Ethics V that the “greatest” such self-satisfaction arises from the third kind of knowledge, and he argues for this claim on the basis of the fact, established three propositions earlier, that “the greatest striving of the mind, and its greatest virtue is understanding things by the third kind of knowledge”. If one relies upon this passage alone, it may appear as though Spinoza believes intuition is the only possible source of acquiescentia in se ipso. But this cannot be the case (pace Yovel 1985: 316; cf. Giancotti 1990: 242-243). For in proposition 52 of Ethics IV, Spinoza maintains that “acquiescentia in se ipso can arise from reason, and only that acquiescentia in se ipso which does arise from reason is the greatest there can be”. The argument that Spinoza supplies in support of this claim makes plain that he means “reason” in the broad sense, as encompassing all forms of adequate cognition (or at least all those forms Spinoza believes to be within our capacity), whether through common notions (i.e., reason in the narrow sense) or the 114

It remains to be seen how God and the love of God fit into the picture. To know something adequately – i.e., through reason – is to conceive that thing “under a species of eternity”. When we know something through reason (i.e., adequately or truly), we know that it is necessarily as it is, and that it cannot possibly be otherwise. But the necessity of this truth is grounded in God’s “eternal nature”: to know that something cannot be otherwise is to know that it necessarily follows from, and has always had to follow from, God’s necessary existence (i.e., his eternal actuality). Thus, to know anything adequately is (as was explained in a slightly different manner above) to know God. Acquiescentia in se ipso is a kind of joy accompanied by an adequate idea of oneself as its cause. As we have just seen, this adequate knowledge of oneself must also be associated with the idea of God, insofar as the knowledge of anything

“involves”, and ultimately is nothing other than, the knowledge of God. Hence, God too will be perceived as the cause of this joy, and will thus be loved (according to its definition, for which see: E IIIP13S & Def. Affs. VI). The love of God is an intellectual love because it stems from the fact that we “understand” (vs. imagine) God’s eternal essence (E VP32C).85

immediate apprehension of the singular essences of things (i.e., intuition; E IIP40S2 & VP36S). Since both are sources of adequate knowledge, both are channels through which we may attain our highest good. But this does not mean that they can’t be ordered hierarchically. Both may be considered sources of the “greatest satisfaction of the mind” or “self-esteem” when compared to the self-esteem (Gloria) that does not arise from reason (in the broad sense): i.e., the vanity or vainglory that is rooted in the imagination, and is thus dependent upon, and as inconstant as (our imaginary perception of) the opinion of our fellow human beings (cf. E IVP58S; TTP III.1). But one cannot read part V of Spinoza’s Ethics without recognizing that Spinoza regards intuition as superior to reason (in the narrow sense). To Spinoza, the third form of knowledge is richer and more “powerful” than the second (which operates on the basis of “common notions” and is thus a “universal knowledge”) because it grants us knowledge of singular things qua singular (or in their singularity) – and, as I shall explain in the appendix to this chapter, despite everything I have argued about Spinoza’s belief in the existence of a universal human essence, it cannot be denied that Spinoza also thought that while the things that exist in this world may share common properties or universal essences, they are ultimately singular (singular manifestations of God’s causal power, endowed with singular essences). 85 In this paragraph, I have presented amor intellectualis Dei as stemming from reason in general (i.e., from both forms of adequate knowledge). This is consistent with what I argued in the preceding footnote about how acquiescentia in se ipso is similarly rooted in both forms of reason in the broad sense (i.e., the third and second forms of knowledge). Readers who initially considered my claim in the previous footnote to be mistaken will likely have reacted in a similar way to this claim. For Spinoza only ever explicitly associates the intellectual love of God with scientia intuitiva. However, Spinoza never says that the amor intellectualis Dei can only arise from the third form of knowledge. Indeed, Spinoza cannot say this, because the argument through which he demonstrates that 115

Crucially, our love of God must also, according to Spinoza, be considered “the very love by which God loves himself” (E VP36). In other words, the phrase ‘amor intellectualis Dei’ must be taken in both possible senses of the genitive. Of course, since joy is an affect that marks a transition “from a lesser to a greater state of perfection”, God, the supremely perfect being, cannot rightfully be said to be affected by joy. And if he cannot be affected by joy, neither can he be affected by love stricto sensu.86 But Spinoza maintains that God is affected by a super- eminent analogon of love (cf. Garrett 1996: 283-284). For God is infinitely perfect, and insofar as he enjoys perfect self-knowledge, he knows the cause of this absolute perfection: viz., himself

(E VP35). Hence, he must be said to delight in the plenitude of his own power, even if in a super-eminent sense that is only analogous to the way in which we delight in the contemplation of our power. God has no end or good outside of himself, but is, on the contrary, wholly self- possessed and self-satisfied. Now, the point I wish to make is that this divine self-contentment

(acquiescentia in se ipso) or love can take the form of – i.e., be one and the same as – the love through which we love him. To Spinoza, to say that an idea is adequate in us (i.e., may be understood to follow from our nature alone) is to say that: “there is an adequate and perfect idea in God insofar as he constitutes the essence of our mind” (E IIP34Dem.) or “insofar as he can be explained through the human mind” (E VP36Dem.). Hence, to say that acquiescentia in se ipso

“from the third kind of knowledge, there necessarily arises an intellectual love of God” (P32C) could serve equally well to demonstrate that the same thing “necessarily arises” from the second form of knowledge. For, if it is true that from the third kind of knowledge “there arises (by P32) joy, accompanied by the idea of God as its cause, that is (by Def. Affs. VI), love of God, not insofar as we imagine him as present (by P29), but insofar as we understand God to be eternal” – which, as Spinoza tells us, is what he understands by an intellectual love of God – the very same thing may be said to arise from adequate knowledge of the second kind as well. 86 There is, of course, another way to explain why God cannot be said to love himself in the strict sense in which love is defined in the scholium to proposition 13 of Ethics III (cf. Def. Affs. VI). For if “love is a joy, accompanied by the idea of an external cause” (Italics mine), then God, as the immanent cause of all things (E IP15), outside of whom nothing can either be or be conceived (E IPP15), cannot be said to love. It is thus noteworthy that in Spinoza’s various accounts of the intellectual love of God – in both senses of the genitive: i.e., as our love for God and his love for himself (E VPP35 & 36) and us (E VP36C) – he describes this love as a “joy accompanied by the idea of God as its cause”. He thus treats such an ‘affect’ of joy as conforming to his original definition of love (cf. E IIIP13S & Def. Affs. VI), even though in all of his descriptions of amor intellectualis Dei the idea of God is, with good reason, never referred to as an external cause of joy (see: E VP15; P32C; PP35 & 36). 116

(and thus, ultimately, our love for God) is (or is rooted in) an adequate conception of our own power/perfection is nothing other than to say that God, not insofar as he is absolutely infinite, but insofar as part of his infinite productive power is expressed in the action of a finite mode (an affection of his attributes), is gratified by the contemplation of his own power with the knowledge of himself as cause of this gratification – i.e., ‘loves’ himself (E VP36).87

Thus, in exploring the interrelated – indeed, on a certain level, identical – notions of acquiescentia in se ipso and amor intellectualis Dei, we once again come to the same all- important point: viz., that to Spinoza, our highest good takes the form of a union with God or

Nature. For, to the extent that we achieve amor intellectualis Dei we cease to regard Nature (or the events that unfold according to its causal order) as alien to us, as a force external and potentially hostile to our conatus essendi, and thus cease to desire or love anything outside of ourselves. On the contrary, we come to rest in the self-contentment and self-possession

(acquiescentia in se ipso) that God himself enjoys, delighting in the contemplation of Nature as an expression of our own causal power or essence – indeed, as our own absolutely unconstrained self-production (Ansaldi 2001: 751-752). We may achieve this unity with Nature precisely because there is always already an underlying community or identity between our essence – viz.,

87 It seems to me that our intellectual love of God, which, as I have explained, goes hand-in-hand with the acquiescentia in se ipso that is rooted in rational understanding, must also be considered an analogon of love in the strict sense in which love is defined in the scholium to proposition 13 of Ethics III (and the 6th Definition of the Affects). For to achieve an adequate understanding of God is, in part, to realize that God must be considered the immanent cause of our being, insofar as the power through which we strive to persevere in being, and which is adequately expressed in the very activity of rational understanding, is merely a part of God’s absolutely infinite potentia existendi. This seems to be intimated by Spinoza himself. For as I mentioned in the previous footnote, while Spinoza cites his strict definition of love in his numerous efforts in part V to explain why a “joy accompanied by the idea of God as its cause” should count as an intellectual love of God (see e.g. E VP32C), it is clear that the joy one feels in acquiescentia in se ipso is not accompanied by the idea of God as its external cause (for this mental satisfaction can also be described as an “action by which God, insofar as he can be explained through the human mind, contemplates himself” (E VP36Dem.)). Hence, if the intellectual love of God is in fact a form of love, it is not a form of love in exactly the sense in which love is formally defined by Spinoza: it too is an analogon of love in the strict sense of a “joy with the accompanying idea of an external cause” (E IIIP13S).

117 reason – and Nature’s rational order or structure. God’s essence involves existence, whereas ours does not. In this respect – and the ramifications of this fact will be made plain in a moment – we are not God (sive Nature). But God’s essence or causal power expresses itself in a way that is, at least in principle, perfectly intelligible; Nature has an inherently rational structure or order (E IA3

& A4; E IP11Alt. Dem.; Haserot 48). Indeed, the whole of natura naturata is quite literally an infinite set of properties that may be deduced from God’s essence, in the same way that the properties of a geometrical figure may be deduced from its definition. Since our essence is (or is at least partly defined by) reason, this order is (at least potentially) not inaccessibly foreign to us: to the extent that we are able to fulfil or actualize this essence by achieving adequate knowledge, we achieve a kind of unity with the rest of Nature that it is strictly impossible for finite modes not defined by reason to achieve (E IV App. Ch. XXXII; cf. Ramond 1999: 81).

God, as we have seen, is the immanent cause of all things by the same absolute necessity through which he himself exists. It follows that the world or the whole of reality – Deus sive

Natura – is absolutely perfect, exactly as it is (and, at the level of the infinite modes, always has been and always will be, ab aeterno and in aeternum), not because it conforms to a transcendent principle or standard of goodness, but because it is the only possible world or reality. God is “an absolutely infinite being”, in the sense that anything expressing essence or being (i.e., a

‘perfection’) belongs to his Nature: he is pure and immutable actuality, the sheer plenitude of being, to which there belongs no negativity, lack, non-being, or potentiality. Hence, if good and evil are, respectively, what contribute to or prevent the attainment of a greater state of perfection/reality, it follows that there can be no such thing as good and evil for God: good and evil have no bearing upon Nature as a whole. Moreover, because joy is an affect that marks “a passage to a greater state of perfection” and sadness is its antithesis, God can be affected by neither. But if the knowledge of good and evil is “nothing but an affect of joy or sadness insofar 118 as we are conscious of it” (E IVP8), since God is incapable of joy or sadness, he also has no knowledge of good and evil.

It follows from what we have seen in the previous paragraph that if it were possible for us to achieve absolute knowledge of God – i.e., to know God in exactly the same way in which he knows himself – good and evil would cease to have any meaning to us. For, as I have shown, to the extent that we are able to achieve knowledge of God (or Nature) we come to participate in his perfection (to realize our union with Nature). Since there can be no plus realitatis to the being who is maximum realitatis, it follows that, having achieved union with this being through knowledge, good and evil would simply become irrelevant to us: we would lack nothing, and thus desire nothing, as we would understand the whole of being, in its plenitude and infinite internal differentiation, to be an expression of our nature. To put this another way: if it were possible for us to understand, not merely in principle, but in every last detail, how the entire order of Nature has been determined “ab aeterno, & in aeternum”(E IP17S) to be exactly as it is by the laws of

God’s eternal nature, we would recognize that it is as absurd to wish for another world, in which things might have been determined to occur otherwise than they have been determined to occur, as it is to wish for a square circle. Ceasing to yearn for what is not and cannot be, we would rest content (acquiesce) in the knowledge of what is and must be the case, for “insofar as we understand we can want nothing except what is necessary, nor absolutely be satisfied

(acquiescere) with anything except what is true” (E IV App. Ch. XXXII). In this manner, it may be said not only that “if men were born free, they would form no concept of good and evil so long as they remained free” (E IVP68; Italics mine), but also that if “men” were able to achieve absolute freedom, they would likewise make no further use of such moral terms, as they would realize their inapplicability to that being through the unification with which alone such absolute freedom is achieved: viz., Nature. 119

Moral categories like good and evil denote “nothing positive in things” if one brackets human interests and considers only the objective order of Nature as a whole. But as Spinoza asserts in the preface to part IV of the Ethics, we must nevertheless “retain these words”. At the beginning of this chapter, I suggested that what Spinoza means in suggesting that moral terms like good and evil must be “retained” is that they are not necessarily, or not merely, subjective fictions of the imagination. They can be used in an ‘objective’ way; it is possible to develop adequate moral knowledge. As I have shown through a detailed exegesis of the relevant passages in the Ethics and the TTP, adequate moral knowledge – knowledge of the highest human good or perfection – is to be deduced from an objective understanding of our nature (cf. Temkine 445).

As Spinoza declares: “the perfection of things is to be judged solely from their nature and power”

(E I App.), and “Man’s” perfection, therefore, “is understood through his nature” (E IV Pref.; cf.

E III Gen. Def. Affs.). Moreover, as Spinoza also intimates in the Preface to part IV (and states even more explicitly elsewhere in the Ethics and TTP), it is possible to obtain “certain” knowledge of what allows us to achieve our highest good – i.e., to perfect our nature.

As should be clear by now, Spinoza’s project in the Ethics is, in fact, precisely this: to develop adequate knowledge of both our highest human good and of the means to its attainment

(cf. Frankena 28). As I have shown, it is demonstrated more geometrico in the Ethics that our highest good is the perfection of our nature as rational beings, and that it therefore takes the form of amor intellectualis Dei. Furthermore, it is proven that all other things are good only in a subordinate manner, insofar as they enable us to realize this highest good. In the Preface to part

IV of the Ethics, by contrast, Spinoza defines as good “what we know certainly is a means by which we may approach nearer and nearer to the exemplar humanae naturae we set before ourselves”. Spinoza fails to elaborate explicitly on the content of this ‘model of human nature’ in the Preface to part IV. But unless we want to suppose that what Spinoza establishes to be the 120 good in the body of part IV (not to mention part V) is different from what he defines as the good in its Preface, we must conclude that this model is nothing other than the idea of a human being having perfected his or her rational nature in the contemplation of Deus sive Natura, and thus come to rest (acquiescere) in the enjoyment of the highest human good (cf. Temkine 448). This reading finds some confirmation in the TIE. In this early work, Spinoza describes the highest human good as the enjoyment of a “much stronger [or more powerful: firmior] human nature” – a phrase that immediately calls to mind the “exemplar humanae naturae” of the Ethics. Assuming it is correct to see in the former a precursor to the latter, support for my interpretation of the

‘exemplar’ is to be found in the fact that this “stronger human nature”, which Spinoza says he

“conceives” and strives to fulfil as his highest good, is nothing other than “the knowledge of the union that the mind has with the whole of Nature (cognitionem unionis, quam mens cum tota

Natura habet)”, whereas anything else is a “true good” only by acting as a “means to [its] attainment” (§13). For, as the reader will have noted, the realization of the “much stronger human nature”, which in the TIE Spinoza envisions to be the highest good, is nothing other than that which, in the Ethics, Spinoza calls the knowledge of God.

According to this interpretation, the “exemplar humanae naturae” of the Preface to part

IV, or the “stronger human nature” of §13 of the TIE, are not purely imaginary constructs: they are formed or deduced, in the same way Spinoza says we form or “deduce” the knowledge of our highest good, on the basis of a rational apprehension of the universal human nature.88 Indeed, the

88 Pace Boss 220-224; Kashap 111; Matheron 1985: 346. Like C. Jaquet (2005: 84-85), P. Sévérac (2005: 313), P. Temkine (1994), and C. Jarrett (161-162, 164-165), D. Eisenberg argues that the exemplar humanae naturae is a “clear and distinct” or “adequate” idea (129) produced by reason. However, taking Spinoza to be a nominalist at least insofar as he considers all “general ideas” defining what is “common and peculiar – indeed, essential – to the members of exactly one so-called natural kind” (118) to be “confused” (129), Eisenberg contends that the model of human nature cannot be a universal. She goes on to make two further, somewhat contrasting, suggestions regarding its nature and content: (a) that, despite its being an adequate idea, it may differ from person to person (as each particular person’s “as yet unrealized ideal self”); and (b), that it might simply represent the real life of an actual 121 way they are “deduced” is akin to the way the properties of a geometrical figure are, according to

Spinoza, “deduced” from the knowledge of that figure’s essence: i.e., from its “true definition”.

If they are not, or at least not exclusively (more on this in a moment), the product of the imagination, if they are, in other words, grounded in reason, they are, however, impossible to ever fully realize. In Kantian terms, they might be said to be regulatory principles or ideals, which we may only ever approximate. But, as I will explain in what follows, the very condition for the possibility of ethics in Spinoza’s system is precisely (and, it might be said, paradoxically) the impossibility of ever perfectly fulfilling his ethical ideal – of ever fully attaining the highest human good. An explanation of what I mean by this will allow me to shed light on some of the most obscure aspects of Spinoza’s ethical and meta-ethical thought.

Spinoza’s ethical ideal – the exemplar humanae naturae; the individual having achieved complete knowledge of, and hence union with, God – is paradoxical, in the sense that it is self- cancelling precisely as an ethico-rational ideal. For, as we have seen, to the individual who would be able to completely fulfil his or her rational nature, and thus achieve perfect knowledge of God, all moral categories would cease to have any meaning (cf. Temkine 446). To enjoy to the fullest the highest human good is thus, paradoxically, to realize that there is no such thing as good or evil in Nature considered objectively and as a whole (cf. TP II.8). It is, in other words, to view the processes in Nature as God views them: i.e., as the immanent and necessary manifestations of his own necessary productive activity, and thus as entirely a-moral. There is nothing good or evil to God, nothing he is supposed to be or do, no norm transcending his productive activity, to which this productive activity must conform, and by reference to which the results of this productive activity (which themselves are not ‘emanations’ or ‘creations’ external

historical figure (Eisenberg contends, on the basis of certain passages in the Ethics and TTP, that Spinoza has Jesus chiefly in mind; vide 129 fn. 14). For a critique of Eisenberg’s reading, see: Jarrett (179, fn. 37). 122 to God, but effects that remain within him) may be judged. To God, there is only what is and must be. Spinoza’s “highest good” or ethical ideal is thus, paradoxically, a purely immanentist thought, which restores to Nature its absolute ‘innocence’.89

2.4. Ethics and the Imagination

This being said, it is important not to lose sight of two things. First, it must be kept in mind that, as was stated above, Spinoza’s ethical ideal – the exemplar humanae naturae; the individual having achieved complete knowledge of, and hence union with, God – is precisely that: an ideal, which it is strictly impossible to realize in full. Only God’s essence is the same as, or “necessarily involves”, his existence. This implies that only God may be called free in the strictest sense of the term, for only he “exists” and “acts from the necessity of his nature alone”, and is “compelled by no one” (E IP17 & C2; cf. E ID7). To the extent that humans come to know God – i.e., to the extent that they are able to live virtuously, or perfect their rational nature

– to that extent as well may they be said to “participate” in God’s perfection and freedom. This form of freedom, which strictly speaking is a derivative form of freedom because it is a freedom by participation rather than by essence, is nevertheless made possible by our rational nature. But our rational essence as human beings is not identical to our existence (cf. E IIP10). Humans are finite modifications of God’s attributes. As such, we are mere “parts of Nature”, whose power to act is necessarily impeded and ultimately snuffed out by myriad other parts of Nature. As

Spinoza writes in proposition 4 of Ethics part IV: “it is impossible (…) that [man] should be able to undergo no changes except those which can be understood through his own nature alone, and of which he is the adequate cause”. On the basis of what we have seen in this chapter, we know

89 On this precise point, the reading I have been putting forward in this chapter converges with the proto-Nietzschean reading. 123 that this is tantamount to saying that while our nature or power may be (or be partly constituted by; see appendix below) reason, and that our highest good is thus the adequate knowledge of

God, it is impossible to ever fully actualize this essence (insofar as it is defined by reason), such as to achieve a perfectly adequate understanding of God, or even such as to only ever have adequate ideas. We are always, to some extent, under the sway of inadequate ideas. To be a part of Nature is for one’s existence not to perfectly actualize, deploy, express, or correspond to, one’s essence (again, insofar as it is defined by reason).

However, the second thing that must be kept in mind is that it is precisely this discrepancy between one’s universal essence and the way it is actually expressed, realized, or deployed in one’s durational existence that is the condition for the possibility of ethics according to Spinoza.

This is true in many respects. As we have seen, the highest human good – i.e., that condition in which our interests would be perfectly realized, and our power would thus have attained a maximum – is deduced from the universal human nature. As we have also seen, our highest good, that condition in which our power or essence as rational beings is maximally deployed, is the knowledge of God. While it is impossible to fully realize this highest good, and thus to absolutely fulfil our rational nature, there are different degrees to which we can enjoy this highest good and ‘live up to’ or actualize our nature – i.e., different degrees to which we may be said to act, or to which our durational existence may be considered an adequate expression of our essence. The nature we hold in common with all humans must be understood as a potentiality, as a latent force or power, for our ethical project, as Spinoza presents it in the Ethics, is its

‘actualization’ or adequate/perfect deployment in our durational existence. In this way, the universal human nature – or the exemplar humanae naturae deduced from it – may be used as a standard or norm for moral judgements, such that “men” may be deemed “more perfect or imperfect, insofar as they approach more or less near to this exemplar”(E IV Pref.), and things 124 may be deemed good or evil insofar as they are known with certainty to allow us to “come closer to” this exemplar (i.e., to more fully deploy or ‘actualize’ in our durational existence the latent power that is our essence; cf. Zac 1972: 62; Ansaldi 2001: 744-745).

What this entails is the apparent paradox that while our highest good consists in the perfect knowledge of God – such that we might come to know God as he knows himself, and thus no longer appeal to or rely upon any concepts implying any sort of transcendence in relation to the absolutely immanent and eternal order of being (e.g., notions of a ‘good’ that this order might be supposed to have failed to realize) – this purely ‘immanentist’ thinking is itself a transcendent norm or ethico-rational imperative (i.e., something “reason declares” to be a good to be realized) for finite rational beings. While this may have an air of paradox to it, it is not necessarily contradictory for Spinoza to ‘have it both ways’ in this manner. The “true knowledge of good and evil” – i.e., of our highest good and the means to its attainment – is an adequate knowledge, even though God knows nothing as good or evil (to him). Or, more precisely, what is adequate in the true knowledge of good or evil is the proposition that the knowledge of God is what is maximally empowering for us, as well as the propositions that a, b, and c (whatever they may be) enable us to know God (i.e., to increase the power of beings of our nature), whereas x, y, and z

(whatever they may be) prevent our achieving such knowledge (i.e., decrease the power of beings of our nature). Insofar as this is what the true knowledge of good and evil comprises, it is perfectly adequate. God may be said to know these things in exactly the way we do – indeed: to know them “insofar as he can be explained through the human mind” (E VP36Dem.) – even though such propositions pertain not to the “order and laws of universal Nature (universae naturae)”, but only to “the law of our nature (nostrae naturae legum)” (TP II.8; cf. TTP XVI.4;

Frankena 40). But this adequate knowledge (it is simply an objective fact that the knowledge of

God is the maximally empowering state for human beings, the state in which our conatus essendi 125 is optimally encouraged, and hence good) is a true knowledge of what is good or evil in the sense which the knowledge of good and evil is granted by proposition 8 of Ethics part IV, according to which such knowledge is ultimately an affect, only from our perspective: i.e., from the perspective of beings who are not God but mere “parts of Nature” capable of increases and decreases in their degree of perfection (reality), and thus of affects of joy and sadness (see, e.g., E

IVP57S). It is only insofar as we are finite modes who must constantly endeavour to persevere in being and increase our potentia existendi/agendi, and whose temporal existence never perfectly manifests, or represents the unfettered deployment of, our rational nature (E IVP4), that such adequate (i.e., objective) knowledge ‘appears’ or, better, ‘is received as’ an adequate “knowledge of good and evil” (again in the sense that proposition 8 of part IV of the Ethics imparts to this phrase, according to which such knowledge necessarily carries an affective component, or simply is our consciousness of an affect). Another way of putting this subtle but crucial point is that the

“true knowledge of good and evil” must, in the final analysis, be regarded as the way finite rational beings such as ourselves, who are necessarily prey to inadequate ideas90 and susceptible to affects, ‘receive’, ‘process’, or are ‘affected by’ our rational/adequate knowledge of: (1) what constitutes the maximization of our potentia agendi; and (2) what helps us bring about whatever it is that is rationally determined to constitute such a ‘best state’ (i.e., condition of maximal power). The imagination thus has an integral role to play in all our moral cognition.

Indeed, one might say that the imagination (knowledge of the first kind) is a necessary condition for the possibility of ethics in general. Spinoza regards it as entirely possible for some humans to come to understand, in principle, how all things are necessarily determined to exist and act as they do by the necessary laws of God’s eternal nature. Insofar as some humans are able to achieve this degree of the knowledge of God – i.e., to know “that everything that happens

90 I.e., who depend upon and think through the imagination. 126 happens according to the eternal order, and according to certain laws of Nature” (TIE §12; Italics mine) – they may also be said to enjoy some measure of the highest good. To this extent also, they will consider all that they and all other things presently are or do to be all that they possibly can be or do at that point in time. To have achieved this degree of rational understanding is thus to serenely accept whatever mistakes, shortcomings, or misdeeds, on one’s own part or on the part of others, prove to have been unavoidable (the achievement of this very abstract level of rational understanding amounting to little more than the knowledge that whatever is the case at any given moment has been determined to be the case at that very moment “from eternity and for all eternity”).

But as parts of Nature, our cognitive powers are necessarily finite, such that it is strictly impossible for us to “grasp” the causal order of Nature as a whole and in its infinite complexity

(TIE §13; cf. TP II.8; Ep 56). We are, at least for the most part, “ignorant of the actual coordination and connectedness of things, that is, of how things are really ordered and connected” (TTP IV.1; cf. TTP III.5). As should be clear by now, the extent to which we are

“ignorant” of Nature’s causal order is a function of our reliance upon the imagination. Moreover, since to truly and adequately understand Nature’s causal order is to understand its necessity (E

IIP44), it is also the case that our belief in possibility or contingency in Nature is a function of our ignorance and, thus, of our reliance upon the imagination (E IIP44C; cf. E IP33S1). But we saw a few paragraphs ago that Spinoza’s ethics depends upon a conception of the universal human essence as defining what it is (or would be) possible for each human being to become, and that, to Spinoza, the ethical project in which we are all necessarily engaged (according to his conatus-doctrine) consists in the striving to increase our potentia agendi – i.e., to bring it about that our actual existence in time is a more adequate/perfect deployment or realization of our 127

(rational) essence. The ethical project, in other words, is: to be all that one can be, as this latent power is defined by one’s essence; to become what one is, potentially and essentially.91

And since this is the case, ethics – understood as an endeavour to increase our potentia agendi, such that more things might be understood as expressions of our essence alone; as a project of self-perfection that must always remain incomplete – depends in part upon the imagination (cf. Sévérac 2005: 144-145; De Dijn 1978: 29). For, as we have seen, the belief in possibility or potentiality, or, more precisely, the belief that it is possible for me to become more perfect than I presently am, is a function of the imagination. It is the very uncertainty with respect to what it is possible for us to become that makes us desire to better ourselves. But this striving for self-perfection, which, since it has to do with the possible, is necessarily related to the imagination, can be carried out in view of an end set before us by reason: viz., the absolute knowledge of, and hence union with, God or Nature. In other words, ethics as a project of self- perfection has no meaning to an omniscient being – even one who, by hypothesis, would not be supremely perfect. But in the case of finite modes such as ourselves, to whom the outcome of

(the vast majority of) things in Nature is uncertain, it is “to think less highly of oneself than is just” to deny that one could increase one’s potentia agendi in the (uncertain) future – or as

Spinoza puts it, to deny “that [one] can conceive of anything certain, or that [one] can desire or do anything but what is wrong or dishonourable” (E III Def. Affs. XXVIII, Exp.). It is thus

“better and indeed necessary for the conduct of life, to regard things as possible” (TTP IV.1), even though the complete fulfilment of the ethical project, as this goal is proposed and realized by reason, would put an end to all thinking in terms of possibility or potentiality. For, to underscore something I said earlier, if the exemplar humanae naturae, or that which it is deduced

91 See: Zac (1972: 62, 66); Deleuze (1968: 205-206); Dufour-Kowalska (195-196, 200, 216); Ansaldi (2001: 743- 745); De Dijn (1978: 28, 31); Lermond (67-68); pace Sévérac (1996: 108-109; 2005: 188, 338); cf. Ramond 1999: 84-91. 128 from – viz., human nature – may be used as a standard according to which moral judgements regarding the relative perfection of particular human beings may be made, it is important to keep in mind that to the extent that this judgement is grounded in reason (i.e., on the rational apprehension of our universal essence and highest good) such a judgement is, strictly speaking, never about a particular person as that person either has been or is at the time of the judgement, but about how this person compares to the same person imagined, in a possible (but therefore uncertain) future, to be a closer approximation of the exemplar humanae naturae put forward by reason. This use of the imagination in conjunction with and furthering the interests of reason

(i.e., “secundum ordinem ad intellectum”(E VP10)), is perhaps some semblance of what Spinoza has in mind when, in the scholium to proposition 17 of Ethics part II, he speaks – counterfactually and enigmatically, to be sure – of a “faculty of imagining” that would “depend only on [one’s] own nature”, and would thus (by E ID7) be “free” (cf. Temkine 445).

Earlier, I suggested that a condition for the possibility of ethics, according to Spinoza, is the very impossibility of ever fully realizing the ethical ideal of perfect knowledge of God. In part, this means that the imagination is itself a necessary condition for the possibility of ethics.

But, it is one thing to say that moral knowledge is exclusively rooted in the imagination, as the reading of Spinoza’s ethical and meta-ethical theory I outlined last chapter would have it, and quite another thing to say, as I am claiming Spinoza maintained, that the imagination has a vital role to play in the constitution of ethics or moral knowledge. It is wrong to say that, in Spinoza’s view, moral knowledge is purely imaginary. For, as I have shown, there is a very real sense in which the “true knowledge of good and evil” may be said to be perfectly adequate (Jarrett 173).

This is the sense in which the latter is merely the true knowledge of what “really (revera)” increases and decreases our potentia agendi or perfection. This knowledge is a knowledge of good and evil for us. For while we may achieve adequate knowledge of some things, we remain 129

“parts of Nature” who, as such, continuously strive to increase our potentia agendi. Spinoza would agree that good and evil only have meaning in relation to the flourishing or curtailing of our conatus essendi. But this does not make him a radical subjectivist, or sceptical relativist.

For there is, according to Spinoza, a distinction to be made between the merely apparent goods proffered by the imagination – which can often differ wildly from one person to the next, or even from one moment to the next for the same person – and the “true good of men (verum hominum utile)”, which is discovered by reason, and which is valid for all humans, regardless of their particular circumstances.92 To Spinoza, an objective account of the good life is possible, for it is possible to determine with certainty, by means of reason, what is and is not to our advantage in general terms – i.e., what does or does not enhance our capacity to act, or aid our striving to persevere in being.93 As we have seen, the “true knowledge of good and evil” is rooted in a grasp of the “laws of our own nature” (TTP XVI.4) – i.e., of the rational nature which all humans share qua human. Because it is deduced from what all humans share qua human, it must remain

“abstract, or universal” (E IVP62S) – a form of “universal knowledge” (E VP36S) – issuing only universal imperatives and leaving unspecified the wealth of detail involved in particular actions.

But it is this same universality that also makes it a grounds for consensus among humans, identifying as it does only what is of common interest to the whole of humanity: a summum bonum that is shared both in the sense of a goal that is, in principle, common to each individual, and also in the sense that all can partake of it equally. The true knowledge of good and evil is inherently related to the imagination in the ways that I have outlined above. But the ways it is related to the imagination do not undermine its fundamentally rational core. And because the

“order of the intellect (…) is the same in all men” (E IIP18S), adequate moral knowledge can be

92 See: Miller (2005: 165-166, 167 fn. 30,169-170); Jaquet (2005: 87); Frankena (28-29). 93 See: Giancotti-Boscherini (1978: 89; 1990: 251); Mara (91); Pezzillo (453); Zac (1972: 62); Jarrett (162); Mattern (79). 130 the basis for consensus among all humans. As such, it is distinguished toto coelo from the form of moral knowledge that is exclusively rooted in the imagination, and which Spinoza tends to refer to as the “knowledge of good and evil”, in opposition to the “true knowledge of good and evil” rooted in reason (even if still related in important ways to the imagination).

2.5. Conclusion

In the previous chapter, we saw how consensus among human beings is nearly impossible

– and extremely unstable when it is achieved – on the basis of the inadequate form of moral knowledge, and how the solution to this problem of dissensus communis is political: viz., the establishment of a Sovereign to settle moral disputes by arbitrary decree and force of arms. Now, as we shall see in the following chapters, there are certain political conditions that foster the development of adequate knowledge in general (and thus adequate moral knowledge in particular). What is crucial for my purposes in this dissertation as a whole is that, as will be made plain in the following chapters, these enabling political conditions for the development of adequate knowledge – i.e., the realization of our highest good – themselves figure among the dictates of reason, as the latter amount to prudential counsels regarding the best means to cultivate one’s potentia agendi.A well-ordered polis is a medium outside of which it is virtually, perhaps even absolutely impossible to lead “the good life”, the life of reason (pace Caillois 1972:

320; Beyssade 1994). In this limited sense, politics may be said to precede reason, and action to come before its recuperation in and ordering through thought. But precisely because political organization is, as we shall see, a necessary means for the development of rational understanding, it is possible in Spinoza’s view to analyze politics from an ethico-rational perspective – i.e., to ask what form of political organization and what political behaviour is consistent with the 131 dictates of reason (both as a means to reason’s development and as an expression of its development).

In this chapter, I have sought to demonstrate that Spinoza believed it was possible to achieve rational or ‘adequate’ moral knowledge. I have, consequently, concentrated on Spinoza’s procedure for arriving at certain moral knowledge – or, more specifically, on the nature, foundations, and ‘method’ of such knowledge, according to Spinoza. I have also paid a great deal of attention to the principal finding of Spinoza’s moral inquiry: viz., that the “highest human good” is the knowledge of God. Seeking this “highest human good” is the chief “dictate of reason”. But, as I have intimated both in the previous paragraph and on many other occasions in this chapter, it is far from being the only dictate of reason. Spinoza acquaints us with a number of these rational precepts in the second half (very roughly speaking) of part IV of the Ethics.

For heuristic purposes, these may be said to fall under two categories, both of which stem from the most basic dictate of reason: viz., that “since reason demands nothing contrary to

Nature, it demands (postulat) that everyone love himself, seek his own advantage, what is really

(revera) useful to him, want what will really (revera) lead a man to greater perfection, and absolutely, that everyone should strive to preserve his own being as far as he can” (E IVP18S;

Italics mine).94 It may seem as though Spinoza is dubiously converting what we do by natural necessity, i.e., as a result of the fixed mechanisms of the passions, into an imperative of

94 However, as will become clearer in the following chapters, the value of my suggestion that the precepts of reason may be regarded as falling under two categories is, in a very real sense, merely heuristic, since most if not all of these rational precepts may be classified under both, such that each can either be a manifestation of one’s having achieved the highest good, or a means to one’s attainment of the latter – sometimes even both for the same person, since the realization of the highest good for flesh-and-blood human beings is always a question of degree (and this entails that one and the same action in accordance with the dictates of reason may often be regarded both as an expression of the degree to which its agent is rational, and as a means to its agent’s becoming even more rational). Thus, these categories aren’t meant to enable us to divide the precepts of reason according to two categories so much as to enable us to discern in each precept two possible aspects, or to see each from two perspectives. 132 instrumental reason.95 However, what seems to be implied by Spinoza’s insistent use of the adverb “revera” here is that reason doesn’t just command us to seek our perceived interests

(which indeed we all do by nature), but to pursue what is truly in our interest – which, as Spinoza has tried to show in the four preceding propositions, we don’t necessarily do by nature.96 In any event, based on what we have seen in this chapter, it will be clear to the reader that what

Spinoza’s claim in this passage amounts to is that we ought to strive above all to decrease our dependence upon, or submission to, external causes, and to increase our virtue, power, or freedom: i.e., our capacity for auto-kinesis, for bringing about effects which follow from our nature alone.

Taken as a whole, the precepts falling under the first category (to be found especially in propositions 67 to 73 of part IV) provide a hypothetical portrait of what such power, virtue, or freedom would look like if fully actualized in a human being (Ansaldi 2006: 150). The precepts falling under the second category consist in “certain” means by which we may come “nearer and nearer” to the exemplar of human nature that the “free man” constitutes, as the latter is described by the precepts of reason falling under the first category.97 Simply put, the precepts falling under the second category thus tell us, with absolute certainty, though only in universal/abstract terms,

95 Spinoza seems to trade on a similar equivocation in another passage from the scholium to proposition 18 of part IV, in which he describes everyone as being “bound (tenetur) to seek his own advantage”. But the ambiguity may be deliberate, for Spinoza may thereby wish to indicate that we are at once “bound” in the sense of an affective or ‘passional’ obligation to seek our apparent advantage, and “bound” in the sense of a rational obligation – an imperative of instrumental reason – to seek our true advantage, as the latter is prescribed by reason. If, through reason, we are able to see what is truly in our interest, it may follow that we are also passionally obligated (i.e., compelled) to do it. It must be kept in mind that, for Spinoza, what determines our actual conduct is not knowledge per se (in any of its forms: i.e., regardless whether it is imaginary or real), but, rather, the force of the affects associated with this knowledge. I found the terminological distinction between passional and rational obligations in chapter 3, section V, of A. Abizadeh’s unpublished manuscript, The Oscillations of Thomas Hobbes: Between Insight and the Will. 96 As Spinoza concludes the sustained argument of propositions 14 through 17: “With this I believe I have shown the cause why men are moved more by opinion than by true reason, and why the true knowledge of good and evil arouses disturbances of the mind, and often yields to lust of every kind” (E IVP17S). Note that I have not said that, for Spinoza, we necessarily do what seems to be in our interest, but only that we necessarily strive (on some level, at least) to do it. See the previous note for further clarification. 97 See footnote 40. 133 the “things which are useful to us (quae nobis utilia)” and which “on that account ought to be sought” (E IVP18S).

I wished to say this much about the precepts of reason in general, as the latter are the foundation for Spinoza’s ethico-rational analysis of politics, from the perspective of which we will, in the next three chapters, take up the question of the validity of political resistance. As we carry out our study of this question, we will therefore examine the content of many relevant precepts of reason that have not yet specifically received our attention.

2.6. Appendix: On the Ontological Status of the “Universal Human Nature” in Spinoza’s

Philosophical System

I have demonstrated all that I had set out to demonstrate in this chapter in view of the overarching aim of this dissertation. Thus, most importantly, I have demonstrated that Spinoza regarded adequate or rational moral knowledge as possible. In the process of substantiating this claim, I have also demonstrated that Spinoza’s ethical theory explicitly relies upon the notion of a universal human essence, and what content Spinoza ascribes to this essence. I would like to conclude by offering some reflections on the ontological status of the “universal human nature” according to Spinoza – i.e., on what he means by a universal human essence, and how such an essence is even conceivable within his philosophical system. I would like, in other words, to bring this chapter to a close by elaborating upon and thus, to the extent that I am able, clarifying what I have argued in it regarding Spinoza’s position on universals and, in particular, on the reality of a universal human essence.

After all, as we saw last chapter, many commentators take Spinoza to be a nominalist: i.e., they maintain that Spinoza regarded Nature as populated only by singular beings endowed with singular essences, and that he thus regarded all universals as mental fictions (or at least as 134 incapable of constituting the essence of any being in Nature). And those who subscribe to this school of interpretation are likely to respond to my claim that Spinoza’s ethics explicitly relies upon the knowledge of a universal human essence with objections based upon the many passages cited last chapter that appear to support the nominalist reading. Convinced that these passages constitute incontrovertible evidence of Spinoza’s nominalism, they are likely to dismiss the many passages I have cited in defence of my reading in this chapter as merely ‘hortatory’ and

‘rhetorical’ in their function and value – i.e., as of little to no theoretical value as an indication of

Spinoza’s ontology (which, they contend, excludes the very possibility of universal essences), or even of his true (meta-) ethical doctrine.

The piece of textual evidence that appears to speak most strongly against the

‘universalist’ reading I have put forward in this chapter is the very definition of essence – or, perhaps more accurately, of what belongs to the essence of any given thing – that Spinoza supplies at the beginning of Ethics II. Spinoza’s definition, it will be recalled, is that something

“belongs” to the essence of a given thing “which, being given, the thing [of which it is the essence] is necessarily posited and which, being taken away, the thing is necessarily taken away; or that without which the thing can neither be nor be conceived, and which can neither be nor be conceived without the thing” (E IID2). This definition would seem to make the notion of a universal essence as contradictory as that of a square circle. For isn’t a universal essence precisely something that does not “posit” the things of which it is the essence – i.e., all of the possible individual members of the class of beings defined by it, or having this essence in common? As medieval thinkers like Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus knew well, the principle of individuation has to be located elsewhere than in a universal essence. The latter can only account for the fact that a plurality of individuals belongs to the same species; it cannot, by definition, account for their individuality (i.e., for their being different members of the same 135 species). And wouldn’t the real existence of a universal essence fly in the face of the last part of

Spinoza’s definition of essence, according to which an essence “can neither be nor be conceived without the thing” of which it is the essence? After all, supposing there is such a thing as a universal human essence, its existence and conceivability surely cannot be said to depend upon the existence of each and every “thing” (i.e., each and every human) of which it would be the universal essence. Furthermore, as we saw last chapter, when Spinoza’s definition of essence is taken in conjunction with his assertion that “nothing belongs to the nature of anything except what follows from the necessity of the nature of the efficient cause” (E IV Pref.; cf. E IP11S), the very distinction between essence and its determinate or ‘particularized’ existence in time – one that is crucial to the theoretical possibility of universal essences – seems to vanish. With respect to one’s essence or nature, it seems one simply is what one becomes, as one is determined by one’s circumstances over time (i.e., in one’s durational existence).

Objections to my reading could also be mounted on the basis of the number of passages, especially in part V of the Ethics, in which Spinoza asserts the superiority of the third kind of knowledge, apparently on the grounds that it is the only form of adequate knowledge that enables us to apprehend the singular essences of things without the mediation of universal concepts – i.e., to grasp things directly in their ineffable particularity, their “haecceitas”, rather than as instantiations of some universal archetype or “quidditas” defining a class of beings to which they might belong.98 Indeed, Spinoza goes so far as to suggest that the striving for adequate and thus

(by E IIP34) true knowledge – i.e., knowledge of things as they really are (E IA6) – must take the form of a striving for “knowledge of particulars”, since “the more particular an idea is, the more distinct, and therefore the clearer it is” (TIE §98). The fact that Spinoza acclaims “intuitive

98 The terms ‘quidditas’ and ‘haecceitas’ are, of course, technical terms in Scholastic philosophy (the latter, e.g., having been coined by John Duns Scotus). Spinoza does not use them. 136 knowledge” as the highest (or most “powerful”; E VP36S) form of knowledge because it is the only form of knowledge granting us immediate access to things as they are in their “inmost” (TIE

§95) being could thus be taken as compelling evidence that Spinoza believes the things that exist are ultimately and irreducibly singular.

These are weighty objections and it may be that they cannot all be answered in an entirely satisfying way. Indeed, they may simply point to a fundamental conflict within Spinoza’s philosophical system: one between his ethical thought (which, as I have shown, explicitly relies upon the existence of a “universal human nature”), and certain aspects of his ontology (which seem to exclude the possibility of universal essences and even to collapse the distinction between essences and their durational existence). One thing, however, strikes me as certain: in an effort to dissolve this tension, it will not do to simply dismiss every mention of a universal human essence made by Spinoza in the context of the exposition of his ethical theory as merely ‘hortatory’ and

‘rhetorical’ in function and (thus) value. For, as I hope to have made clear in this chapter,

Spinoza’s appeal to and use of this concept in his ethical theory is so extensive and methodical that such an ostensible ‘solution’ would render incomprehensible the bulk of the actual argument through which Spinoza establishes his ethical ideal (and thus, also, the epistemological status

Spinoza himself ascribes to this ethical ideal). Furthermore, it would belie what Spinoza insists upon: viz., that his ethical theory “must be based on metaphysics and physics” (Ep 27). For it would imply that Spinoza was unable to build his ethical theory on a rigorously scientific basis, resorting instead to imaginary but (ethically) useful fictions.

On the contrary, if any of Spinoza’s assertions are to be downplayed or taken with a dose of salt, I believe it is those in which he maintains that “nothing” belongs to the essence of anything except what that thing is determined to be by its efficient or external causes (e.g., E IV

Pref.; cf. E IP11S; Ep 60). Such passages must be regarded as overstatements on Spinoza’s part, 137 for if they were literally true, they would leave no room for the most fundamental concept of

Spinoza’s metaphysics, physics, and (thus) ethics: i.e., the notion that “the striving to preserve itself is nothing but the essence of the thing itself (by IIIP7), which, insofar as it exists as it does, is conceived to have a force for persevering in existing (by IIIP6) and for doing those things which necessarily follow from its given nature” (E IVP26 Dem.).99 Nor, for that matter, would the literal truth of such passages leave any room for the very goal of ethics according to Spinoza, which is precisely to minimize the extent to which what one is and does depends upon external/efficient causes, such that what one is and does can instead be understood to follow from one’s nature alone.100

99 Cf. the original phrasing of this doctrine in the demonstration to proposition 7 of Ethics part III: “the power of each thing, or the striving by which it (…) does anything, or strives to do anything – that is (…) the power, or striving, by which it strives to persevere in being – is nothing but the given, or actual, essence of the thing itself”. 100 Finally, it should be added that the literal truth of such passages would exclude the possibility of the subtle but crucial theoretical distinction Spinoza frequently makes between the essence of a given thing and the “affections” or “modifications” of that essence, which Spinoza defines as “any state (constitutionem: constitution, condition) of that essence” – resulting from internal or external causes – through which that essence is “determined (…) to do something” (E III Def. Affs. I; cf. E IIIP56Dem.). Desire, understood as “any of man’s strivings, impulses, appetites, and volitions” is, according to Spinoza, “man’s very essence”. But this is true “insofar as [man’s essence] is conceived to be determined, from any given affection of it, to do something”. Hence, a person’s desires vary in accordance with the variations in the constitution or state of his/her essence. When the state of a person’s essence can be understood on the basis of that person’s essence alone – as an adequate expression of its inherent power – then that person may be said to act (or that person’s desires may be said to be actions; cf. E IV App. Ch. III). The opposite will be true in cases where the “state” of a person’s essence, and hence his/her desire, must, to any degree, be understood through external causes. The point I wish to make is that it is only by maintaining such a theoretical distinction between essences and their states (essences as they are modified by internal or external causes) that Spinoza can, on the one hand, claim that “desire is man’s very essence”, and, on the other hand, assert that a man’s desires “are not infrequently so opposed to one another that the man is pulled in different directions and knows not where to turn” (E III Def. Affs. I). For otherwise the notion that a single person’s desires could be in conflict with one another would be rendered absurd by proposition 4 of Ethics III, according to which it is impossible for the inherent striving of any given being, as defined by that being’s essence, to be self-contradictory (i.e., to tend simultaneously towards x and not-x). Incidentally, an understanding of this distinction allows us to shed new light on the scholium to proposition 57 of Ethics part III, which, as I explained in the preceding chapter, is often pointed to as evidence of Spinoza’s nominalism (specifically with respect to the possibility of a universal human essence). As was noted last chapter, the scholium opens with the claim that “the affects of the animals which are (…) irrational (…) differ from men’s affects as much as their nature differs from human nature”. This claim is predicated upon the fact that, as Spinoza has shown in the scholium to proposition 9, “desire is the very nature, or essence, of each [thing]”, and “joy and sadness” – as well as the myriad other affects derived from them – are merely this desire itself insofar as it is “increased or diminished, aided or restrained”. This part of the scholium appears to bolster one of the major claims of the present chapter: viz., that Spinoza’s ethics explicitly recognizes and depends upon the existence of a universal human nature, and that this universal human nature is (or is at least partly defined by) reason. However, as we saw last chapter, many have taken what Spinoza goes on to say in this scholium as proof of Spinoza’s nominalism. For he goes on to 138

But this leaves the serious objections based (inter alia) on Ethics IID2 and much of part V to be reckoned with. How, and to what extent, can these passages, with everything they entail, be reconciled with the fact that, as I have shown in this chapter, Spinoza’s ethical theory explicitly relies upon and posits the real existence of a “universal human nature”? My suggestion – and I wish to put it forward as no more than a suggestion as I recognize that this remains a very murky and problematic area of Spinoza’s system – goes as follows.

We must begin by carefully distinguishing between two senses in which Spinoza uses the word ‘essence’. First, there is the strict sense it is granted by its formal definition (Ethics IIID2), according to which it refers only to the particular striving to persevere in being or degree of power of singular beings. Second, there is the sense in which it is used when Spinoza speaks of the idea of a “universal human nature” or essence. This second sense may, in an important way,

affirm, on the basis of the above-mentioned equation between affects and one’s nature, that “there is no small difference” between the affect by which, e.g., “a drunk is led”, and that same affect in, say, a philosopher. To many, this can only follow if Spinoza is assuming that the individual drunk and the individual philosopher actually have distinct essences (i.e., do not share a common nature). However, this is to lose sight of the crucial qualification Spinoza has just brought (in the demonstration to proposition 56) to his earlier definition of desire/appetite as “nothing but the very essence of man” tout court (cf. E IIIP9 S): viz., that “desire is the very essence, or nature, of each [man] insofar as it [i.e., that essence] is conceived to be determined, through some state (constitutione) of itself, to do something” (Emphasis mine). I contend that the scholium to proposition 57 of Ethics part III does not – or at least does not necessarily – constitute evidence in favour of the nominalist reading of Spinoza with respect to his stance regarding the existence of a universal human essence, as long as one keeps this crucial qualification in mind. For if Spinoza suggests that, because a given affect in one individual differs in nature from that same affect in another individual “as much as the essence of the one [individual] differs from the essence of the other [individual]”, “there is no small difference” between a given affect (e.g., gladness) in a drunk and that same affect in a philosopher, this does not necessarily suggest that they – the drunk and the philosopher – have altogether different essences. This may simply mean that while they share a common essence – viz., the capacity for reason, which, as Spinoza implies in this scholium, distinguishes them from the “lower animals (bruta)” – this essence has taken on different ‘states’ or ‘modifications’ (has been differently “constituted”; cf. E IIIP56Dem.) such that in the Philosopher this essence, as modified or determined to “do something” by this essence’s own internal power or impulse, is adequately expressed, whereas the very same essence in the drunk, as modified or determined to “do something” by external causes, is not adequately expressed (its adequate expression has been stunted or impeded by these external causes). Thus, their essences may be said to differ “not a little”, but only with respect to their respective ‘states’ or ‘constitutions’, not in the more fundamental sense in which the essences – and hence affects – of irrational (i.e., merely sentient) animals differ from humans (i.e., animate, sentient, and rational finite modes; cf. E IIIP57S; TTP XX.6; TP V.5). This is why, qua human, the drunk must be thought of as having the potential to become a Sage, and why it is appropriate to exhort a drunk to begin living according to the dictates of reason (i.e., such that the ‘state’ of his/her essence would better correspond to, or more adequately express, his/her rational essence), whereas such exhortations are totally inappropriate with respect to the “lower animals”, who are “irrational” by nature. 139 be considered looser than the first. For here it is being used as a synonym for what Spinoza calls a “common notion” (cf. Jaquet 2005: 85).

A common notion denotes, or is the adequate idea of something – a characteristic, or quality – which is “common to all” or many things, and which is “equally in the part and in the whole” (E IIP38). Moreover, as Spinoza makes plain in the second scholium to proposition 40 of

Ethics II, common notions are both “universal notions” and “adequate ideas of the properties of things”. In other words, common notions are universal ideas that are not the merely subjective projections of the imagination, but rather the very “foundations of reasoning” – i.e., the universal principles from which (in the case of common notions regarding the essences or properties of things), and/or in accordance with which (in the case of common notions regarding the rules of logic), knowledge of the second kind is derived. As Spinoza intimates in the TTP (IV.6; cf.

VI.6), common notions are clear and distinct, or certain, either insofar as they themselves constitute the first principles of reasoning (in which case they are simply grasped immediately by the ‘eyes’ of the mind, and not the product of an antecedent chain of reasoning), or insofar as they are derived with no-less self-evidence from such first principles (other common notions).

In this chapter, I have argued that, to Spinoza, reason is the “universal human nature”. As such, it is that which all humans hold in common, and which is no less in each human being as in the whole of humanity.101 The idea of reason is thus a common notion pertaining to all humans qua human: to be human is (or is at least in part) to be capable of developing adequate – i.e., absolutely certain or self-reflexive – knowledge (cf. Jaquet 2005: 85; Lermond 68). Indeed, as proposition 47 of part II of the Ethics makes plain, all humans have adequate knowledge of at

101 I cannot here enter into the long-standing debate among Spinoza-scholars over whether, to Spinoza, humanity constitutes a kind of higher-order individual, of which individual humans might be ‘parts’. I will, however, have a little more to say about the precise sense in which humanity may be considered a ‘whole’ (i.e., an individual) in what follows. 140 least some things (e.g., the eternal and infinite essence of God: i.e., being).102 However, as

Spinoza explains in proposition 37 of Ethics part II, as well as in the demonstration to the second corollary of proposition 44 of the same, a common notion cannot, by definition, “constitute the essence of any singular thing”. Hence, reason or the “universal human nature” is not a universal essence in the sense of an archetype or eidos of which individual human beings would be the mere instantiations, or in the sense that it alone (i.e., in itself and by itself) would constitute their essence (as the latter term is formally defined by Spinoza).

Spinoza’s use of the term ‘essence’ in the Ethics and elsewhere is thus, to some extent, equivocal. However, it is not purely equivocal. As we have seen in this chapter, the highest human good is, according to Spinoza himself, to be deduced from the “universal human nature”.

If, as I have just suggested, the idea of the universal human essence is in fact a common notion, the universal human essence cannot, by and of itself, constitute the essence of any particular human being. However, there is nothing to prevent the common ‘property’ denoted by a common notion to constitute an integral part of the essence of a singular being. Indeed, in the case of the universal human essence (cum common property denoted by a common notion), this must be the case if it is to play the role Spinoza grants it within his ethical theory.103 For Spinoza

102 It should be noted in passing that, because adequate knowledge is, by definition, self-reflexive (i.e., certain), to be human, to be rational, is to know that one is rational. All humans, as such, are not only rational (to some extent, at least), but recognize themselves to be rational (at least to the same extent that they may be said to be ‘rational’). This does not mean that all humans necessarily recognize rationality to be an essential trait, defining them as humans, only that any human being will, as such (i.e., as a finite mode which, by definition, is in possession of at least some adequate ideas), regard him or herself as rational. This makes the self-evidence of one’s own rationality or capacity to form adequate ideas a common notion (at least in the sense in which this term is used in the TTP: cf. IV.6): i.e., it is an indubitable first principle both presupposed by, and transparent in, all rational reflection. 103 M. Della Rocca would solve this problem somewhat differently, by arguing that Spinoza “speaks of essences at different levels of generality (pace Harris 1978: 135 fn.6). At the most specific level, essences are unique and not shared. But there are also general essences – such as the essence of human beings – which can be shared by more than one individual” (194; cf. 93-99; Haserot 56-57). This solution is perhaps easier to conceive, and may, for this reason, find favour. It certainly appears to fit Spinoza’s talk of a “universal human essence” much more straightforwardly. My concern, however, is that it seems to run too strongly against the grain, generally speaking, of Spinoza’s ontology, in which everything that exists is ultimately singular. To the extent that what the nominalist reading of Spinoza stresses is the ultimately singularity of the real, I must agree with it. Hence, I prefer to conceive 141 believes that in deducing the highest human good from the universal human essence, he is achieving certain knowledge of that which will be maximally empowering for – i.e., that which will optimally encourage the conatus essendi of – each and every individual human being (whose essences, in the strict sense, are ultimately singular). In other words, Spinoza believes the universal human essence dictates, at least in part, what each individual human being ought to strive for (and, in principle, does strive for) by nature. Hence, reason must define part of the singular essence that constitutes each individual human being. And this is exactly what we find

Spinoza say in the Ethics: “man’s greatest good is common to all; (…) it is deduced from the very essence of [a] man insofar as that essence is defined by reason”(E IVP36S; Italics mine).104

This explains why it is not a pure equivocation to call reason the universal human essence, even though it is denoted by a common notion pertaining to all human beings.

The things in Nature that are comprehended under the general term ‘human’ are, like all other beings in nature, ultimately singularities. These singularities are ‘humans’ indirectly, secondarily, one might almost say accidentally, insofar as their singular essences comprise a power, property, or quality – viz., reason – that is an integral part of the essences of other singular beings who, because their singular essences also inherently involve reason (the “universal human nature”) are also ‘human’. For a finite mode to be ‘human’, according to Spinoza, its singular of the “universal human essence” – qua corrolate of a common notion – as somehow a constitutive part of the singular essence of each human being (even though it may be difficult to flesh out what such a conception really means). This way of construing the ontological status of the universal human essence, it seems to me, at least has the benefit of allowing us to plot a middle course between the nominalist position championed by S. Hampshire and others – the weakness of which is that, from its perspective, one simply cannot take seriously, and/or make sense of, many of the pivotal aspects of Spinoza’s ethics (cf. Steinberg 308) – and Della Rocca’s ‘universalist’ or ‘generalist’ position (who, in this matter, merely puts forward a variant of M. Gueroult’s position: see Vol. II of the latter’s Spinoza [Paris, Aubier-Montaigne, 1968], 429, 459, and 547). 104 The absence of definite articles in Latin means this passage can be translated either as “from the very essence of man”, or “from the very definition of a man”. This ambiguity is of utmost significance in the present context. I must admit that in possible support of the first translation, and thus in possible contradiction with the interpretation I am putting forward of Spinoza’s appeals to a “universal human nature”, Spinoza also writes in the Ethics that: “whatever follows from human nature, insofar as it is defined by reason, must be understood through human nature alone” (IVP35Dem.). For in this latter passage, it is not the nature of a human being that is to some extent defined by reason, but humana natura in general. 142 essence must involve the common property or power of reason.105 This is very different from

105 Indeed, as I hope to have made clear, the general impression one gets from Spinoza’s writings is that being rational is a sufficient condition for a finite mode to be ‘human’. To avoid any confusion, it must be stressed that, according to Spinoza, it appears to be a sufficient condition for a finite mode or singular thing (E IID7) to be rational (i.e., capable of some degree of adequate knowledge) in order for it to be human. The qualification ‘finite mode’ is crucial. For the idea Dei or “absolutely infinite intellect” – i.e., the immediate infinite mode within the attribute of thought – is obviously also rational: it contains nothing but adequate ideas (E IIP36Dem.). It would thus not be true to say that everything that is rational, without further qualification, is human. But, as I have shown, Spinoza does seem to want to maintain that whatever is rational and a finite mode is human. As we have seen, he often distinguishes between humans, who by definition are endowed with reason, and all other animals, which are not human precisely because they are not rational. Granted, he frequently speaks of a State as either being or failing to be ‘rational’, and the State is a finite mode (assuming it is a mode: i.e., a being with a formal reality of its own, separate from that of its constituent individuals). It might thus be objected that, on my reading, the State would have to be called ‘human’. However, Spinoza’s use of the term ‘rational’ in these instances is clearly derivative. He does not mean that the State is rational in the primary and most proper sense of rationality: i.e., as a power of adequate knowledge. When he calls a State rational, he means that it meets the requirements of reason – that it is organized and functions according to the dictates of reason so as to empower its constituent citizens (some of whom may be rational in the strict sense, or may be encouraged to become rational in the primary sense precisely because the State is ‘rational’ in the secondary sense). We may accept, for the sake of argument, that the State must be considered a real individual according to Spinoza, and must therefore be said to have a ‘mind’ (in Spinoza’s technical sense of the term, as the collection of ideas that ‘correspond to’ its corporeal reality). But even so, this does not necessarily imply that the ‘rational’ State is capable of adequate understanding. After all, a windmill, catapult, or any other complex entity having a determinate function and ‘rationally’ organized to carry out that function – e.g., the State (for a detailed account of the essential function and ‘instrumental necessity’ of which, see chapters 3 and 4) – must, in Spinoza’s view, also be said to have a mind. Yet these entities cannot be said to think adequately. It is because the well-ordered State is only ‘rational’ in the secondary sense I have just described that Spinoza nowhere suggests that the well-ordered State (i.e., the State one could call ‘rational’) is capable of the intellectual love of God – i.e., of the highest good for rational beings in the primary sense. On the other hand, it is certainly the case for Spinoza that to be human is, at the very least, to be a rational, finite mode. Indeed, Spinoza gives every indication of believing that these are sufficient and not merely necessary conditions for something to count as human. For while he occasionally speaks of human nature as only partially defined by reason (“… whatever follows from human nature, insofar as it is defined by reason…”; E IVP59Dem.), he more often than not either explicitly declares, or says things that imply, that a capacity for adequate knowledge is sufficient grounds for a finite mode to be considered human. If he believes there is any other condition a finite mode must meet in order to qualify as human, he never makes it known. It is also worth emphasizing how the “true definition” of human beings as rational, finite modes, in no way depends upon the imagination. This, of course, should be obvious by now. Yet it is easy, given our strong tendency as finite beings to fall into ‘picture-thinking’, to lose sight of one of the major implications of this fact: viz., that as long as a finite mode is to any extent rational (i.e., capable of adequate knowledge), it needn’t look anything like what we have come to expect humans to look like in our reliance upon imaginary cognition, in order to be considered ‘human’. Nor does it have to meet any of the biological criteria for belonging to the zoological genus ‘homo’. Thus, an extraterrestrial finite mode capable of adequate knowledge but looking nothing like us (i.e., not a humanoid), and unable to successfully reproduce with a member of our zoological genus homo (and thus not itself a member of this zoological genus), would still have to be called ‘human’ according to Spinoza’s special, technical understanding of this term. Conversely, if we were to push Spinoza’s story of the Spanish poet suffering from acute amnesia even further than he does and suppose that the poet’s illness had left him bereft of the very possibility of rational thought – such that he were now a “grown-up infant” in the most extreme sense – I maintain that Spinoza would not hesitate to declare this man dead qua ‘human’, even if he still exhibited all of the “signs on account of which the body is thought to be alive” (E IVP39S). For a “human life” in Spinoza’s technical sense “is characterised not by the circulation of the blood and other features common to all animals, but most particularly (maxime) by reason, the true virtue and life of the mind” (TP V.5). Prior to his illness, the poet may be said to have had a ‘human body’, in the sense that the characteristic proportion of motion and rest of its parts was such that his mind was capable of adequate understanding. But if the illness is supposed to have caused the parts of his ‘human body’ to take on a proportion of motion and rest so altogether different that his mind is no longer capable of adequate understanding, then his “human 143 saying that a common property – the “universal human nature” or reason – could of itself define, or constitute the essence of, any individual beings. And, crucially, it is only the latter claim that would contradict Spinoza’s formal definition of essence. Hence, if my account of what Spinoza means when he explicitly refers to and makes use of the notion of a universal human essence

(understood in the sense of a common property) in his ethical teachings is correct, then Spinoza’s doing so may, I suggest, in fact be consistent with the assertion that essences, understood in the sense in which he formally defines them, are singular. This strikes me as the only way to take seriously, and thus account for, Spinoza’s appeal to universal essences, while maintaining the consistency of his system (i.e., respecting the parameters of his ontology).

But my solution may seem to have simply changed the site of the contradiction – que changer le mal de place. For if the idea of the universal human essence is a common notion, and the latter are “universal” (E IIP40S1), how can something corresponding to a common notion constitute, even if only in part, the essence of a singular being? The answer to this question lies in the correct understanding of the sense in which common notions, or the common properties

body” must be said to have been “changed into another nature entirely different from its own”, such that while still carrying out certain vital, biological functions (e.g., respiration or the circulation of the blood), it is no longer ‘human’ in the strict sense Spinoza gives this term. This last example should give us pause. For it entails that members of the zoological genus homo so mentally disabled as to be incapable of any adequate knowledge, or children having not yet reached l’âge de raison, are not, or are at least not yet fully, ‘human’. This is troubling since what is at stake is obviously much more than ‘mere semantics’. Rather, the question of the definition of ‘human nature’ has direct, and rather disconcerting ethical implications, given what Spinoza has to say in the Ethics about how we ‘ought to’ or ‘may’, according to the dictates of reason, deal with things that “do not agree in nature with us” – i.e., which are not rational. In the first scholium to Ethics IVP37, Spinoza explains that “the law against killing animals is based more on empty superstition and unmanly compassion than sound reason”, for the “rational principle of seeking our own advantage teaches us to establish a bond with men, but not with the lower animals, or with things whose nature is different from human nature”. The fact that the “lower animals” are, or that other “things” might be, sentient changes nothing: they differ from us in nature (i.e., are not rational), and we may therefore use them however we wish (i.e., in whichever way we think will further our interests). If I am right that the only thing that defines “human nature” is the capacity (on the part of a finite mode) for adequate understanding, then this would imply that we may “use” members of the zoologically-defined genus homo who are incapable of reason “at our pleasure” and “treat them as is most convenient for us” – even kill them if it suits us, as is “permitted” in the case of the “lower animals” even though they can feel pain (E IVP37S1). Although the issue is complicated in the case of those deficient in reason due only to their age, as they are at least potentially rational (and thus potentially of the same nature as us), the crux of the implication is clear in the case of the permanently and gravely mentally disabled. It is clear, and extremely disturbing. 144 they denote, are “universal”. They are not universal in the loosely ‘Platonic’ sense of a form or archetype, which would be instantiated by particulars bearing varying degrees of likeness to the their paradigm (but necessarily diverging from their model precisely in virtue of their particularity). On the contrary, common notions are “universal” in the sense that the properties they denote are shared by, or common to, a plurality of individuals in a very literal way. To the extent that two singular beings share common properties, their relation to each other is not one of resemblance by virtue of their ‘participation’ in, or approximation of, a common model (a

‘Platonic’ universal-cum-paradigm), but one of identity (such that their relation to each other with respect to that common characteristic is in fact, or at the same time, a self-relation). As we saw much earlier in this chapter, Spinoza has a very strong understanding of what it means for two things to agree (convenire) in nature or have properties in common: the community of traits between two or more things makes these things as-one (‘comme-un’). In virtue of this community of traits, and the principle of the identity of indiscernibles, they are one and the same

(Della Rocca 196; cf. Steinberg 309, 314-315; pace Rice 299-301). And in this sense, when compared to universals understood in the ‘Platonic’ manner, common notions may actually be regarded as referring to singulars.106 Hence, my interpretation of what Spinoza means when he

106 This is easiest to see in the case of the common notions pertaining to the attributes of substance. Extension, e.g., is a ‘universal property’ in the sense that it may be predicated of any mode of extension (tables, chairs, houses, etc.), and its concept is involved in the concept of any such mode (hence its being a “common notion”). But it is not a universal in the loosely Platonic sense outlined above (cf. Haserot 59). Spinoza is clear about the fact that the extension involved in one mode of extension (say: the table in front of me) is not a numerically distinct instance of the extension involved in another mode of extension (say: the chair upon which I am sitting; E IP15S). Attributes are indivisible. They cannot be separately instantiated like a universal conceived along Platonic lines. This means the whole of the attribute of extension is implicated in each of its modes (such that qua extended beings, they are one and the same). Likewise, I would like to suggest, the whole of the “universal human essence” is present in any of the singularities that happen to deploy/manifest it, such that, to the extent that these singularities deploy/actualize it (by achieving rational understanding), they are/become one and the same. 145 refers to a universal human essence does not contradict his formal definition of essences, which makes the latter invariably singular.107

107 There is much in L. Lermond’s The Form of Man: Human Essence in Spinoza’s Ethics (Leiden: Brill, 1988) that strikes me as pointing in the direction of a similar solution. But if I understand her correctly, Lermond ultimately adopts a position very close to M. Della Rocca’s (and M. Gueroult’s), insofar as she reads the Ethics as “accepting both the essence of man and the essences of men as entia realia” (68), and ascribes to Spinoza “a doctrine of type, of concrete essences common to a plurality of individuals” (69; Italics mine) – i.e., insofar as she merely allows for the real existence of essences at different levels of generality. This is curious, since Lermond’s own argument seems to move her to adopt an interpretative position akin to mine: viz., that the universal human essence, qua common property, is (to use a phrase that she uses only to describe the divine attributes and infinite modes) a “universal singular” (cf. 51). In a paper entitled “Spinoza’s Ethical Doctrine and the Unity of Human Nature”, D. Steinberg comes even closer to anticipating my interpretative solution, at least with respect to the precise ontological status of the “universal human essence” within Spinoza’s system, though she never ventures to define this essence (to say what Spinoza took it to be). Thus, her initial claim is that: “All men share a common nature or essence in the sense that the human nature of one person is absolutely indistinguishable as such from that of any other. That is, the human essence does not have numerically distinct instances, and qua human, all men are one” (1984: 314; Italics mine); or, as she puts it a page later: “(1) human nature is involved in the nature of each man and (2) two human beings do not constitute two instances of human nature” (1984: 315; Italics mine). This is close indeed to the solution I have proposed. But Steinberg then goes on to claim – in seeming contradiction with her own initial claim (the substance of which is encapsulated in the two preceding quotes) – that “Spinoza held mankind or humanity as a whole to be a complex individual whose parts are individual human beings”, and that “to say that all human beings share a common human nature (or possess the human essence in common) is to say that they are each part of the individual which is mankind” (1984: 319; Italics mine). As she explains, her contention is thus that individual humans stand to the “individual which is mankind” in the same way that the heart and hands of an individual human being stand in relation to the whole of which they are part. I fail to see how this last claim harmonizes with, let alone draws support from, Steinberg’s initial claim (see above). For according to the latter, insofar as humans share a common essence, they are “absolutely identical” and thus not “numerically distinct” (1984: 309). But according to her second, ‘organicist’ conception of human nature, individual humans – qua human (i.e., somehow precisely insofar as they share a common essence) – are discrete and differentiated parts of a larger whole (“humankind” or “humanity”) which they are regulated by their essence to serve (like the human heart and hand are ordered towards the interests of the whole human body of which they are parts). Insofar as they fulfil their human essence, individual human beings cannot simultaneously be absolutely identical (i.e., not numerically distinct) and distinct parts of a larger whole (viz., humanity): parts of a whole are, by definition, numerically distinct. This being said, it is worth noting in passing that at least part of L. Rice’s critique of Steinberg (contained in his paper: “Tanquam Naturae Humanae Exemplar: Spinoza on Human Nature”) falls wide of the mark. He criticizes her for having ignored something Spinoza insists upon: viz., that “higher-order individuals are constituted by collections of lower-order individuals ex pluribus diversae naturae, not of lower-order individuals of the same nature” (1991: 298). But, as I have just shown, the problem with Steinberg’s argument is in actual fact that its two basic claims are incompatible: her second claim (viz., that humans form a higher-order individual) appears to suppose precisely the diversity of natures that her first claim (viz., that insofar as they agree in nature, humans are not even numerically distinct) would exclude. Rice seems to suggest that the refutation of her claim that humanity constitutes a higher-order individual implies the invalidation of her claim that insofar as humans “agree” or “have something in common”, they are “absolutely identical”. However, precisely because they are incompatible (i.e., because the first claim does not imply, but in fact excludes, the second – at least as Steinberg articulates it), to refute the second claim is not to cast doubt on the first via simple modus tollens. Finally, my solution would seem to have been gestured at by A. Donagan in an under-developed passage of his Spinoza (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 51-52. There, Donagan suggests – though really does no more than suggest – that common notions can be constitutive of the ideas of essences of things like geometrical figures, which, “although they are individual, may function as universals” (52). Donagan cites a passage in the TIE as evidence, in which Spinoza has this to say about at least the most common properties of things denoted by common notions (e.g., thought and extension, and the laws of motion and rest): “So although these fixed and eternal 146

This constitutes an even stronger sense in which Spinoza’s appeal to a universal human essence does not conflict with his formal definition of essence, according to which essences are always singular. As we have seen, Spinoza argues, on the basis of the fact that humans share the same rational nature (are thus, in this respect, “exactly the same”; cf. E IVP18S), that their

“greatest good must be common to all” (E IVP36S), and that their strivings must necessarily harmonize such as to bring about this common good (as well as other intermediary goods). In other words, he infers, from the fact of their essential identity – of their having one property or power in common: viz., reason – that they pursue and enjoy one common end: viz., the knowledge of God. Thus, the fact that the “connection of ideas which happens according to the order of the intellect” – i.e., reason – is “the same in all men” does not just mean that insofar as humans are rational they think alike (E IIP18S). It means that to the extent that individual

‘humans’ (or more precisely, but also more cumbersomely: the singularities-that-are-human) actualize that part of their singular essence in virtue of which they are ‘human’ – viz., the part

“defined by reason” – they commune, they enjoy “a union or harmony of minds”, they form one mind (TP VI.4; cf. III.7 & VIII.6; cf. Lermond 64, 68; Zac 1972: 51). Indeed, how could this be otherwise if to ‘actualize’ one’s rational nature and thus achieve one’s highest good is, as we have seen, to achieve “the knowledge of the union that the mind has with the whole of Nature” – i.e., to become one with God, such that one’s love towards (erga) him is one and the same as his love for himself and all men (amor intellectualis Dei; E VP36C)? To Spinoza, such a communion (or plain union) of minds is not a metaphor: from an ontological standpoint, it is a literal truth (pace Balibar 1985: 389). The “connection of ideas which happens according to the order of the intellect” – i.e., the order of adequate ideas, which capture the one necessary and things are singular [Donagan’s translation has ‘individual’], nevertheless, because of their presence everywhere, and most extensive power, they will be to us like universals, or genera of the definitions of singular [Donagan: ‘individual’] changeable things (…)” (§101). 147 eternally true order of Nature – “is the same in all men”. As we have seen, to have an adequate idea is for God to have such an idea “only insofar as he constitutes the nature of the human mind”

(E IIP11C) or “insofar as he constitutes the essence of our mind” (E IIP34Dem.). And Spinoza insists, this knowledge of God (in both senses of the genitive), our highest good, “can be enjoyed by all equally” (E IVP36): many individual humans (indeed, in principle, all individual humans) may participate in it simultaneously and equally. Hence, when God has an idea insofar as he constitutes the essence of “our mind” alone (i.e., insofar as our mind contains or, more accurately, is partially constituted by adequate ideas), he has an idea of the mind of all human beings (insofar as to be a ‘singularity-that-is-human’ is, in essence, to think adequately) – i.e., he

“constitutes the nature of the human mind” (which Spinoza refers to in the singular when he refers to the mind of all humans, insofar as we think adequately or ‘live up to’ our rational nature). When we think adequately, when we fully deploy that part of our singular essence (i.e., power or striving) defined by reason, we form one mind, and thus very literally become one being (cf. Harris 1978: 133). In this way, Spinoza’s appeal to a universal human essence does not conflict with his apparent belief that the beings in Nature are ultimately singular, as well as his formal definition of essences, which seems to make all essences singular. For the human essence, properly understood, is in fact singular, and insofar as humans achieve adequate knowledge, they form one mind, one individual.108 So long as one is talking about finite modes

108 I wish to stress that I am not claiming that humanity is a higher-order individual, whose parts would be individual human beings. D. Steinberg, among others, draws attention to the fact that, in Spinoza’s view, because they agree entirely in nature, those singular things that correspond to the definition of a human being are able to join forces in order to bring about a common good/end. Bearing in mind Spinoza’s definition of a “singular thing” (or “individual”), which states that “if a number of individuals so concur in one action that together they are all the cause of one effect, I consider them all, to that extent, as one singular thing” (E IID7), Steinberg concludes that humanity constitutes a “singular thing” – a single individual or whole, comprised of individual human beings (1984: 319). I cannot here embark upon a proper examination of this claim (though I offered some critical remarks in the previous footnote). It suffices at this point merely to note that what I, by contrast, am suggesting is that, at least in principle, there is no such part-whole relation between the singular beings having actualized their rational nature (their “universal human nature”). In principle, their relation is one of identity: they are the same individual. But, of 148

(i.e., singularities; E IID7), to posit reason (the “universal human nature”) is to posit ‘man’, and to posit ‘man’ is to posit reason.

I have suggested an interpretation of Spinoza’s explicit appeal to and use of the notion of a universal human essence in his ethical theory in an attempt to reconcile this central feature of his ethical theory with those aspects of his metaphysics/ontology seemingly at odds with it. It should be stressed that I put forward this interpretation as no more than a suggestion, as it may raise as many questions and objections as it tries to answer (if not more). For example, it might be objected that what my proposed interpretative solution does is convert a common notion (or the common property denoted by a common notion) into the essence of a singular thing – a move

Spinoza declares to be invalid. Perhaps even more damning is the fact that it leaves the following question unanswered: viz., if reason is only a part of what defines the essence of certain singular beings (the ‘singular-beings-who-are-human’), then what is the essence of these singular beings?

Or what is it, besides reason? As we have seen, in his exposition of his ethical doctrine in part IV of the Ethics, Spinoza declares the essence of the human mind to consist in rational understanding. He also makes crucial use of the notion of a universal human essence, which he clearly equates with the capacity for adequate understanding – i.e., reason. But in parts II and III

course, because, as we have seen, the knowledge of God is something that no singular human being may ever perfectly achieve, this identity either: (1) only exists as a regulative principle (one that can only ever be approximated to varying degrees), such that the ‘whole’ of humanity, which would cease to be a whole constituted by parts the moment it would be realized, must remain a goal to be striven for but never fully attained for singular human beings (who, as such, are mere “parts of Nature” subject to inadequate ideas); or (2) only exists from God’s perspective, insofar as he has an idea of all the things that follow from him “insofar as he constitutes the nature of the human mind” in the singular – i.e., of all the things that the sum (‘whole’ in a cumulative sense) of all humans will ever know adequately – whereas “our mind” (my mind, your mind, Spinoza’s mind, etc.), as a part of Nature, can only ever grasp an even more limited number of things adequately because it is partially constituted by inadequate ideas (E IIIP9 Dem.). In the first case, the perfect communion of all human beings – qua human – would constitute part of the content of the exemplar humanae naturae, which, while it is rationally deduced from the knowledge of the “universal human nature”, must remain an ethical ideal (impossible to realize in full). I must admit that I am not sure the second case is even conceivable from Spinoza’s point of view (i.e., within Spinoza’s metaphysics), though something akin to it seems to have been attributed to Spinoza by E.E. Harris (1978: 133), D. Steinberg (1984: part 3), and L. Lermond (68). It is, at any rate, an extremely speculative extrapolation from anything Spinoza actually says on the matter (cf. Zac 1972: 22).

149 of the Ethics,Spinoza repeatedly declares the “essence of the human mind” to consist in or be

“constituted by” the idea of our body existing “in actuality” (cf. E IIP10, P11 & P 13; E

IIIP11Dem. & Gen. Def. Affs.). If we wish to gain greater insight into what it means for reason to constitute ‘part’ of the essence of ‘singular-beings-who-are-human’, we must come to understand the relation between these two accounts of the “essence of the human mind”. In other words, we must determine how it is precisely as the idea of the actually existing body that the essence of the mind – and thus also the essence of the human being (insofar as each human being may be exhaustively described in terms of the language of ideas or bodies) – may in part be defined by reason.

I will have a little more to say about this last question in chapter 4 of this dissertation.

However, I must unfortunately leave any thorough exploration of these questions and objections to another occasion, for it is not the aim of this dissertation to solve the riddle of Spinoza’s general doctrine on essences. Given what I will be arguing in the following chapters, it is enough to have demonstrated in this chapter that Spinoza believes adequate moral knowledge is possible.

The puzzles engendered by, or the possible aporiae of, his ethical theory (where the latter is thought of as including his metaphysics) needn’t detain us more than they already have. 150

Chapter 3

Resistance is Irrational: Spinoza’s Ethics of Political Obedience

3.1. Introduction

In the preceding chapters, I demonstrated that, while he is not always perfectly clear on the issue, Spinoza must be said to have distinguished between two forms of moral knowledge: (1) knowledge of good and evil which is inadequate because it is grounded in – or, more precisely, reducible to – the passive affects of joy and sadness themselves; and (2) knowledge of good and evil which is adequate and, hence, true or certain, as it is grounded in common notions and the inferences reason is able to make on their basis. Thus, I established that, according to Spinoza, reason acquaints us with a set of general and therefore abstract guidelines that, if followed, will enable us to lead a life that optimally satisfies our interests. However, in doing so, I also provided a preliminary overview of the most fundamental tenets of Spinoza’s ethics.

Accordingly, I outlined only the most general of Spinoza’s general ‘dictates of reason’.

Whatever the intrinsic value of such a provisional account of Spinoza’s ethical and meta- ethical doctrines, its importance with respect to the broader aims of this dissertation is that it furnishes us with the background needed to begin our study of Spinoza’s treatment of the question of political resistance along normative lines – i.e., from the perspective of his ethics.

This, it will be recalled, is my overarching purpose: viz., to determine the status of resistance in the rational politics of Spinoza’s ‘wise’ or ‘free’ person. The general question I will thus be pursuing in this chapter, and will continue to examine in chapters 4 and 5, is whether or not resistance is, in Spinoza’s view, ethico-rationally justifiable. If it is rationally justifiable, then under what specific conditions does it agree with the dictates of reason? And what kinds of political resistance does Spinoza think are sanctioned by reason? 151

In this chapter, drawing in part on the account of Spinoza’s (meta-) ethical theory I have just put forward,109 I want to exhibit the most compelling evidence for the claim that from

Spinoza’s ethico-rational standpoint resistance is never justified. This is the claim made by the overwhelming majority of the scholars who have broached the topic of the validity of political resistance in the rational politics of Spinoza’s “free person”.110 In chapters 4 and 5, I will go on to show that it is nevertheless possible to find in Spinoza’s writings strong arguments for the ethico-rational justification of certain types of active political resistance, under certain conditions.

3.2. In Praise of the State, or Why Obedience is Always to Our Advantage

3.2.1. Homo homini Deus est

In the previous chapter, attention was paid on several occasions to the scholium of proposition 18 of Ethics part IV, in which Spinoza summarizes his chief ethical teachings.

Because this scholium is meant as a kind of précis, bluntly asserting rather than rigorously demonstrating the principal dictates of reason, it is bound to give rise to a few misapprehensions.

Chief among these, perhaps: Spinoza appears to affirm unconditionally that what is most useful to a human being is another human being, tout court (i.e., in the everyday sense of the term).

This impression is corrected by propositions 31 through 35. Proposition 31 confirms that something is “necessarily good” to the extent that it agrees with our nature. Spinoza’s argument for this is that if something were evil through a property it has in common with us, this would

109 Though I will of course have to fill in many vital details regarding Spinoza’s ethical teachings as I proceed. 110 As I indicated in the general introduction to this dissertation, it is not at all the norm for Spinoza scholars to even recognize the existence of this second, ethico-rational mode of analysis in Spinoza’s political thought (cf. Matheron 1985A: 343, 349, 351; Zac 1985: 121-123). Among those who do, to varying degrees, recognize its existence (e.g.: Giancotti-Boscherini 1978: 90, 92), very few have given much thought to the issue of the justifiability of political resistance within this alternate optic. And among the even more limited number of scholars who have thought about this specific issue, the vast majority have: (1) answered the question in the negative; and (2) only done so in passing, in the context of broader discussions (see, e.g.: Smith 51, 127-129; Feuer 97-98; McShea 193; Belaief 84; Haddad- Chamakh 1984: 48, 52). None have really examined Spinoza’s arguments for the ethico-rational necessity of obedience in their own right, or in the systematic and comprehensive manner in which I will do so in this chapter. 152 entail that one of our intrinsic properties excludes the existence of our own nature. But this, by proposition 4 of Ethics part III – which basically posits the ontological validity of the principle of non-contradiction – is absurd. Nor, as Spinoza goes on to show, can such a common property merely be indifferent to us, in the sense that it would neither enhance nor diminish our power to exist (i.e., affect us neither for the better nor for the worse). Since “nothing exists from whose nature some effect does not follow” (E IP36; cf. E IA3), the supposition of such an indifferent shared property would entail that an effect could follow immediately from our nature that does not serve to secure its preservation. But this too, as Spinoza explains at Ethics IIIP6, and as we have already seen in chapter 1, is absurd: every essence or nature, as a particular manifestation of

God’s infinite being or power to exist, displays an inherent drive to exist, and directly gives rise only to those effects which encourage and realize this striving to ‘come to be’ and ‘persevere in its being’.

For its part, proposition 35 adds the important qualification that it is “only insofar as men live according to the guidance of reason” that they “must (…) always agree in nature”. In a nutshell, this is because, to Spinoza, it is only to the degree that we are guided by reason that our actions may be understood to follow from our common human nature alone, and, as we have seen, nothing is evil – i.e., nothing excludes our existence – through what it has in common with us. But Spinoza’s reasoning in the demonstration to proposition 35 is complex, and it is worth tarrying with it a little longer. As I showed in chapter 2, Spinoza believes that whatever we deem to be good or evil through reason must truly be beneficial or detrimental to the actualization of our nature. Furthermore, as Spinoza explains, both the true knowledge of good and evil achieved 153 through reason, and the effects that follow from this knowledge,111 are an active expression of our singular essence or nature, insofar as that singular nature is comprised of traits constitutive of, and hence common to, human nature as a whole (E IVP35Dem). Hence, Spinoza concludes, to the extent that our actions are guided by reason, they are invariably in accord with the true interests of human nature in general, and thus of “each man” in particular. The upshot is that

“there is no singular thing in Nature which is more useful to man than a man who lives according to the guidance of reason”(E IVP35C1; Italics mine). A rational person ardently seeking his or her own true advantage ipso facto seeks mine, and, conversely, such an endeavour on my part can only benefit my fellow humans (E IVP35C2). Hence, insofar as humans live according to the dictates of reason, the adage is true: homo homini Deus est (man is a God – i.e., of utmost utility

– to his fellow man; E IVP35S).

3.2.2. Homo homini lupus est

The problem, of course, is that individual humans are seldom guided by reason, even though each individual human is, qua human (as we saw in chapter 2), defined by reason. As we have seen, Spinoza defines a passion as a modification of our body – and hence also as the accompanying affect that registers the variation this modification involves with respect to our power to exist – of which we are merely the ‘inadequate’ or ‘partial’ cause. A passion, by definition, cannot be understood to follow from our nature alone, but is the result of the impinging of foreign bodies upon our own. It is the record in our body of its being modified by – i.e., subject to, or at the mercy of – its surroundings. As Spinoza never tires of repeating: we are parts of Nature. As such, our power to act is limited and surpassed by an infinite number of

111 Given Spinoza’s conviction that modes of the attribute of thought may only interact with or give rise to modes within the same attribute (E II P5 & P6), these ‘effects’ of the knowledge of good and evil may perhaps more accurately be referred to as further inferences or conclusions derived from this knowledge. 154 external forces whose effects have not been providentially arranged to always enable the full expression of our nature (E IVP4Dem). Hence, human beings are, for the most part, slaves to their passions (E IVP4C; IVP66S). According to Spinoza, to the extent that this is the case, “men

(…) cannot be said to agree (conveniant) in nature” (P32), and may in fact be “contrary to one another” (P34; cf. TP II, 14), such that another adage may more fittingly describe their interactions: homo homini lupus est (man is a wolf to his fellow man).

A short explanation as to why Spinoza thinks passions or ‘passive affects’ almost unfailingly lead to social strife is in order here. Spinoza, it will be recalled, defines love as

“nothing but joy with the accompanying idea of an external cause”, and hate as “nothing but sadness with the accompanying idea of an external cause”. Since we necessarily strive to persevere in our existence, and those things that sadden us do so because they deplete this very power to exist, while the reverse is true of things that gladden us, it follows that “one who loves necessarily strives to have present and preserve the thing he loves”, while, on the other hand,

“one who hates strives to remove (amovere) and destroy (destruere) the thing he hates” (E

IIIP13S). Now, if the affects of joy and sadness upon which love and hate are predicated are passions (indeed, this must be the case when the affect is one of hate: see section 5.4 below), then they are rooted in the imagination – i.e., they are functions of the educational and temperamental idiosyncrasies of our minds and bodies. Conflicts therefore arise because while our characters

(ingenia) often differ drastically, the logic of the affects is, according to Spinoza, such that we necessarily seek to impose our worldview, tastes, value judgements, etc. upon each other, while resenting each other’s efforts to do so.

This is more readily understandable if we attend to Spinoza’s doctrine of the “imitation of the affects” (E IVP27S) and its repercussions. Spinoza demonstrates in proposition 27 of Ethics part III that affects are, so to speak, highly contagious. Chances are, we are not even aware of 155 this fundamental law of human psychology and interpersonal interaction, but a very large number of our affects and desires are, to use R. Girard’s term, “mimetic”.112 When we “imagine a thing like us” – i.e., a thing the nature of which we take to be similar to our own, such that we suppose it to be capable of the same set of experiences as us, and suppose ourselves to be able to decipher the ways in which it expresses these subjective experiences – to be affected in a certain way by a certain object, we cannot help but be similarly affected, and thus come to harbour the same feelings towards the object in question. If, for example, it is made known to me that an object that inspires me with joy provokes sadness in another, the pleasure I take in the contemplation or possession of this object will be diminished in proportion to the degree to which I suppose the other person to be saddened by it. On the other hand, if it should come to light that another person takes pleasure in something that also happens to please me, then the joy I feel in relation to that object would be strengthened accordingly. Given that we necessarily strive to maximize our joyful affects and eliminate all sources of sorrow, Spinoza concludes that we will spare no effort to bring it about that all others should come to see the world as we do – sharing our hobbies, our religious dogmas and rituals, our conceptions of justice, our aesthetic preferences, even our pet peeves and most seemingly trivial predilections. The trouble is that our desires are, more often than not, shaped by our inborn characters (which are always singular and can thus vary quite dramatically from one person to the next) as well as by the contingencies of our upbringing and natural and social environments. Under such circumstances, one person and the next may have little in common besides the desire to lord it over each other by dictating what

112 See R. Girard, Mensonge romanesque et vérité romantique (Paris: Grasset, 1961). Spinoza’s doctrine of the imitation of the affects is germane to, and in some respects the philosophical prototype for, Girard’s famous literary study of the ‘triangular’ or ‘mimetic’ nature of desire. I thus find it strange that Girard makes no mention of it in this work, while on the other hand openly acknowledging its indebtedness – in terms of its conceptual apparatus and philosophical language – to Hegel’s well-known description of the dialectic between Master and Slave.

156 ought to be desired, and what shunned. Since we cannot all be masters, and since there are few things harder to control than another person’s way of thinking, our passionate drive to ideological hegemony almost inevitably gives rise to a situation in which conflict is the norm, and peace but a temporary and unstable respite – i.e., the mere absence of war.

Moreover, passionate loves are more often than not for objects that cannot be possessed in common (E IVP37S1). Thus, while we necessarily strive to persuade or compel others to love what we love, we simultaneously fear to be believed, since we will thereby turn ourselves into rivals to be eliminated in pursuit of the coveted but ‘scarce’ (i.e., non-shareable) object (Ibid.).

And of course the scarcest object of all to those whose desires follow their passions, the object of desire which passionate humans are least able to possess in common, is honour or esteem – i.e., the joy and consequent self-love that arises out of the recognition by others of one’s pre- eminence, one’s relative high standing, in a particular domain, no matter how paltry, insignificant or illusory. Vainglory, or the passionate (and thus imaginary) love of esteem, is the impetus behind an otherwise incomprehensible human phenomenon: war waged, in the words of the Bard,

“even for an eggshell” (Hamlet IV.iv.53).

What’s more, because the ideational mechanisms of our mind are such that the ideas we have are associated with other ideas largely as a result of our random experiences (experientia vaga), anything can quite accidentally become an object of love or hate – sometimes simultaneously and for the same person. For example, I may develop an aversion for a particular style of hat, because I happen to have associated it with a painful experience. Where this is the case, I will hate, and thus seek to harm (eliminate or destroy), anyone I subsequently encounter wearing such a hat. But in so doing I will incur the reciprocal hatred of the hat-wearing person(s)

I am attempting to harm. In other words, to the extent that we are governed by our passions – or, what amounts to the same thing, by an imaginary knowledge of the sources of joy and sadness – 157 we will have become enemies (“contrary to one another”). Crucially, Spinoza maintains that not only in childhood, but also for the better part of their lives – indeed, often their entire lives – human beings think almost exclusively by means of the imagination, and are therefore almost always the plaything of their passions. The major repercussion of this fact, in Spinoza’s view, is that humans may as well be regarded as natural enemies.113

3.2.3. The Origins and Instrumental Necessity of the State

What I have sought to show in the preceding, admittedly rather cursory discussion is that, to Spinoza, the fact that humans are rarely guided by anything other than their passions has as its consequence that they are “usually envious and burdensome to one another (plerumque invidi, atque invicem molesti sint)” (E IVP35S). This being said, it remains the case for Spinoza that humans can “hardly (…) live a solitary life (vitam solitariam vix transigere queunt)” (Ibid.). By cooperating, humans can “provide themselves much more easily with the things they require”, and it is “only by joining forces that they can avoid the dangers which threaten on all sides”

(Ibid.). Spinoza makes this point even more forcefully in the TTP, arguing that we simply cannot ensure our security or even our bare subsistence – let alone the flourishing of “the arts and sciences, which are indispensable for the perfection of human nature and its blessedness” – without “mutual aid (mutua opera)” and a division of labour that harnesses each person’s distinct aptitudes (V.7). As Spinoza puts it: “All men are not equally suited to all activities, and no single person would be capable of supplying all the things he, [even] on his own, greatly needs (nec unusquisque potis esset ad ea comparandum, quibus solus maxime indiget). Each would find strength and time fail him if he alone had to plough, sow, reap, grind, cook, weave, stitch and

113 I say “may as well” because, as we saw last chapter, it is only in a loose sense that humans may be said to be “by nature enemies”. For more on this, see, especially: footnote 20 of chapter 2. 158 perform all the other numerous tasks to support life (…)” (Ibid.). Echoing Hobbes (cf. L Part I,

Ch. XIII, §9), Spinoza characterizes such a hypothetically “solitary” condition, in which each individual must fend for him or herself, as “wretched (miseram)” and “almost brutish (paene brutalem)” (Ibid.), and as utterly lacking in the “cultivation of reason” which, as we have seen, is absolutely integral to our happiness – i.e., to the maximization of our power to act (TTP XVI.5).

Hence, for the sake of their common interests in both peace/security and the good/blessed life, humans must overcome their passional differences, their ‘natural’ antagonisms,114 and strive to coordinate their respective activities. To satisfy their many, naturally convergent interests – such basic needs as food and shelter, or loftier aspirations like self-determination (freedom), rational enlightenment (knowledge), and spiritual fulfilment (happiness) – humans must “come together as one (in unum conspirare)” (TTP XVI.5), or live as if (veluti) they shared, or were governed by, one mind (una mente: TP II.16; ubique). Individual human beings, whose essences are always, ultimately, singular (though by nature they share at least one essential trait or power that allows them to be thought of as belonging to the same “species”: viz., reason), and whose passions, we have also seen, may pull them in such opposing directions that the essential harmony of their desires is upset and fails to manifest itself in actuality, must become the components for a larger, even more complex, internally differentiated and self-regulating entity, whose purpose it is to ensure – or at least maximize the likelihood – that the common interests of its members are taken care of. The higher organism or individual to be formed is, it will have been guessed, the State or ‘body politic’.115 As mentioned, its purpose, rendering it

114 Again, see (esp.) footnote 20 of chapter 2 for an explanation of my use of scare-quotes over the adjective ‘natural’ as applied to the conflicts that arise in human relations. 115 Whether or not Spinoza regards the State as a higher-order individual in the strongest and most literal ontological sense, according to which it would be endowed with a singular essence, and thus also with an inherent drive (conatus) to persevere in being, is an open question in the scholarly literature. A. Matheron’s seminal work, Individu et communauté chez Spinoza (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1969), is still the foremost representative of the ‘literalist’ 159 indispensable, is to regulate – in certain key respects, and never (either in practice or in principle) in every respect – the activities of the mainly passion-directed individuals of which it is composed, in ways that are not only consistent with, but in fact help realize, the aims these individuals hold in common. And it successfully achieves this purpose by means of a system of interlocking and mutually reinforcing institutions (legislature, military and police, judiciary, bureaucracy, etc.; cf. Matheron 1969: 344 & 620).

But the formation of a state and its functioning in a manner befitting its purpose cannot be accomplished unless each of its potential constituents agrees to abandon the unlimited natural right to all things s/he enjoys in the ‘state of nature’ – the latter being characterized as the condition chronologically and/or conceptually prior to the advent of political society. This includes the right to judge what is good or evil, and of personally avenging perceived acts of injustice. These rights have to be transferred to society as a whole such that it (by “common agreement”), or the individual(s) to whom it has entrusted or transferred its sovereign authority

(again by “common agreement”), is granted the power “to prescribe a common rule of life” through laws and their enforcement, and “everyone is bound (tenetur) to submit to the state” (E

IVP37S2). All must “bind themselves by the most stringent pledges to be guided in all matters only by the dictates of reason” (TTP XVI.5), which, as I will show in a moment, means obeying the commands of the sovereign to whom they have handed over their natural liberty to judge all things and to act in accordance with these judgements.116

camp. The best exposition of the rival interpretative position, according to which Spinoza’s treatment of the State as an individual should be regarded as merely metaphorical, is to be found in S. Barbone’s “What Counts as an Individual for Spinoza?” (Spinoza: Metaphysical Themes. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002), 89-112. While I personally favour the ‘literalist’ reading, this debate is of no real importance to the general argument of either this chapter or this dissertation as a whole. Hence, the reader may understand my description of the State as an organism or individual according to whichever interpretative camp s/he subscribes to. 116 In the paragraph to which this footnote is appended I have focussed on the contractualist account of the formation of the State given by Spinoza in chapter XVI of the TTP. It should be stressed that Spinoza can in no way be regarded as an unambiguous social contract theorist (pace Haddad-Chamakh 1980: 168-174; Zac 1972: 88, 91). 160

3.2.4. The Question of the Nature of Political Obligation

According to the contractualist account – which Spinoza would have found more or less as he presents it in, e.g., Hobbes’s De Cive (a copy of which is listed in the inventory of Spinoza’s library) – rational agents, having evaluated their options, decide to forsake the bulk of their rights in the state of nature, transferring these to a designated third party, to whom they thereby promise absolute obedience, in exchange for the goods – most notably, security – the institution of such a sovereign power brings with it. Scholars like A. Matheron (1988: 287) and D. Den Uyl (1983: 24) are quick to point out that this contractualist account seems to presuppose the existence of individuals who are already rational – i.e., capable of calculating their interests (of weighing the pros and cons of the status naturalis and status civilis) and of acting in accordance with the outcome of this instrumental reasoning – whereas Spinoza more often than not speaks as though the existence of a well-ordered State were a conditio sine qua non for the development of rationality. Furthermore, they point out that it seems to contradict Spinoza’s equation of right and power, and thus to reintroduce the ‘juridical/transcendent’ conception of rights Spinoza is at pains to expunge even in earlier sections of the TTP, since through their pledge of obedience the contractors would be juridically obligated to obey their sovereign even if they should have the power to resist his commands with impunity (Curley 1995: 324; Montag 1989: 100; Wernham 26). These and other scholars have also noted that – perhaps as an acknowledgement of and attempt to rectify these apparent flaws – Spinoza’s subsequent writings seem to display a marked shift away from the contractualist account, towards an explanatory model that appeals only to the laws that govern the interactions between humans who are still overwhelmingly guided by their passions. The best-known and most brilliant attempt to reconstruct such an account on the basis of a close reading of the TP together with the Ethics (especially part III) is A. Matheron’s Individu et communauté chez Spinoza (Paris: Les Éditions de minuit, 1988; vide Ch. 8). To Matheron and those working in his wake (e.g., Den Uyl 1983: 31, 44, 64; Mugnier-Pollet 1976: 116-126), it is this account that represents Spinoza’s mature and most noteworthy contribution to the early-modern debate surrounding the origins of the State. However, many, including Den Uyl (1983: 41; see also Curley 1995: 340 fn. 30; Gildin 378), also rightfully point out that such a movement away from the contractualist model occurs even within the TTP, as Spinoza very quickly seems to qualify or take back much of what he had seemed to want to say in chapter XVI about the absolute and transcendent rights of the sovereign, and the obligations assumed through the making of a pact. Finally, one other interpretation, though perhaps more limited in scope, is to be mentioned: viz., the so-called ‘hero-founder’ model, to which scholars like R. McShea (1968: 95-104) and L. Strauss (1997: 236) have drawn attention. According to this theory, the State is born when one person or group driven by libido dominandi is able to secure, through cunning, violence, charisma, and, most importantly, the use of myth (of a powerful ideology and persuasive set of images), the allegiance of enough followers to form an autonomous community (able to cater to most of its needs, to guard against and repel foreign attacks, to maintain internal order, etc.). According to these scholars, Spinoza’s treatment of the founding of the Jewish State by Moses would be meant as a kind of paradigm for this method of State-building. It is, emphatically, not my intention to wade into this long-standing debate by focussing on the contractualist model Spinoza puts forward in chapter XVI. Nor, in so doing, do I wish to deny the validity of the rival interpretations I have summarized above. I have focused on it, rather than the other explanatory models Spinoza did undeniably advance, because it is the account which – as will become clear – is of greatest pertinence to the topic at hand: viz., the question of whether or not, in Spinoza’s eyes, it is justifiable for the rational person to resist the decrees of the sovereign. As I will show, there is a sense (but only a sense) in which it does not matter to the rational person living in a State how the State was actually formed; what matters is that it is rational to regard the State as if it were formed through an explicit covenant (i.e., by the giving of mutual consent). Or rather, to put this a little more precisely, it is the account most congruent with the results of this chapter, in which it will be shown that the rational person never resists, but, rather, always consents – and would always have consented – to the rule of the Sovereign. Furthermore, I have focussed on it because it is the basis for one of Spinoza’s arguments for the ethico- rational justification of unconditional obedience (see section 2.6), and, as I will show, its employment for this purpose is legitimate even if one rejects it as a true model of how the State is ever formed in reality, since other arguments Spinoza deploys serve to demonstrate that, as I have said, it is rational for the ‘free’ or ‘wise’ person to regard the State as if it were grounded in consent. 161

Our brief look at the purposes and origins of the State leads us to the question of the nature of political obligation in Spinoza’s thought. Granted, in light of the sketch of Spinoza’s realist/immanentist analysis of politics I provided in my general introduction to this dissertation, it can be asked whether in Ethics IVP37S2 and similar passages Spinoza is actually making a de jure claim (à la Hobbes: see L Part I, Ch. XVIII, esp. §§1-8) about the absolute and transcendent right of the Sovereign, as the beneficiary of every individual citizen’s alienated right. No doubt, like Hobbes, Spinoza speaks of a transfer of right as the foundation of civil society and sovereign authority. But, as D. Den Uyl contends, whereas Hobbes’ transfer “involves the expressed desire to be subject to another’s power”, Spinoza’s conflation of power and right would seem to

“require that one not see the transfer in terms of an expression of will. Rather, transferring rights must be conceived in terms of power relations – that is, whether one [as a matter of fact] falls under another’s power or gains power over him” (1983: 15; cf. Curley 1996: 325; Montag 1989:

100). This being the case, it may seem as though, in his account of the “foundations of the State” in the second scholium to Ethics IVP37, Spinoza is merely making a de facto claim about the conduct of human beings under the influence of the passions.117 Accordingly, what Spinoza might be taken to mean when he states that each citizen is “bound (tenetur) to submit” to the dictates of the State is actually that the State has force on its side – i.e., that it “has the power

[read: strength] to prescribe a common rule of life, to make laws, and to maintain them not by reason, which cannot restrain the affects (by P17S), but by threats (easque non ratione, quae affectus coercere nequit (…), sed minis firmandi)” (E IVP37S2).

In keeping with the suggestion made last chapter that Spinoza’s use of ‘tenetur’ is often deliberately ambiguous, such as to indicate both a passional and/or physical obligation, and an

117 See footnote 8 of this chapter. 162 ethico-rational form of obligation,118 I maintain that Spinoza’s point, both in the second scholium to Ethics IVP37 and throughout his writings on politics, is that the obligation subjects are under to obey the commands of the Sovereign is both passional and/or physical – i.e., merely a function of (their passionate fear of) the coercive force at the Sovereign’s disposal – and ethico-rational.119

As I made clear in my general introduction to this dissertation, I take the first sense of

‘obligation’ that the verb tenetur may have in Spinoza’s political theory – viz., the sense of passional/physical obligation – to be obvious in Spinoza’s writings, and thus well-established in the secondary literature. My present task is to show that there is another sense in which, according to Spinoza, one can be ‘bound’ to obey the sovereign, regardless of whether one is or is not also passionally/physically obliged to do so: viz., the sense in which, in Spinoza’s thinking, one can be ‘bound’ by an ethico-rational imperative.

3.2.5. The Wise Person Recognizes an Ethico-Rational Obligation to Obey

A number of passages from the Ethics can be cited to corroborate the claim that Spinoza regards the subjects’ obedience to the sovereign as a dictate of reason, since such obedience is always to their ultimate advantage. Thus, in proposition 40 of Ethics IV, Spinoza asserts that

“things which are of assistance to the common society of men, or which bring it about that men live harmoniously (concorditer), are useful (utilia)”, whereas all those things “which bring discord to the State” are evil (Italics mine). Foremost among the things that bring concordiam is, as we have seen, our covenanting to obey the commands of a third party – the Sovereign – in all

118 I take R. McShea to mean something similar when he declares: “The word ‘oblige’ in Spinoza’s writings will always be found to mean either ‘must’ or ‘is well advised to’” (172). However, McShea claims it is a case of either/or, whereas I am claiming that for Spinoza obligation is very often both physical/passional and ethico-rational. 119 Cf. F. Haddad-Chamakh, who writes: “On peut noter qu’au chapitre XVI du TTP, chaque fois que Spinoza évoque la soumission de l’individu à l’autorité absolue de la souveraine puissance, il lui assigne une double origine, l’une passionnelle, l’autre rationnelle” (1980: 181). 163 things, especially evaluative judgements. Hence, this proposition would seem to rule out resistance to the sovereign’s edicts fairly straightforwardly. In addition, the demonstration of this proposition bears out my earlier claim that, to Spinoza, an agreement to live according to the dictates of reason is an agreement to obey the Sovereign in all things, for it hinges on the notion that those things “which bring it about that men live harmoniously” – e.g., obedience to the sovereign – “at the same time (simul: which Spinoza often uses in the sense of ‘by that very fact’ or ‘as such’) bring it about that they live according to the guidance of reason”. By propositions

26 and 27 of Ethics IV, such things are good, and hence themselves number among the dictates of reason.

The demonstration of proposition 73 of Ethics IV makes the ethico-rational character of the obligation to obey even plainer. As Spinoza writes: “a man who is guided by reason desires, in order to live more freely, to keep the common laws of the state”. It is never rational to break the laws of the Sovereign, which is why, as Spinoza puts it in a letter to Jacob Ostens, “everyone is duty bound” – even when not passionally/physically bound – “to (…) obey the commands of the sovereign power” (Ep 43; Italics mine). Spinoza also argues that since, as he has already shown, anyone “who is guided by fear, and does good to avoid evil” cannot be said to be “guided by reason” (E IVP63), and “a free man [i.e., a person who is led by reason alone to persevere in being] thinks of nothing less than death” (E IVP67), it follows that anyone “guided by reason is not led to obey by fear” (E IVP73Dem). Thus, if subjects are “bound” to obey their sovereign, this is in part because they are under an ethico-rational obligation to do so. Though the passions that can lead subjects to revolt may overrule the prudential maxims of reason, it is still the case, in Spinoza’s eyes, that they ought to obey if they truly want to look after their own interests. This is because, for the reasons I have already stated, “more advantages than disadvantages follow from their forming a common society” – even where the ruler(s) of such a society are irrational, 164 such that they “direct everything according to their own lust” (E IV App. Ch. XIV). Because we need society, because life outside of society is utterly miserable – indeed almost completely impossible – and because an essential condition for the existence of society is the existence of a sovereign power to which everyone submits, it is always “better to bear men’s wrongs calmly” than to resist what one perceives to be tyrannical or oppressive rule (i.e., rule in the exclusive interest of the ruler, rather than the ruled).120 For such insubordinate behaviour runs the risk of dissolving the State and plunging us back into the ‘dark wood’ of the state of nature. In other words, even in the worst-case scenario, in which the commands to be obeyed are tyrannical, obedience is still the lesser of two evils, since the alternative, Spinoza seems to want to say, is a return to solitude (where all must fend for themselves) and anarchy (where, in the absence of a final arbiter to settle disputes, everyone follows his/her own judgement). This means obedience, even under such circumstances, “is really a good” (E IVP65Dem), and, as such, it is always to be preferred by anyone acting “ex rationis ductu”.

All of these points are made even more boldly in Spinoza’s political treatises: the TTP and

TP. Turning to these, though supplementing our reading of them with passages from the Ethics, will also help resolve certain problems and obscurities latent in Spinoza’s reasoning as presented thus far. For instance, it is not yet entirely clear why Spinoza should so frequently think in terms of such a strict dichotomy between obedience to the sovereign’s commands – no matter how abusive – and the benefits of life in statu civilis, on the one hand, and disobedience and the chaos of the state of nature on the other.121 Where the issue is the wise person’s ethico-rational

120 As F. Haddad-Chamakh puts it: “Si rien ne justifie la révolte, si tout exige et justifie l’obéissance, c’est que pour Spinoza, les hommes ne sont hommes que dans la société politique et que la masse des hommes, livrés à leurs instincts et à leurs passions, est incapable non seulement de bien vivre, mais même de subsister” (1980: 233). 121 It should be stressed that Spinoza does not always think in terms of such an either/or. Take, for the example, the following excerpt from TP VI.1: “Now since fear of isolation inhabits all men inasmuch as in isolation no one has the strength to defend himself and acquire the necessities of life, it follows that men by nature strive for a civil order, 165 obligation to obey, why does Spinoza talk as if even a single act of resistance threatens to provoke the dissolution of the civil State? Surely such an intimate, indeed seemingly necessary connection between resistance and the collapse of the State cannot be pointed to as an empirical fact. So what kind of claim is Spinoza making here? Furthermore, why shouldn’t we think that revolt against tyranny might in fact culminate in the formation of a better civil order, one that is more empowering to and inclusive of its citizens, less violent, etc.? I will try to elucidate

Spinoza’s answers to these pressing questions in what follows.

In the TP, Spinoza tells us that since peace (or security) is an end enjoined upon us by reason, it is therefore also rational to will the only means by which it may be obtained: viz., the instauration of a sovereign power by common consent, to whose edicts everyone promises obedience, sight unseen (TP III. 6). As Spinoza puts it: “(…) the more a man is guided by reason

– that is (…), the more he is free – the more steadfast he will be in preserving the laws of the state and in carrying out the commands of the sovereign whose subject he is” (Ibid.). So much we have already learned from part IV of the Ethics. But what Spinoza drives home much more emphatically in this section of the TP is that, given what has just been said, the person guided by reason ought to obey even the most irrational of commands. It is a law of reason that one should always choose the lesser of two evils (E IVP65), and obeying the commands of the sovereign- cum-tyrant is still a good – i.e., a lesser evil – compared to the horrors attendant upon the complete dissolution of the State, and (thus) the absence of sovereign power, which would automatically follow if everyone were to regain the individual right to judge right from wrong, and to act accordingly (i.e., to judge which commands should be obeyed because they are consistent with a standard of justice independent of the Sovereign’s will, and which ones should and it is impossible that men should ever utterly dissolve this order (nec fieri posse, ut homines eundem unquam penitus dissolvant)”. But thinking in terms of the radical disjunction outlined above is nevertheless the predominant tendency in Spinoza’s writings – perhaps especially in the TTP. 166 be resisted because they are not). In Spinoza’s words: “although a subject may consider the decrees of the commonwealth to be unfair, he is nevertheless bound (tenetur) to carry them out”

(TP III.5); “if a man who is guided by reason has sometimes to do, by order of the commonwealth, what he knows to be contrary to reason, this penalty is far outweighed by the good he derives from the civil order itself” (TP III.6; Italics mine). It is never contrary to reason to follow the laws of one’s commonwealth, and reason never requires one to do otherwise.

Spinoza says much the same thing in the TTP. Thus, we find him admonishing us that

“unless we wish to be enemies of the state and to act against reason which urges us to uphold the

State with all our might, it is our duty to carry out all orders of the sovereign power without exception, even if those orders are quite irrational (nisi hostes imperii esse velimus, et contra rationem, imperium summis viribus defendere suadentem, agere, omnia absolute summae potestatis mandata exequi tenemur, tametsi absurdissima imperet)” (TTP XVI.9; Italics mine).

Spinoza’s justification for this is once again that under any conceivable scenario – Spinoza makes no mention of any possible mitigating circumstances – obedience to tyrannical commands will be the “lesser of two evils”. 122 In passages that read like an encomium of the State, he calls it the

“highest good”, conferring such a “supreme advantage” that its existence must be conceived as a

“necessity”. Reason, which allows us to recognize this, accordingly counsels that we “entirely forswear deceit (dolos)” and in “absolute good faith abide entirely by [our] agreement” to obey,

“this being the strongest shield of the state (summum reipublicae praesidium)” (Ibid.). If everyone were to agree “only in words”, civil society would collapse, landing us in a ‘pre-’ or

122 Cf. R. McShea, who underestimates the force of the passages I have just quoted from the TP and TTP when he states: “any but the most irrational regimes may count on [the] active support [of Spinoza’s ‘rational person’]” (92). Barbone does a better job capturing the unconditional nature of the rational imperative of obedience when he writes: “The wise person perceives that obedience always promotes his/her greater interests, even if short term consequences seem to contradict this fact, and so he/she does nothing to contravene the sovereign’s authority” (1999: 105; Italics added). But he goes on to cast uncertainty upon the very existence of a rational obligation to obey in Spinoza’s political philosophy (1999: 106). 167

‘extra-’ political condition – the status naturalis – that, in Spinoza’s view, we ought to want to avoid at all costs.123

3.2.6. The Spinozist ‘Test of Universalization’ and the Ethico-Rational Obligation to Obey

It is worth considering the argument implicit in this passage from the TTP alongside proposition 72 of Ethics IV. In the latter, Spinoza wants to show that “a free man always acts honestly, not deceptively”. The scholium to this proposition brings home just how far Spinoza is willing to go with this claim, for in it he defends the position that it is against the dictates of reason to break faith, even in order to save oneself “from the present danger of death”. Spinoza’s argument for this is that if reason were to recommend such a course of action, it would recommend it universally.124 Hence, “reason would recommend, without qualification, that men should make agreements to join forces and to have common laws only by deception – that is, that really they have no common laws”. And this, Spinoza concludes, “is absurd”. Thus, even the principle of self-preservation doesn’t seem able to make room for exceptions to the rational imperative of honesty and fidelity: i.e., of making promises in good faith and honouring them once they have been made. And if this is the case, then neither can the principle of self- preservation be called upon to justify resistance to a sovereign one has contracted to obey – even if honouring one’s contract to obey should entail one’s serious harm, or lead to one’s demise! It seems D. Bidney is right on target when he writes: “Spinoza counsels the Socratic virtue of

123 By once again laying stress on the contractualist elements of Spinoza’s political thought, I am thereby emphasizing that strand of Spinoza’s political writings in which he distinguishes the state of nature from the civil state, and, to some extent also, right from power. More often than not, this either sits uneasily with, or is altogether replaced by, a conception of civil society as a continuation of the state of nature – and, hence, of politics as an extension of war by other means (see, most notably: Ep 50; cf. TP III.3). 124 J. Miller notes that the scholium to Ethics IVP72 “makes universalizability a required test of one’s actions” (2005: 24). 168 absolute obedience to the laws of the State even though [this] involves certain death. A free man must never act in bad faith” (316-317).125

There are a few remarks I would like to make regarding the line of argument sketched in the preceding paragraph. Firstly, I want to draw the reader’s attention to the fact that Spinoza appears to come very close here to positing a duty or moral obligation to obey in the strong,

Kantian sense that it would be binding irrespective of one’s interests and inclinations. If this were the case, it would fly in the face of everything else Spinoza says about the dictates of reason as perfectly tracking our interests, all of which are, at the end of the day, manifestations of our conatus essendi.126 I will attempt to resolve this apparent inconsistency in section 2 of chapter 5, in which I will deal with a similar apparent inconsistency (mutatis mutandis) arising out of what can be argued to be Spinoza’s ethico-rational justification of a certain type of resistance, under certain conditions. The reader should be warned, however, that the only solution I can see to this conflict relies heavily on some of the most difficult and enigmatic aspects of Spinoza’s metaphysics and ethics – most notably his conception of the nature of, and connection between, personal salvation and eternity.

Secondly, I want to offer some reflections on the manner in which the argument outlined above depends upon the contractualist account of the foundation of the State (in the sense of both the act of its founding and the basis upon which it rests), as well as on the validity of such an

125 It is thus wrong, or at least a little too quick, to say as R. McShea does that “obligation arises out of the contract not because contracts themselves create obligation, but because by their contract the subjects have put themselves in the physical power of the sovereign” (170; cf. Curley 1996: 324, 326). While it is perhaps impossible to formulate an argument on Spinozist grounds for the fact that contracts inherently create obligation, it is possible to reconstruct, as I have done, a Spinozist argument for the ethico-rational necessity of fulfilling contracts even when: (1) it ceases to be in our ‘apparent/immediate’ interest to do so (i.e., doing so might lead to our physical destruction); and (2) we have the power to avoid doing so. 126 In other words, D. Bidney would be completely justified when he writes: “Spinoza’s Stoic rationalism with its acknowledgement of absolute moral standards [and here Bidney has in mind the unconditional imperative of faithfulness argued for in Ethics IVP72 & S] is incompatible with his biological naturalism which teaches the complete relativity of good and evil, virtue and vice, to the requirements of self-preservation” (317). 169 appeal. There is an obvious sense in which it does rely upon it. For if what proposition 72 of

Ethics IV proves is that the honouring of contracts is an ethico-rational imperative (i.e., that the wise person always acts honestly, always keeps faith), then one can only appeal to it as a premise in a further argument against the ethico-rational legitimacy of civil disobedience if one assumes, as a second premise in one’s argument, that such an act of disobedience would contravene an existing pledge of unconditional obedience. I would like to argue that such an appeal to the social contract is perfectly defensible, even if one dismisses Spinoza’s occasional efforts to account for the actual historical origins of the State along contractualist lines as ‘vestiges’ from previous thinkers or ‘false starts’, standing at odds with his ‘definitive’ or ‘mature’ account, which, as we have seen, can be said to refer almost exclusively to the laws of the passions in its theoretical reconstruction of the move from the state of nature to the civil state. For the argument in question clearly operates within that strain of Spinoza’s political thought concerned with the exposition of the rational politics of the wise person. And, as I have by now established, it is a basic tenet of Spinoza’s ethico-rational analysis of politics that the wise person ought never to resist the decrees of the Sovereign. The wise person always consents to being ruled by the

Sovereign because of the advantages life within the State affords. As Spinoza puts it: “as long as a man is acting in accordance with the Sovereign’s decrees, he cannot be acting against the decree and dictates of his own reason” (TTP XX.8). Hence, even if the wise person knows that the true, historical origins of the particular State to which s/he belongs, as well as the means of its continued existence, lie elsewhere – e.g., in the subjugation through force or the threat thereof of one group by another – it remains valid from an ethico-rational perspective for the wise person to regard the State as if it had arisen through an explicit pact of obedience between covenanting parties. The wise person would always be willing to enter into a contract to found, or justify the legitimacy of, the Sovereign power to which s/he, as a matter of fact, answers; the decision to 170

“transfer to the Sovereign [one’s] right to live by [one’s] own judgement” is always taken “with the full approval of reason” (Ibid.). What’s more, the wise person regards him or herself as always having been under an ethico-rational imperative to do so. Once this has been established

– and it has, to a large extent, even within the demonstrative sequence of the Ethics leading up to proposition 72 of part IV – it is then valid to rely upon the (possibly counterfactual) supposition of the contractual nature of the origins of the State as a basis for yet another argument for the ethico-rational impermissibility of political resistance: i.e., the argument ‘from faithfulness’ outlined in the first paragraph of the current section of this chapter (2.6).

From the standpoint of Spinoza’s normative study of politics, it is rational for the wise person to regard the commonwealth as if it were founded in the explicit consent of its members, even if this is known, or may very well prove, to be factually inaccurate. Such a rational, though quite possibly counterfactual supposition, I would like to suggest, is an ethico-rational analogon of a genetic definition. A genetic definition of a created being is one that captures the essence of that physical or conceptual entity through its proximate causes – i.e., by retracing the steps of its genesis (De Dijn 1996: 154-155). Most importantly, such cognition can be completely adequate, in Spinoza’s technical sense of the term, and thus reveal the true essence of the thing in question, from which all of its essential properties may be deduced, even if it does not in fact correspond to how the definiendum was or is ever actually generated (TIE §72). It is thus a mental construct that, while possibly a mere “fiction”, remains true and useful. For example, a circle can be defined genetically as the geometrical shape formed when a line segment is moved continuously in one direction, with one of its endpoints remaining stationary (TIE §96). Likewise, a sphere can be defined genetically as the geometrical shape obtained when a circle is turned around its centre

(TIE §72). Few existing circles or spheres are actually generated in this way: the circles in question are entia rationis. But these genetic definitions do nevertheless illuminate the true 171 essence of actually existing circles and spheres. What I want to suggest is that the social contract has a status in Spinoza’s ethico-rational analysis of politics akin to such genetic definitions. The social contract is an idealized (or “feigned”; cf. TIE §72) account of the genesis of the State, which yields insight into the true essence of the State (the power to command and enforce “a common rule of life”: i.e., Sovereignty), from which all of its other essential properties may be deduced (e.g., the institutions whose functioning properly in concert ensure its survival: the military and police, the schools, the legislature, the judiciary, etc.).127 If this is correct, then it is a nice example of the way ethics, epistemology, and politics often overlap or tie into one another in

Spinoza’s philosophy: it is the wise person’s insight into the vital ethical function or purpose of the State that enables an adequate understanding of the social contract as a (quasi) genetic definition of the State.128 In other words, it is only once we have grasped the necessary ethical

127 As will become apparent below, my account of the social contract in Spinoza as an ‘idealized fiction’ or ‘genetic definition’ bears some affinities (mutatis mutandis) with S.B. Smith’s suggestion that the social contract plays the role in Spinoza’s political thought of: “a goal yet to be accomplished in historical time”; an “ideal of reason that can point or guide the way to action (…)” (1997: 89). My account is perhaps even closer to R. McShea’s, who writes: “The social contract for Spinoza is merely an explanatory device to make clear some fundamental and necessary relations between men in civil society; it has no reference to possible or actual historical events; it is a purely rational exercise in human relations (…)” (85; cf. Pezzillo 451). 128 To Spinoza, the power of Nature is absolute and all-encompassing: there is nothing that falls outside of Nature. Hence, regardless of whether the State is conceived along naturalist lines as the unintended result of the law- governed play of the human passions, or along contractualist lines as the result of human artifice or convention, the State must be conceived as pars naturae, as a natural entity. In the Appendix to part I of the Ethics and the Preface to part IV (which I will study in considerable detail in chapter 6, but which I have already touched upon in chapters 1 and 2), Spinoza undertakes a painstaking critique of teleological thinking – i.e., of the ascription of purposes or intentions to natural objects, especially in the attempt to explain them through their causes. To put things simply (indeed, much too simply), Spinoza believes that objects in nature are determined to act by the ‘push’ of blind mechanistic causality, as opposed to the ‘pull’ of a telos to be realized. This being so, something should be said here about the legitimacy of attributing an ‘ethical purpose’ to the State (which Spinoza does repeatedly). Though he never formulates it explicitly, Spinoza may be said to operate with a distinction between natural objects ‘in themselves’ and the same objects ‘for us’. It does not belong to the essence of the State, considered in itself, to realize an ethical end like freedom or even security (which is an ethical end under Spinoza’s conception of ethics). Considered objectively, the general essence of the State is effective Sovereign power. It just so happens that the offshoot or consequence of the effective (i.e., actual, stable, enduring) deployment of this essence in practice – i.e., the actual power to implement a common rule of life – is the realization of purposes the State has for us (given our desires or needs): e.g., security or freedom. Thus, when I say, following Spinoza, that the State has an ethical purpose (though Spinoza would just say ‘purpose’), I mean for us – i.e., in relation to our desires. And even when the State is considered in relation to us, its constituents, it is our desire for goods like security and freedom, presented to us by the imagination or reason, which acts as an efficient cause for our consenting to be governed (i.e., our coming together to form, and/or remaining in, the State). The State’s purpose, even correctly understood as its 172 aim or value of the State that we then come to realize that in some important respects it does not matter how the State originated in actual fact – a ‘deeper’ or more ‘essential’ understanding of its nature (and thus of its essential properties) can be achieved by positing the fiction of (i.e.,

“feigning”) a foundational covenant.129 If every member of the State were to publicly recognize the rationality of this supposition, the State would by that very fact actually be founded in a social contract: the “fiction” of the social contract, which helps direct the actions of the rational person, would become an historical fact (cf. Smith 1997: 89).

Finally, consideration of the argument for the ethico-rational necessity of obedience that I have just reconstructed on the basis of proposition 72 of Ethics IV also allows me to answer the first of two questions I raised in section 2.5 of this chapter: viz., What kind of claim is Spinoza making when he argues that resistance is to be proscribed because it implies the dissolution of the commonwealth, an evil far worse than any evil the act of resistance could be intended to militate against? The answer, quite simply, is that this is not a claim about what will as a matter of fact happen if a certain percentage of the citizenry decide to disobey their sovereign. Whether or not the State itself will collapse as a result of acts of resistance perpetrated against its ruler will depend on the nature of the specific acts carried out, the strength of the insurgency relative to the

purpose ‘for us’, is never the final cause of our actions: only an efficient cause insofar as we look to and desire this end as an empowering future possibility. The closest one can legitimately come to ascribing an intrinsic purpose to the State within Spinoza’s system is to say that, just like any other individual in nature (I am assuming for the sake of argument here that it is a natural individual: cf. Barbone 1999: 100), it strives (un-self-consciously, of course) to persevere in being. 129 This does not exclude the possibility that Spinoza often (or even primarily) thought of the social contract as a real historical event through which a real historical State had been constituted, or that his ‘Sage’ should do the same. His reading of the Scriptural account of the formation of the Hebrew State in chapter XVII of the TTP is confirmation of this. Indeed, Spinoza’s description of the historical covenant at the origins of the theocratic Hebrew State intimates a belief on his part that other commonwealths besides the first Hebrew State have been formed in this way: “Now this promise, or transference of right to God, was made in the same way as we have previously conceived it to be made in the case of an ordinary community when men decide to surrender their natural right. For it was by express covenant and oath (…) that they surrendered their natural right and transferred it to God, which they did freely, not by forcible coercion or fear of threats” (TTP XVII). Such a belief in the historicity of the social contract in at least some instances is also suggested by Spinoza’s use of the past tense in his first presentation of the social contract in chapter XVI of the TTP: “They therefore arranged…”; “…and so they had to bind themselves…”; etc. (Den Uyl 1983: 25- 26; pace McShea 85). 173 strength of the State’s repressive apparatus, and many other particular factors. As I will explain in greater detail in chapter 5, there is, according to Spinoza, simply no way for finite beings such as ourselves – whose cognitive powers are just too limited to grasp the total nexus of causes at work in any given political conjuncture – to predict with certainty and complete accuracy the outcome of any (or at least of the vast majority) of our concrete initiatives in the political sphere.

The claim Spinoza is making is one from the standpoint of reason in its practical capacity: i.e., insofar as it is capable of prescribing general maxims or principles of conduct. As Spinoza explains in proposition 72 of Ethics IV and elsewhere, whatever reason recommends, it does so universally (cf. E IVP62S). The ethical imperatives of reason are valid for, and thus to the benefit of, all human beings, without exception (TP III.7). Hence, conversely, if a maxim or principle of behaviour cannot be universalized without producing an intolerably harmful result to some or all human beings, then it cannot be considered a dictate of reason. When this hypothetical test of universalization is conducted upon the maxim of disobedience to the

Sovereign’s commands, the result – necessary in principle and intolerably harmful – is the dissolution of the commonwealth. This would render all common laws “mere ink on parchment”, whereas the very essence of the State is the ability to command a “common rule of life” through laws (E IVP37S2). Thus, when Spinoza stresses the intimate connection between resistance and the dissolution of the State, to the point of turning it into an apparently necessary or analytic relation, he is considering the issue from the perspective of the ethical imperatives of reason. In other words, when Spinoza regards political resistance hypothetically as one of the dictates of reason – which, crucially, are always universal – the conceptual relation between resistance and the dissolution of the state becomes a necessary one between a premise assumed for the sake of argument and an untenable/absurd provisional conclusion in a reductio ad absurdum argument proving that it is in fact compliance with the Sovereign’s decrees that is called for by reason. 174

3.3. The Imprudence of Revolution

Having answered the first of the two questions I raised in section 2.5 of this chapter, which had to do with the connection Spinoza thinks obtains between resistance to the Sovereign’s commands and the dissolution of the State (in some respects the summum malum), this section can be regarded, in part, as an attempt to answer the second question: viz., Why isn’t it advisable to think that resistance to tyranny might give rise to a better political regime-form, one that is more collectively and individually empowering? To answer this question, I will focus on the one major passage in which Spinoza examines the historical results of attempted revolutions and make plain the principal prudential lesson that Spinoza seems to imply can be gleaned from such an examination.

Spinoza’s scientific analysis of the outcome of political revolutions – i.e., of the attempt to not only topple an incumbent government, but to fundamentally alter a given State’s very form of government – is undertaken through his realist lens. It relies on what I have referred to as his

‘morally neutral’ and ‘objective’ understanding of the laws governing human behaviour. This being the case, it may be objected that a discussion of this analysis has no place in a chapter on

Spinoza’s arguments for the ethico-rational illegitimacy of resistance. But this objection falls wide of the mark, for I am not interested in the details of Spinoza’s realist analysis, per se.

Rather, I am interested in the findings of this analysis insofar as they may be shown to have repercussions within Spinoza’s parallel, ethico-rational analysis of politics. It should be kept in mind that, to Spinoza, an ethico-rational imperative is not a kind of Kantian categorical imperative binding irrespective of the interests or inclinations it might serve. In Kantian language, Spinoza’s dictates of reason are prudential, instrumental, or conditional maxims of the sort that run: If you want to maximize your advantage or potentia existendi (and because reason 175 commands nothing against nature, it dictates that you should), then you ought to do x (cf. Curley

1973: 371). Hence, if Spinoza’s analysis should show that revolutions seldom if ever lead to their desired outcome (i.e., an increase in one’s true advantage or power to exist), then a prudential lesson to be drawn from this – and another way to call such a prudential lesson would be a ‘dictate of reason’ – is that the wise person always accepts the political status quo and never looks to foment, organize, or in any way participate in, a revolution.130

3.3.1. Nothing Fails Like Revolution

Spinoza’s most complete analysis of the outcome of political revolutions is to be found at the very end of chapter XVIII of the TTP. It comes as a sort of addendum to the fourth and final lesson Spinoza thinks we should take away from his study of the vicissitudes of the ancient

Hebrew State: viz., that it is fatal “for a people unaccustomed to the rule of kings, and already possessing established laws, to set up a monarchy”. Having briefly explained why this is so,

Spinoza says it is incumbent upon him “not to fail to point out that there is also no less danger involved in removing a monarch (non minus periculosum etiam esse monarcham e medio tollere), even if it is clear by every criterion that he is a tyrant (tametsi omnibus modis constet eundem tyrannum esse)” (TTP XVIII.7).

130 I do not, for the time being, wish to enter into the scholarly debate surrounding the issue of Spinoza’s preferred form of government, i.e., which of the three traditional forms of government Spinoza regarded as most empowering or advantageous to its citizens. The ethico-rational argument for obedience I want to reconstruct in this section does not rely on any such hierarchical classification of the various possible regime-forms, since it depends only on Spinoza’s belief in the impossibility of a given State undergoing a lasting change from one form to another (thus, in the impossibility of improving one’s condition through a revolutionary struggle). Be it noted in passing, however, that the most common position in the secondary literature on Spinoza is – by far – that he was a proponent of democracy. A few examples (inter alia) of such an interpretation are to be found in the works of: Smith (1997: esp. Ch. 5); Balibar (1985: 10, 44-48); Den Uyl (1983: 162); Israel (2001: esp. Ch. 15, section iii); Feuer (1958: 96, 101); and Mugnier-Pollet (255). By contrast, T. Verbeek has recently tried to show that Spinoza was an advocate for aristocracy (2003: Ch. 5, esp. pp.141-143), while still others have alleged that he favoured none in particular, regarding all three as capable of the best and the worst (see, e.g.: Caillois 335). 176

Although Nature, in Spinoza’s view, does not create nations, individual human beings are separated into nations “by differences of language, law and mores” (TTP XVII.26). These differences constitute the distinctive character, temperament, or personality (ingenium) of a nation; they represent a shared, habitual way of viewing and doing, or way of life.131 Over time, these can become so deeply entrenched as to become all but ineradicable. Now laws and mores under a monarch are bound to differ in many ways from those under an aristocratic or democratic regime. In Spinoza’s view, if a people lives under a certain type of regime for long enough, its associated laws and mores can crystallize into a (quasi-) permanent political habitus or ingenium, rendering this people incompatible with, or unsuitable for, any other form of rule. Spinoza believes that once this occurs, it becomes extremely difficult, perhaps downright impossible, for anyone to ever carry out a true, lasting revolution, in which the fundamental form or constitution of that people’s government is changed (the three fundamental forms being: democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy).

About the endeavour to topple a monarchy and replace it with a more inclusive and liberal regime, Spinoza has this to say: “The people, accustomed to royal rule and constrained by that alone, will despise and mock a lesser authority (populus regiae authoritati assuetus eaque sola retentus minorem contemnet et ludibrio habebit)”. As a result, such a people “will find it indispensable to appoint another [king] in his place”. And yet, what’s worse, the parameters of the situation will compel the new king, even if he is by nature inclined to be clement, moderate, and solicitous, to rule with an iron fist (“tyrannically”, writes Spinoza). Perceiving the violent deposition of the previous king as a foreboding example of that which his subjects are all-too- capable of, and knowing that many of his subjects regard the regicide they committed or abetted

131 Actually, to be precise, Spinoza thinks only shared laws and mores lend a disparate collection of individuals a common (‘national’) character. It is unclear to me why Spinoza believes language does not play such a role. 177 as a “glorious deed” and stern warning for their current ruler, the latter’s sole preoccupation – if he doesn’t want to be subject to his subjects, judged by them and reigning “at their pleasure” – will be to consolidate his power by ruthlessly “[avenging] the death of his predecessor”, such that the people, heeding this counter-example, never “[dare] to repeat such a crime”. In so doing, however, he will, inadvertently or not, be promoting the agenda and “cause of the former tyrant”, making the former tyrants’ enemies his own, and benefiting those who used to support him and his policies – and who will thus clamour for the same policies to be implemented again. At the very least, the new rex tyrannus will appear to be embracing and extending the legacy of his predecessor. Spinoza’s grim conclusion, in this important passage at least, is that revolutionary movements are more or less doomed to failure: they either amount to an ironic repetition of history, dashing hopeful expectations as the ‘new boss’ proves to be no better than the ‘old boss’, or “change everything for the worse” (TTP XVIII.8). As Spinoza puts it: “This is why a people have often been able to change tyrants but are never able to get rid of them or change the monarchical form into another form of state” (TTP XVIII.7; Rosenthal 122-123).

3.3.2. Historical Examples

Spinoza turns to recent English history to bear out this pessimistic assertion. As Spinoza tells the story, in fabricating, by whatever theoretical means they could cobble together, a justification for the deposition and execution of Charles I, and then – “after spilling a great deal of blood” – vesting Sovereign power in Oliver Cromwell as Lord Protector of the

Commonwealth of England, the English people merely “resorted to hailing a new monarch by a different title (as if the whole thing [i.e., the English Civil War] had been about nothing but a title)” (TTP XVIII.8). Their intention had been to turn England into a parliamentary republic, but

“the inevitabilities of political evolution (…) generated an absolute dictatorship, and the 178 subjective intentions of the English revolutionaries counted for nought against the workings of social law” (Feuer 94). The English had thus found it “quite impossible to change their form of government (nihil minus facere potuit quam formam imperii mutare)” (TTP XVIII.8). And once

Cromwell proved he could maintain power only by methods similar to, or worse than, those for which his predecessor had been beheaded (political assassinations; arbitrary and indefinite detention of dissident groups [e.g., the Levellers]; ruinous foreign wars designed to distract the populace from the dubious, regicidal origins of his rule and to prevent seditious “murmurings”

[e.g., the Anglo-Dutch war]; etc.), the English realized they had “done nothing for the safety of their country other than violate the right of a legitimate king (pro salute patriae nihil aliud fecisse quam jus legitimi regis violare)”. Hence, at the first opportunity, they “decided to backtrack”, placing Charles’ heir (Charles II) on the throne in what has come to be known as the Restoration of 1660.132

Interestingly, Spinoza considers two historical counter-examples to his contention that revolutionary movements always end in failure since it is quite impossible to change the form of a government. From ancient history, Spinoza examines the case of the Romans who, it would seem, successfully mounted a revolution against what would be the last of the Tarquin kings, sending Lucius Tarquinius ‘Superbus’ and his family into exile, and turning Rome into a

Republic that lasted half a millennium. Spinoza denies that this constituted a genuine change in governmental form, since the Roman kings were elected by the people, and all the revolt against the kings achieved was to replace one tyrant with many (TTP XVIII.9).133 Spinoza adds that the

132 For an interesting discussion of how Spinoza’s verdict “expressed the general Dutch Republican disillusionment with Cromwell’s revolution”, see Feuer (1958: 90-95). 133 As S. Feldman remarks in a footnote to S. Shirley’s translation of the TTP, this is a very peculiar way to characterize the period of the Roman Republic (211, fn. 4). I take it by the “many” tyrants Spinoza is referring to the dominant role played by the Senate and, hence, by the wealthy patrician class, in the political affairs of the Roman Republic. This, however, is just a guess, and he may just as well be referring to the consuls, or to some other faction. 179 form of the State once again became monarchical under the Emperors. Spinoza’s reasoning here is quite muddled, and there is little sense in trying to reconstruct or amend it (Is the state’s original form monarchical, as the reversion to monarchy with the emperors suggests? Or is it aristocratic/democratic, as the notion that the people – though through a process largely controlled by the Senate – elected the kings would suggest?). Even so, Spinoza’s rather strained interpretation of Roman history (especially under the Republic) is of interest in that it demonstrates the lengths to which he is prepared to go to defend the claim that no revolution has ever successfully changed the form of a State. I will venture an explanation as to why this is so important to Spinoza in a moment.

First, however, I want to look at Spinoza’s treatment of a second counter-example: viz., the Dutch revolt against their Spanish overlord, Philip II. This is an extremely significant counter-example, much more so than the first. Spinoza spent his entire life in the Netherlands, and the TTP was written with a primarily Dutch audience in mind. The TTP was a pièce d’occasion, meant to address and, indeed, influence a debate that was raging in the Netherlands of Spinoza’s day about the history, values, political organization, and rightful leaders of the

Dutch State, and thus inevitably also about the nature, basis, and limits of political authority in general. Many of the issues being fiercely debated at this time arose as a direct or indirect consequence of the successful Dutch campaign against Spanish rule. Spinoza’s discussion of the revolt in this section of the TTP would have been of utmost relevance to this debate, and thus of great interest to his contemporaries. Predictably, what Spinoza says about it is that while the revolt led by the States of Holland against the then Count of Holland, Philip II, was undeniably an act of defiance or resistance, it was not a revolution, as it did not radically alter the form of the 180

State. Drawing upon arguments made in an influential pamphlet penned by François Vranck and published by the States of Holland themselves in 1587,134 Spinoza alleges that:

[The States] had always reserved to themselves the authority to remind [the] Counts of their duty, retaining the power to defend their [= the States’] authority and the liberty of the citizens, and rescue themselves from them should they become tyrants, and generally keep a check on them, so that they could do nothing without the permission and approval of the States. The right of Sovereignty, it follows, was always vested in the States (TTP XVIII.10).

Spinoza’s contention is that the States did not rebel against Philip II, their ruler at the time, since in unseating him they merely “recovered their original power which they had by then almost lost”

(Ibid.). Their efforts were thus purely conservative, as they did not seek to secure new rights or to alter the fundamental form of the State, but merely to bring the actual workings of the State back in line with its (customary/unwritten) constitution. This, presumably, accounts for its success in Spinoza’s eyes. In any event, having shown – to his own satisfaction at least – that these counter-examples do not in fact undermine his original claim that revolutions result in nothing but a pointless expenditure of blood, Spinoza concludes that in fact all three of these examples “confirm (…) that the form of each state must necessarily be retained and cannot be changed without risking the total ruin of the state (id, quod diximus, omnino confirmatur, quod scilicet uniuscujusque imperii forma necessario retinenda est nec absque periculo totalis ipsius ruinae mutari potest)” (Ibid.; Italics added).

3.3.3. La morale de l’histoire

The value or significance of the “must” in the passage I have just quoted is twofold. On the one hand, Spinoza means to indicate thereby a (meta-) physical necessity: it just isn’t possible, given the laws of human behaviour, to change the form of a relatively long-standing

134 Its title was: Corte vertoninghe van het recht der Ridderschap, Edelen ende Steeden van Holland en West- Vriesland (Rotterdam). 181

State. At least it is not possible to do so without an appalling cost in terms of human life, and without throwing the State into the gravest turmoil. Plus, the gains one might achieve through such a change in the form of the State in terms of one’s potentia existendi – assuming, for the sake of argument, that such a correlation exists, and that some State-forms are therefore more collectively empowering than others – will be short-lived, as the State “must” in time revert to its prior form. This “must” belongs to Spinoza’s realist analysis of the outcome of revolutions.

However, on the basis of this sense of (meta-) physical necessity, the “must” may also be taken to denote an ethico-rational imperative. We have seen how, to Spinoza, dictates of reason amount to prudential counsels for maximizing one’s advantage or power to exist. Spinoza’s realist analysis of the outcome of revolutions has shown that they never result in a durable change in the form of the State, and hence cannot be regarded as leading to an increase in one’s power to exist. On the contrary, his analysis has shown that such an attempt imperils the very existence of the State – something we have seen the rational person “must” avoid at all costs. Hence, from the perspective of his ethico-rational analysis of politics, Spinoza’s conclusion that the form of each

State “is to be preserved (retinenda est: must be preserved)” isn’t just meant as a statement of fact: it is meant as an admonishment, as a dictate of reason or counsel of prudence.135 The wise person recognizes that revolution is imprudent, in the sense that it is a means that does not lead to the desired end – an increase in one’s power to exist – and that may in fact run counter to that objective. It should be stressed, however, that this particular argument for the ethico-rational necessity of obedience is more limited in scope than all of the other arguments we either have seen or will see in this chapter. It would not serve to prohibit less ‘ambitious’ acts of resistance: i.e., the many conceivable forms of resistance not aimed at the radical transformation of a State’s

135 S.B. Smith similarly takes Spinoza to be drawing a prudential lesson from the fact that the form of a particular government “must” be maintained (1997: 158), though he does not clearly distinguish this ethico-rational sense of obligation from the physical/realist sense that the necessity of retaining the form of the State also has for Spinoza. 182 fundamental constitution. One could say that it rules out revolution, understood in Spinoza’s precise sense as a change in the form of a State, but not every act of political resistance, where the latter is loosely defined as any effort to defy or challenge the authority of the Sovereign.

Spinoza never makes such a distinction explicitly. But we have seen how Spinoza’s analysis of the Dutch Revolt, at least, hinges upon the fact that while every revolutionary act is an act of resistance, not every act of resistance is revolutionary. Spinoza’s realist analysis of the outcome of attempted revolutions doesn’t of itself exclude the possibility that political resistance might, as a matter of fact, usher in positive changes within a particular form of government (i.e., while leaving the fundamental form of the government, or even its current administration, intact).

Consequently, conclusions as to the ethico-rational legitimacy of such efforts – i.e., efforts to improve conditions under a given formal structure of power – cannot be drawn from it.

3.4. The Motives of Resistance & Obedience Considered From an Ethico-Rational Perspective

Another basis upon which an argument against the ethico-rational validity of political resistance can be constructed is to be found in Spinoza’s discussion of the ‘rational’ affects: i.e., those affects that are either produced by, or simply agree with the dictates of, reason. What I want to show is that the (passive) affects that move subjects to resist political authority can never agree with the dictates of reason, according to Spinoza.136

3.4.1. The Sad Affects of Political Resistance

136 Though still considerably wider in its purview than the argument against resistance (or, more precisely: revolution) presented in the previous section, it should be noted at the outset that since the argument developed in this section will serve primarily to exclude acts of resistance motivated by sad affects, it may also prove somewhat limited. Everything depends upon whether or not it is conceivable, in Spinoza’s view, that acts of resistance should be motivated by active affects – i.e., affects that are the by-product of the mind’s adequate understanding, and that may thus be said to follow from our nature alone. 183

As we have seen, Spinoza defines sadness as an affect indicating a decrease in the capacity to act of the mind and body (the two being expressions of the same fundamental thing within different attributes). Spinoza’s corresponding definition of hate is of “sadness with the accompanying idea of an external cause” (E IIIP13C). Since we necessarily strive to persevere in existence – and thus tend to do all those things which we imagine promote this very power to act

– it follows that we necessarily “strive to avert (amovere) or destroy (destruere) what we imagine

(…) will lead to sadness” (E IIIP28). This is no less true of things we imagine as affecting others with sadness, since, according to Spinoza, we necessarily imitate the affects of those things we conceive to be “like us”. Spinoza’s name for sadness born out of the imitation of the sad affects of beings we imagine to be similar to us is pity (commiseratio; E III Def. Affs. XVIII; cf. P22S), while the consequent “desire to benefit one whom we pity” he calls benevolence (benevolentia; E

III Def. Affs. XXXV; cf. P27S). Finally, indignation (indignatio) is the hatred we feel towards

“him who has done evil to another” – i.e., “injured” and thus saddened “one like us” (E IIIP22S).

Since we strive to eliminate, or free ourselves from, all sources of sadness, Spinoza believes it follows that “as far as we can, we strive to free a thing we pity from its suffering” (E IIIP27C3), and, hence, do what we think will benefit it, by eliminating that which we imagine afflicts it: i.e., that thing which has aroused our indignation.

It isn’t hard to foresee the political ramifications of passive affects like hate, pity, benevolence, and indignation, and Spinoza is especially sensitive to them in the TP. The latter is, as I explained in the general introduction to this dissertation, above all a realist study of the political structures or orders (to use Machiavelli’s term: see, e.g., The Prince Ch. XIII) that can best ensure the stability or “permanence” of the State, even where both its ruler(s) and its subjects are not guided by reason. As I also explained in my general introduction, it is in the context of such a realist analysis that Spinoza singles out indignatio and the related affects of pity and 184 benevolence as the de-stabilizing and subversive affects par excellence – the affects of revolution. If the reign of a sovereign is perceived to be violent and oppressive, if it is felt to be nothing but ‘a long train of abuses’, and if it appears to be exclusively oriented towards the sovereign’s benefit, at the expense of the subjects’ well-being, then this reign will be one in which sad affects proliferate, and perhaps even predominate. Though the threshold beyond which subjects cease to be able to tolerate such abuses is impossible to identify exactly or predict a priori, Spinoza believes there are de facto limits to the repression humans can withstand, which is why “no one has maintained a violent regime for long” (TTP V.8; cf. XVI.9). We hate what we believe to be the cause of our sadness, and we necessarily take measures to eradicate this cause, provided we imagine that in so doing we will be bringing about a greater good for ourselves, or the lesser of two evils. When a critical mass of subjects come to mirror and, hence, reinforce, each others’ sadness with a corresponding idea of its external cause – viz., the

Sovereign – there has arisen a state of “general indignation” (TP III.9). And the likely result of such collective indignation – provided this passion is sufficiently widespread and intense – is a movement of active resistance against the Sovereign’s rule: i.e., an effort on the part of the subjects-turned-insurgents to topple the government, and thus remove the source of their sadness.

All of this is encapsulated by passages like the one from TP IV.4, in which Spinoza explains that for the Sovereign “to slaughter subjects, despoil them, to ravish maidens and the like” is to turn the subjects’ fear of the Sovereign “into indignation, and consequently the civil order into a condition of war” (cf. TP IV.6 & VII.2).

3.4.2. “Odium nunquam potest esse bonum”

As Spinoza himself suggests, it is tempting to look favourably upon these affects (E IV

App. Ch. XXIV). After all, can a will to do well to another person (benevolentia), or the 185 indignatio that impels us to combat tyranny, be evil? At least one scholar appears to have given in to this temptation, alleging that: “c’est bien, dans l’indignation collective, à l’exercice d’une vertu auquel nous assistons” (Bove 1996: 294; Italics mine). It is, however, misleading to characterize the passive affects of political resistance as virtues in Spinoza’s sense of the term.

An affect or deed of ours is virtuous in the Spinozist sense if it is active – i.e., if it can be understood to have followed from the laws of our nature alone, such that we are its adequate cause.137 By contrast, as a species of sadness, an affect of hate like indignation is “directly evil”

(E IVP41; cf. IVP51S), since it represents a diminishment or restraining of our capacity to act, and always passive, since nothing which runs counter to our conatus essendi can be conceived to follow from our nature (the two are the same, and hence this would be a flat contradiction). The same must be said for pity and benevolence, as Spinoza defines them.

Proposition 45 of Ethics IV confirms all of this, for it states unequivocally that hatred towards any of one’s fellow human beings “can never be good”, since, as Spinoza has established in proposition 37, “the good which everyone who seeks virtue wants for himself, he also desires for all other men”(reliquis hominibus etiam cupiet)” – and the more so, the more that person is led by the dictates of reason – whereas “we strive to destroy the man we hate (by IIIP39)” (E

IVP45Dem; Italics mine). The corollaries to this proposition draw the further consequences that:

(1) all affects derived from hate (e.g., vengeance or indignation) are evil (E IVP45C1); and (2) anything we desire out of an affect of hate is dishonourable (turpe)(E IVP45C2).

For the definition of what is honourable and dishonourable, Spinoza invites us to return to the first scholium of Ethics IVP37. There he defines “being honourable” (honestatem: honesty) as “the desire by which a man who lives according to the guidance of reason is bound (tenetur) to join all others to himself in friendship (ut reliquis sibi amicitia jungat)” (Italics mine), and

137 See section 2 of chapter 1 and section 3 of chapter 2 for a more elaborate treatment of these concepts. 186

“honourable” (honestum: honest) that “which men who live according to the guidance of reason praise (laudant)”. Now, earlier in the Ethics (IIIP59S), Spinoza has explained that “strength of character (fortitudo)” (i.e., all of the “affects related to the mind insofar as it understands”, and which are thus active) is to be divided into tenacity (animositas) and nobility (generositas).

Significantly, he defines the latter as “the desire by which each one strives, solely from the dictate of reason, to aid all other men (reliquos homines juvare) and join them to him in friendship (& sibi amicitia jungere)”. Hence, Spinoza wants to draw a connection between nobility as an active affect – i.e., a true virtue of the mind – and those traits of character which are in accordance with reason because they “beget harmony (concordiam)”: viz., “justice, fairness, and being honourable (justitiam, aequitatem, & honestatem)” (E IV Def. Affs. Ch. XV; cf. E

IVP18S). It should be recalled that those things that lead to and preserve concord among humans are to be contrasted with all those things that “bring discord to the state (E IVP40). Hence, these traits accord with reason because, among other things, they prompt us to honour our contracts, especially the contract to obey the sovereign – something we know Spinoza often insists is an imperative of instrumental reason.

Thus, Spinoza appears to want to set up a strict dichotomy between the sad, passive affects of resistance – which as such are not aligned with the dictates of reason – and the affects of obedience, which in some cases may be active (and hence virtues related to strength of character), since they are engendered by the mind insofar it understands (i.e., are produced by reason). Such an interpretation is supported by the scholium to IVP73, in which, after having shown that the politics of the rational or free person is one of unconditional obedience to the

Sovereign, Spinoza states that in the free person, such rationally justified submission is “related to strength of character, that is, to tenacity and nobility”. In keeping with what we have just seen, 187 this means “that a man strong in character hates no one, is angry with no one”, and, most significantly to us, “is indignant with no one”.

We may conclude that to Spinoza any act of resistance motivated by hatred is evil, and hence condemned by the dictates of reason. Spinoza warns that the acts of resistance motivated by “affects of sadness toward men” may “present the appearance of fairness” (E IV App. Ch.

XXIV). But, says Spinoza, they are in reality “directly opposed to justice, fairness, being honourable, morality, and religion (directe justitiae, aequitati, honestati, pietate, & religioni opponuntur)”. For “when each one is allowed to pass judgement on another’s deeds, and to enforce either his own or another’s right, we live without law” (Ibid.), and we have seen: (1) how sad affects like indignation can lead to such a condition of anarchy; and (2) how such a condition is to be avoided at all costs. Spinoza’s realist approach to politics may demonstrate that such passionally motivated acts of resistance are often the inevitable outcome of certain types of misrule, and his political immanentism may entail that the effective power of a movement of resistance is the right by which subjects may resist (i.e., that rights simply are effective resistance). But from the perspective of Spinoza’s ethico-rational analysis of politics, such acts of resistance cannot be justified; they are not in accordance with the dictates of instrumental reason. What’s more, the foregoing discussion of the political ramifications of the two principal categories of active affects according to Spinoza – viz., tenacity and nobility – would seem to show that, in his view, no act of political resistance can ever be motivated by active affects.

Spinoza’s sage, it appears, does not resist.

3.5. The Fulfilment of Reason and Political Quietism

It is possible to generate one other set of interconnected arguments to buttress the claim that Spinoza’s ethical theory – to which his metaphysics and theory of knowledge are 188 inextricably related – amounts to a rational justification for a politics of obedience. These arguments all have to do with the supposed relation between the fulfilment of reason in knowledge sub specie aeternitatis and political quietism. Where scholars have examined the question of the validity of political resistance from the standpoint of Spinoza’s ethico-rational treatment of politics, they have tended to focus on these kinds of arguments. Because these arguments are so common in the secondary literature, I will be a little more expeditious in my treatment of them.

3.5.1. “Acquiescentia in se ipso”, or No Longer Kicking Against the Pricks

To Spinoza, true happiness, freedom, or “self-contentment” (acquiescentia in se ipso) all consist in our understanding of, and, hence, alignment with, the necessary order of Nature.

Spinoza refers to this supremely joyful cognitive activity, in which one comes to “understand all things as governed by necessity” (E VP6), as “the intellectual love of God” (amor intellectualis

Dei). Spinoza’s commentators often depict the acquiescentia that is said to accompany the attainment of true knowledge as a state of quietude and resignation, in which one comes to discern the ineluctability of all natural events, and, hence, the futility of the desire to change what cannot be otherwise. Thus, by way of example, S. Hampshire writes: “To Spinoza it seemed that men can attain happiness and dignity only by identifying themselves, through their knowledge and understanding, with the whole order of nature, and by submerging their individual interests in this understanding” (123; Italics mine). Similarly, L.S. Feuer contends that Spinoza’s intellectual love of God amounts to a call for humanity to “(…) admire the power of nature which may destroy it and to take delight in the beauty of mathematical laws which threaten it with annihilation. (…) Behind Spinoza’s metaphysics lies an injunction to love that which is necessary, a cosmic acquiescence” (217-218). Since, as Spinoza demonstrates, Nature’s power is 189 all-encompassing, events of a political nature are no less determined than the changing of the seasons or the tides, and true happiness and freedom consist in the rational apprehension of this necessity, such that one no longer “kicks against the pricks” (TP VII.30). One can see how such a conservative interpretation of the political implications of Spinoza’s amor intellectualis Dei fits well with all those passages I have highlighted in which Spinoza seems to promote the acceptance of the status quo, and proscribe any endeavour to subvert the given political order or resist its figures of authority.

3.5.2. “In quacunque civitate homo sit, liber esse potest”

Another, closely related argumentative strategy has its starting point in Spinoza’s assertion that: “a man can be free in any state, for a man is free (…) to the extent that he is guided by reason” (TTP Ann. 33). Few scholars go so far as to contend that Spinoza completely dissociates the conduct of politics from what they allege to be, in principle, the solitary, contemplative activity of the philosopher (which, on this reading, would be the exclusive and sufficient source of real freedom).138 But quite a few are prepared to argue, on the basis of such passages, that Spinoza’s doctrine of salvation through the intellectual love of god entails compliance with the de facto political power, since all the philosopher requires from any political regime is the modicum of peace and stability needed to enjoy the highest good: viz., the rational contemplation of the natural order (Den Uyl and Warner 295). In this manner, scholars very

138 Such a claim is made perhaps most forcefully by H. De Dijn (1985, 1993, 2004). I will have more to say about De Dijn’s unabashedly a-political reading in the next chapter. Other scholars to have reached similar conclusions about the purely contemplative and/or solitary nature of Spinozist philosophical salvation are: R. Caillois (1972: 320); J.M. Beyssade (1994); and S.B. Smith (1997, 2003). Two passages from Smith’s writings are particularly striking in this regard. In Spinoza’s Book of Life, Smith writes: “…Spinoza’s conception of freedom of mind comes with a price tag. His idea of human perfection, the rational love of God, is extremely private, not to say utterly solitary” (182). This is virtually identical to what he had earlier written in his Spinoza, Liberalism, and the Question of Jewish Identity: “Spinoza’s model of human perfection is (…) deeply anti-political. (…) Spinoza’s is a deeply private or solitary idea of the philosophic life” (144; cf. 137-138). 190 quickly derive a doctrine of strict political obedience from some of Spinoza’s pronouncements on the nature of the good life and its reliance on political conditions.

A prime example of both of the related argumentative strategies I have just outlined can be found in a recent book by F. DeBrabander (2007), in which it is argued that, according to

Spinoza, “Reason will prevail upon us to observe the laws of the state, even if they should be issued by a tyrant or some other less desirable sovereign” (116), because: (1) reason teaches us to identify with, and thus acquiesce to, the necessary order of Nature, of which the realm of politics is but a part; and (2) the most fulfilling human activity – the intellectual love of God – can in principle be carried out under any political regime, as long as the latter ensures a minimum of peace and stability (the possibility of its exercising control over the private domain of a philosopher’s thoughts being ruled out). The philosopher is thus made out to be “the sovereign’s greatest ally” (Ibid.).139

3.5.3. There is Nothing to Resist for the Sage

This brings up a final, once again closely related argumentative strategy meant to show that the fulfilment of reason entails a politics of obedience, this time drawing upon those passages in which Spinoza seems to treat all knowledge of good and evil as fundamentally irrational or

“inadequate” – i.e., as a symptom of the incompleteness of our knowledge. The most important and clear-cut of these passages is no doubt proposition 64 of Ethics IV, in which Spinoza maintains that “knowledge of evil is an inadequate knowledge”, with the corollary that “if the human mind had nothing but adequate ideas, it would form no notion of evil” (E IVP64 C).140 A

139 L.S. Feuer also makes use of both of these argumentative strategies. For the first, see p. 84 of Spinoza and the Rise of Liberalism (Boston: Beacon Press, 1958); for the second, see pp.103-104 of the same. Cf. Hampshire (125). 140 In his argument for this, Spinoza begins by reminding his reader of his earlier claim (E IVP8) that the knowledge of evil is sadness itself, since whatever diminishes one’s capacity to act or impedes one’s conatus essendi is evil, and 191 passage from the scholium of proposition 73 of Ethics IV is also pertinent here, since it makes the connection between the amor intellectualis Dei and an a-moral conception of Nature:

A man strong in character (vir fortis) considers this most of all, that all things follow from the necessity of the divine nature, and hence, that whatever he thinks is troublesome and evil (molestum, & malum), and moreover, whatever seems immoral, dreadful, unjust, dishonourable (impium, horrendum, injustum, & turpe), arises from the fact that he conceives the things themselves in a way which is disordered, mutilated, and confused [i.e., inadequately]. For this reason, he strives most of all to conceive things as they are in themselves (in se sunt), and to remove the obstacles to true knowledge, like hate (odium), anger (ira) [etc.] (Italics added).

It seems rational or free persons – qua rational or free – regard nothing as evil, since they no longer see anything as degrading and reprehensible (turpe), or as a source of pain, displeasure, or harm (molestus). On the contrary, rational/free persons regard every natural phenomenon, without exception, with pure joy, since each is merely an opportunity to increase their understanding of Nature – and, hence, of God – which is their highest good, and, thus, intrinsically pleasurable (E IVP28; cf. III Pref.; IVP57S; Ep 30). To the extent that this is the case, it seems to follow that the rational or free person does not resist, say, the decrees of a tyrant, because there is nothing in them to resist – if by resistance one understands an attempt to eliminate or destroy (amovere seu destruere) a source of sadness, an evil.141

an affect of sadness indicates precisely such a diminishment or impediment. Now, as we’ve seen, such a “passage to a lesser perfection” cannot “be understood through man’s essence itself” (if it could, we would have to say that an essence can have a property – i.e., something can follow from it – which negates that essence, which is a patent absurdity). The knowledge of evil is therefore a passion. In proposition 3 of Ethics III, Spinoza shows how we are only susceptible to passions insofar as we have inadequate ideas: a passion ceases to be a passion when we understand it adequately (for then it ceases to be something that happens to us, but, rather, a property, or the expression, of the internal resources of our mind: we become its adequate cause). Hence, knowledge of evil – which is nothing other than a passive affect or passion – is inadequate. The reader may wonder how this claim squares with what I have said in chapter 2 of this dissertation about the “true knowledge of good and evil”, which Spinoza clearly thinks is adequate, and clearly sees himself as striving to achieve in the Ethics as a whole. I cannot here attempt to resolve the apparent tension between these two strands within Spinoza’s ethical theory. Suffice it to say that, as I tried to show in chapter 2, there must actually be two forms of knowledge of good and evil if Spinoza’s ethical theory is to remain coherent: an inadequate knowledge based on passions and the imagination (the first kind of knowledge), and an adequate knowledge based on common notions and rational inferences from these (Spinoza’s second kind of knowledge). 141 It should be stressed that the argument I have just outlined for the necessity of strict political obedience ultimately rests on a reading of Spinoza’s ethical teachings that chapter 2 of this dissertation (indirectly) served to 192

3.6. Conclusion

This dissertation is devoted to the study of the question of the legitimacy of political resistance from the standpoint of Spinoza’s ethico-rational analysis of politics. In other words, its task is to ascertain the status of political resistance in the rationally enlightened politics of

Spinoza’s “wise person”. It is thus predicated upon the notion that, in Spinoza’s view, reason can in principle arrive at true and certain knowledge of what is good or evil – i.e., useful or harmful – to us. This much was established in chapter 2, which also (indirectly) furnished a summary of some of the principal prudential counsels or “dictates” of reason, according to Spinoza. It thus set the stage for the present chapter, in which I provided a comprehensive overview of the various argumentative strategies available to a Spinozist to buttress the claim that the wise person should never engage in or countenance political resistance – i.e., that when the chief tenets of Spinoza’s refute: viz., the reading according to which there is no such thing as evil for the rational person (i.e., that evil is a non-being, whose imaginary positivity vanishes when the world is rationally apprehended). The rational person, as such, possesses true and certain knowledge of both good and evil. Qua finite, the rational person will still experience certain things as evil (i.e., as the cause of sad affects), but insofar as s/he apprehends these evil things rationally, his/her affective relation to them will no longer be entirely crippling or disempowering. What Spinoza thus wants us to think is the (admittedly very challenging) possibility of simultaneously knowing something to be evil insofar as that thing affects us – as finite embodied beings – negatively (tends to disrupt the precise ratio of motion and rest in which the parts of which we are composed must stand in order to constitute us as individuals) and joyfully affirming that thing (evil to us insofar as we are vulnerable finite beings), through the knowledge of its causes, as necessary – indeed as the free and therefore joyful expression of our own rational powers. Insofar as we always remain finite embodied beings, the experience of amor intellectualis Dei – which in itself may be one of “pure joy” – is a complex and ambiguous one. In this experience, we come to recognize that the conception of ourselves as ‘discrete’, ‘atomistic’, or finitely individuated beings is mistaken. Instead, we correctly come to regard ourselves as “parts of Nature” in the deepest and most essential sense: i.e., we come to see that we have no real independent existence outside of the interconnected web of things that Spinoza calls Natura naturata, save perhaps as an extremely limited expression of the infinite power to exist of Natura naturans. In other words, we come to realize our essential unity with the order of Nature as a whole. But this experience is complex or ambiguous because – qua finite or “singular” (E IID7) – we never cease to be this particular thing amidst an infinity of other finite individuals (we never simply dissolve into or merge with some sort of undifferentiated Plotinian One – what Hegel would call the “night in which all cows are black”), and, hence, never cease to be affected (on some level) by evil. Only now whatever negative affects we are still prone to as finite beings no longer have the upper hand, no longer suffocate us or overwhelm us, because our experience of them is mediated by our knowledge that they are the necessary expression of a power greater than ourselves, but which we – in a sense – also are. As chapter 2 has established, and as the next chapter will confirm, it is thus far too simplistic to say that, to Spinoza’s rational person, there is nothing evil, and hence nothing to resist.I have nevertheless presented the argument for the ethico-rational necessity of obedience that is based upon this unsophisticated reading because it is one that is common in the secondary literature, especially in introductory accounts of Spinoza’s philosophy. 193 ethics are applied to the field of politics, they amount to a prescription for a politics of strict obedience to whatever political authority happens to be in place. While Spinoza makes some of these arguments himself, others were extrapolated from, or reconstructed on the basis of, his explicit ethical, political, and metaphysical teachings. However, even in the latter cases, in which some amount of extrapolation was involved, I did not have to perform feats of hermeneutical and argumentative acrobatics to derive an ethico-rational imperative of obedience from Spinoza’s ethics and metaphysics: in most cases, such an imperative followed quite naturally, and was a more or less direct implication of Spinoza’s own explicit analyses or doctrines. It is thus surprising that while the bulk of the scholars who have (1) noticed Spinoza’s use of an ethico- rational lens when studying politics (as opposed to the much more frequently noticed realist- immanentist lens), and (2) taken up the question of the validity of political resistance in Spinoza’s works from this ethico-rational standpoint, have been led to answer this question in the negative, this chapter marks the first attempt in the secondary literature on Spinoza to study, in a meticulous and exhaustive manner, all of the possible Spinozist arguments for the ethico-rational necessity of obedience. Even more surprisingly, while many scholars have touched upon one or two of these possible arguments, at least one such possible argument has – to my knowledge – never been examined in the secondary literature: viz., the ‘argument from motives’ sketched in section 4 of this chapter.142

Readers familiar with the content and objectives of Spinoza’s political writings (most notably the TTP) may find one topic conspicuously missing from the present chapter: viz.,

Spinoza’s critique of the theological justification for political resistance. After all, as L.S. Feuer

(90), R. McShea (191), F. Haddad-Chamakh (1980: 246), and others have done so well to point

142 We merely catch a glimpse of it in L.S. Feuer’s assertion – made in the context of a discussion of the futility of revolution in Spinoza’s eyes, and never pursued in its own right thereafter – that for Spinoza: “Revolution was the political mode of passions, a manifestation of the life of bondage (…)” (100). 194 out, if Spinoza appears to us to be a conservative political thinker, anxious to safeguard the current state of affairs through arguments intended to show that resistance does not agree with the dictates of reason, we must not forget what it meant to be a revolutionary in the Netherlands at the time of Spinoza’s writing, say, the TTP. At this time, Spinoza was, by his own reckoning:

“fortunate to enjoy the rare happiness of living in a republic where every person’s liberty to judge for himself is respected, everyone is permitted to worship God according to his own mind, and nothing is thought dearer or sweeter than freedom” (TTP Pref. § 8). While Spinoza remained critical of the policies and administration of the Dutch Republic, he recognized that a revolution would not come from the more radical and intellectually emancipated fringe groups, whose members longed for an even freer, more inclusive, and more tolerant society.143 The revolution would be fought against the very notion of a free republic, against freedom of speech and the open-minded respect for religious pluralism. It would take the form of an alliance between royalists, loyal to the House of Orange and looking to help it turn the Netherlands into an absolute monarchy on the French model, and religious zealots bent on imposing Calvinist orthodoxy and thus turning the Netherlands into another Geneva. Hence, it should be stressed that no matter how harsh, extreme, or conservative the ethic of unconditional obedience delineated in this chapter may appear, it is, paradoxically, at least partially motivated by

Spinoza’s desire to defend the cause of freedom, given the historical context of the writing of at least the TTP (possibly the Ethics as well, much of which was written at the same time as the

143 The leading lights of this radical but also quite marginal segment of Dutch society included some of Spinoza’s closest friends and associates – among others: the brothers Koerbagh, and Franciscus Van den Enden. Cf. Israel (2001: Chs. 8 & 9). Many of the myriad protestant sects that proliferated at this time must also be placed within this segment: e.g., the Collegiants, the Quakers, and the Anabaptists. For more on these religious movements, see: Kolakowski (1987). There is of course some overlap and exchange between these groups and the more mainstream political leadership of the Republic, since the well-to-do bourgeois circles from which these leaders were selected and whose interests they therefore tended to represent were also relatively liberal and progressive-minded (cf. McShea 27). 195

TTP).144 And, more to the point, a desire to protect the no-doubt imperfectly inclusive, tolerant, and liberal Dutch Republic (of whose shortfalls Spinoza was keenly aware) was the driving force behind Spinoza’s thoroughgoing critique of any and all religious justifications for resistance.

This being said, the study of this critique would be out of place in this chapter, as it was intended to survey only those arguments against the validity of political resistance grounded in reason – either its prudential maxims or its fulfilment in amor intellectualis Dei. By contrast, Spinoza’s critique of the religious justification for resistance either: (1) depends upon the arguments outlined in this chapter, and, as such, does not stand on the same level as them; or (2) relies on arguments that are internal to the religious tradition and discourse from which the theological justifications for resistance with which Spinoza would have been acquainted were also culled.

This latter argumentative strategy also implies that Spinoza’s critique is not waged at the same level, or upon the same grounds, as the collection of ethico-rational arguments for obedience I have been at pains to explicate in this chapter.

In closing, it would be difficult to overstate the severity and radicality of the arguments for the ethico-rational necessity of obedience presented in this chapter. If all one knew of

Spinoza were what has been said about him in this chapter, one would be likely to come away with the impression that he is an uncompromisingly rigid defender of the status quo, a hard-line conservative categorically opposed – on the basis of his ethical and metaphysical teachings – to any and all efforts to take one’s political fate in one’s hands by resisting the commands of one’s rulers. One may even come to regard him, as L.S. Feuer has perhaps most famously (84-85, 111; though he was neither the first nor the last to do so: cf. Préposiet 1985: 378-379), as a kind of beatifically aloof, rationalist saint, preaching stoic indifference to, or a quietist acceptance and

144 As R. McShea puts it: “(…) Revolution in the Netherlands meant the victory of reaction. (…) Spinoza had a vested interest against further revolution in his own country” (191). 196 tranquil contemplation of, the trials and tribulations of humanity. While Spinoza has of late been celebrated as an early and staunch champion of democracy, egalitarianism, free speech, and religious tolerance – the recent works of J. Israel being the paramount examples in English of this tendency – the findings of this chapter should have a sobering effect. By focussing exclusively upon the arguments for the ethico-rational necessity of obedience to be found in Spinoza’s writings, we get a very different picture of Spinoza’s political philosophy. For on their basis alone, it is not at all clear that Spinoza ought to be regarded as a champion of toleration and free speech. On the contrary, it would seem as though the person guided by the dictates of reason ought, according to Spinoza, to be prepared to consent to extremely far-reaching restrictions upon his or her rights to free self-expression and religious worship, if the Sovereign should deem these necessary for the well-being of the State as a whole.145 Nor, it seems, should the rational person care about such encroachments, as long as they do not interfere with the essentially private and solitary activity of philosophical contemplation. To put this as provocatively as possible: it seems as though a Spinozist sage living in Nazi Germany would have found no reason not to carry out even some of the Führer’s most horrific commands. Indeed, he may even have been serene in his execution of such orders, provided he were given the leisure and security to contemplate the inflexible order of causes that had led to this state of affairs. E. Curley, among others, shares my concern about the seeming extremism of Spinoza’s conservatism, asking:

“Does viewing things sub specie aeternitatis require us to accept the success of [tyrannical] governments so long as they are able to maintain their power? If so, does being a good Spinozist not require a level of detachment from individual human suffering which is either superhuman or

145 Perhaps the strongest proof of just how far-reaching Spinoza took this rational imperative of submission to be is his own avowal, at the outset (Pref. §8) and again at the close of the TTP, that he is ready to retract any part of his writing that the civil authorities deem “to be in conflict with the laws of [his] country, or prejudicial to the common good” (XX.18). These, at least, do not sound like the words of an unflinching defender of free speech. 197 subhuman?” (1996: 335). Furthermore, he wonders whether “Spinoza’s philosophy possesses the theoretical resources to condemn tyrannical governments as strongly as we would wish to”

(Ibid.).

In the next chapter, I will show that Spinoza’s ethico-rational analysis of politics does offer “theoretical resources to condemn tyrannical governments”, and, hence, to justify resistance to them. Accordingly, the next chapter will show the respects in which my portrayal of Spinoza’s rational politics in the present chapter was one-sided, isolating and emphasizing the quietist and conservative strands of Spinoza’s political thinking. Only once I have made plain the ethico- rational ‘resources’ available to a Spinozist for the condemnation of, and resistance to, tyranny will it then be possible to draw a more complete, nuanced, and complex portrait of Spinoza’s views on the question of political resistance. Mind you, while the next chapter will act as a much-needed corrective to the view that Spinoza’s ethico-rational analysis of politics offers no resources for the condemnation of, and resistance to, tyranny, it will not prove the discussion in this chapter to have been tendentiously one-sided. On the contrary, while it will show how certain aspects of Spinoza’s ethico-rational analysis mitigate, or even flatly contradict, the apparent extremism of Spinoza’s ‘ethics of (unconditional) obedience’, it will cast doubt on neither: (1) the existence of the hard-line conservative doctrine outlined in this chapter; nor (2) the overall predominance of this doctrine in Spinoza’s political writings. 198

Chapter 4

Resistance is Rational (I): Spinoza’s Ethics of Political Resistance

4.1. Introduction

This dissertation asks the question: What is the status of political resistance in the rational politics of Spinoza’s ‘wise person’? Does Spinoza’s study of politics through an ethico-rational lens vindicate or condemn resistance? Its centrepiece is a diptych, composed of this chapter and the last. In the preceding chapter, I presented the range of arguments against the ethico-rational validity of political resistance that can be culled from a reading of Spinoza’s major philosophical works. Though almost none of these arguments have gone entirely unnoticed in the secondary literature, more often than not they have merely been touched upon in passing. No previous study has sought to examine them methodically and in their own right, or to compile an exhaustive list of them. My efforts to do so last chapter resulted in a picture of Spinoza as an extremely conservative political thinker, one categorically opposed to any attempts to defy

Sovereign power, or to overthrow a particular political regime. This Spinoza, the theorist of absolute State power, is starkly opposed to the politically progressive Spinoza one gets in, for example, the works of J. Israel (2001; 2006), in which Spinoza is cast as the founding hero of the

Enlightenment struggle for: freedom of thought and expression; religious toleration; equality of opportunity; government for and by the people; and widespread intellectual emancipation.146

In this chapter, I will show that the picture of Spinoza’s stance on political resistance obtained last chapter was incomplete. For sitting alongside the passages that lend credence to the conservative reading are passages that strongly suggest, and sometimes even directly affirm, that

146 In short, those who side with J. Israel believe Voltaire’s “Écrasez l’infâme!” could even more appropriately have been Spinoza’s battle-cry. 199 resistance is ethico-rationally justifiable for Spinoza under certain conditions.147 Though my work in this chapter may be said to fall under the auspices of the progressive reading of Spinoza popularized by J. Israel, it represents an original contribution to the ‘school’ (loosely speaking) of interpretation of which he is but the most widely-read representative. Indeed, the very possibility of a distinctly Spinozist justification for resistance, specifically grounded in his ethical teachings,

147 It is my contention that these conditions can be inferred from the general principles of Spinoza’s deductive science of ethics, when taken in conjunction with certain relevant findings of his general, ethico-rational analysis of politics. Accordingly, my main purpose in this chapter is to derive the basic conditions for the ethico-rational justification of political resistance from Spinoza’s broader ethical and political theory. As I will show, these conditions fall into three variously interrelated categories. The first category might be characterized as ‘consequentialist’, since it has to do with the actual repercussions of acts of political resistance in terms of the empowerment of both its agent(s) and its target(s). The second category might, by contrast, be termed ‘intentionalist’ (for lack of a better word), as it has to do with the aims and motives of the agent(s) of political resistance. Thus, as I will make clear in this chapter, the ethico-rational justification of certain forms of political resistance that can be gleaned from Spinoza’s writings on ethics and politics makes use of both ‘intentionalist’ and ‘consequentialist’ criteria. The third category might be called ‘contextual’, as it has to do with the political circumstances (or ‘conditions’) that call for forms of resistance consistent with the first two categories. It should be stressed that the primary question I am thus looking to answer in this chapter is: What are the conditions that, if they could be known to obtain, would justify political resistance from an ethico-rational standpoint, according to Spinoza? The attempt to ascertain these conditions on the basis of Spinoza’s writings is, strictly speaking, logically separate from the question of whether it can ever be known (either ante factum or post factum) that a particular act of resistance meets these conditions. I will return to this second question at several points both in this chapter and, especially, the next (see section 4). I hope to show that, under certain extremely dire political circumstances, and assuming that the ‘intentionalist’ conditions are met (something that cannot possibly be known in advance, if at all), some forms of political resistance can be justified ante factum. But even if I am wrong about this, and it can either only be known post factum whether a particular act of political resistance has met all of the ethico- rational conditions of legitimacy, or it can in fact never be known whether a particular act either has met or will meet all of the ethico-rational conditions of legitimacy, this does not undermine the validity of my central project in this chapter (indeed, in this dissertation as a whole), which, again, is simply to demonstrate that there are, in Spinoza’s view, conditions under which political resistance may be said to harmonize with the dictates of reason. For if the knowledge that a particular act of resistance is justified can only ever be obtained post factum, this post factum assessment remains ethico-rational, and thus still falls within the purview of a study seeking to reconstruct an ethico- rational justification for political resistance on the basis of Spinoza’s thought. In other words, the fact that an evaluation of the justification of a particular act of resistance is carried out post factum does not necessarily make its justification de facto (i.e., a justification along realist/immanentist; cf. sections 2 and 3 of my general introduction). And if a general theoretical inquiry of the kind I am presently engaged in cannot get down to the level of particulars, and cannot show that, or explain how, we can know with certainty that a particular act of resistance is ever warranted according to the three types of conditions listed above (and which we will examine in detail in what follows), this should neither alarm nor surprise us. As Aristotle maintained (and on this point I think Spinoza would have agreed: see section 4 of the next chapter), theoria can only ever identify and explicate general conditions, universal principles and precepts, for ethical conduct (i.e., regarding the nature of virtue or the good life; what counts as a virtuous act). What is needed to discern whether a particular act meets the general conditions or precepts determined through theoretical wisdom (sophia) is an altogether different form of wisdom: practical wisdom (phronesis), which comes from experience, does not take the form of the mere application of a universal rule or formula, and which one either has or does not have (i.e., one either simply ‘sees’ what is right in a particular time and place, what is in accordance with the general principles of virtuous action, or one does not; there is only so much one can do to teach another person to be prudent). 200 has been either overlooked or flatly denied by virtually all of Spinoza’s commentators, including, in large part, L. Bove, whose La Stratégie du conatus: affirmation et résistance chez Spinoza was the only monograph to have been devoted to the issue of resistance in Spinoza’s philosophy prior to this dissertation.

The novelty of the reading of Spinoza I will be putting forward in what follows is all well and good, but what is of most interest here is the question of the novelty of the doctrine of resistance – of the strategy for the justification of resistance – that is to be found in Spinoza’s ethico-rational analysis of politics. As was discussed in the general introduction to this dissertation, Spinoza’s conflation of right and power entails the rejection of any theoretical justification for resistance that relies on the appeal to a set of rights that transcend the relations of power one wishes to challenge. The latter is what I will call the ‘juridical’ model for the justification of resistance. It is the model adhered to by the bulk of the early-modern political theorists who defended the legitimacy of political resistance under certain conditions – perhaps most famously by Spinoza’s contemporary, John Locke.148 In contrast to Locke’s juridical model, Spinoza’s treatment of right and power as coextensive means that a movement of political resistance has only and exactly as much right as it has power. If it hasn’t the power to achieve the objectives it sets out for itself, then neither has it the right to achieve them. While, as I explained in my general introduction, this entails the possibility of a de facto justification of political resistance, it also seems to divest a Spinozist of any means to criticize and condemn forms of domination and violence, from the mildest intimidation or exploitation to full-fledged genocide. Spinoza’s scientific or ‘geometrical’ study of political resistance thus leaves us with serious moral reservations. In this chapter, however, it will become clear that when Spinoza lays aside his realist lens, and analyzes politics from the perspective of his ethical teachings, he gives

148 Locke and Spinoza were both born in 1632. Locke died in 1704, outliving Spinoza by roughly 27 years. 201 us a firm basis for the condemnation of oppression or tyranny – no less so than Locke. However, again in contrast to Locke’s juridical model, it will prove to be the case for Spinoza that an act of resistance may be justified ethico-rationally, even though its agents haven’t the power, and hence, to Spinoza, the right, to carry it out effectively (in concrete terms: the movement of resistance is snuffed out by the more powerful repressive apparatus of the State, having exerted little to no influence upon its workings or policies). As we shall see in this chapter, though especially in the next, the fact that Spinoza’s ethico-rational justification of resistance in effect sidesteps the question of the right to resistance makes Spinoza something of an anomaly in the world of seventeenth-century political theory, though perhaps not so much of an anomaly as has been claimed.149 Part of my task in this chapter and (especially) the next will thus be: (1) to pinpoint the differences between the Lockean juridical model for the justification of political resistance and Spinoza’s ethico-rational model; and (2) to determine the real significance of these differences (e.g., are they substantive differences, or merely differences in the terminological and metaphysical trappings of their theories?).

149 I am referring, of course, to A. Negri’s brilliant but difficult: The Savage Anomaly: the Power of Spinoza’s Metaphysics and Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991). The way Spinoza’s de facto justification of resistance proved to be anomalous (compared to a much more mainstream figure like Locke) in the general introduction to this dissertation was, in important respects, a function of the way his metaphysics and ethics are anomalous to Negri: i.e., as a function of his immanentism, his univocal conception of being, his equation of right and power. This will remain true for the way Spinoza’s ethico-rational justification of resistance makes him an historical anomaly. Given my focus in this dissertation on the rational politics of Spinoza’s wise person, I am less interested in Negri’s claim that Spinoza’s understanding of democracy as the spontaneous self-constitution of the social order by the multitude is historically anomalous. I am, however, somewhat apprehensive about claims made by Negri (1991), but also by G. Deleuze (1968, 1981), M. Hardt (1991, 1993), and W. Montag (1989), that Spinoza jettisoned all elements of transcendence from his ethics and, by extension, ontology. As I made clear in chapter 2, and as should become even more clear as we proceed in this chapter and the next, there is, in my view, an important sense in which Spinoza’s ethics – and, hence, his ethico-rational analysis of politics – retains certain elements of ‘transcendence’. These elements are generated by reason in its ‘practical’ capacity (i.e., insofar as it is capable: of issuing ethical imperatives; of achieving true and certain knowledge regarding good and evil, the useful and the harmful, what is empowering and what is disempowering), and the relation of the latter with the imagination. I am thinking, for example, of the exemplar humanae naturae, which, while (as I argued in chapter 2) it is a rational construct, can never be fully realized by flesh-and-blood human beings, to whom its progressive realization must therefore remain a transcendent goal, a future possibility – the notion (or, more precisely, ‘image’) of the latter being contributed by the imagination. 202

Finally, as the reader may already have surmised, and as will become increasingly apparent throughout this chapter and the next, the two panels of my diptych do not easily harmonize with one another. How, after all, is it possible for Spinoza to consistently maintain, on the one hand, that absolute obedience to the Sovereign is a dictate of reason, and, on the other hand, that resistance to the Sovereign is ethico-rationally warranted under certain conditions?

Though I do not think it is possible to reconcile everything Spinoza has to say about the ethico- rational legitimacy of political resistance, my description of the conditions he can be seen to lay for the ethico-rational justification of resistance will make him as consistent as he can be made to be on this issue, given the conflicting nature of the textual evidence.

4.2. Strength of Character and Resistance: Preliminary Remarks

As mentioned last chapter, to Spinoza, “all actions that follow from affects related to the mind insofar as it understands” are to be related to “strength of character (fortitudo)”. Such strength of character manifests itself in two ways: viz., as the virtues of tenacity (animositas) and of nobility (generositas). Tenacity represents “the desire by which each one strives, solely from the dictate of reason, to preserve his being” (E IIIP59S). To Spinoza, “it is permissible (licet) for us to avert (amovere), in the way that seems safest, whatever there is in Nature which we judge to be evil, or able to prevent us from being able to exist and enjoy a rational life” (E IV App. VIII), for, by the dictate of reason, we strive to promote our advantage, to maximize our capacity to act, and evil is not only that which threatens our very existence, but also that which poses an obstacle to our flourishing (which, as we have seen, ultimately means the unfettered deployment of our power in the rational comprehension of the order of Nature: amor intellectualis Dei).

However, in Spinoza’s view, the tenacious drive for self-preservation of the vir fortis (the person strong in character) does not conflict with or exclude the effort to secure the advantage of 203 all other human beings – i.e., the virtue of nobility, which, it is worth recalling, Spinoza defines as “the desire by which each one strives, solely from the dictate of reason, to aid all other men

(reliquos homines juvare) and join them to him in friendship (& sibi amicitia jungere)” (E

IIIP59S).150 On the contrary, since nothing in Nature is “more useful to man than a man who lives according to the guidance of reason” (E IVP35C1), it follows that “when each man most seeks his own advantage for himself”, i.e., when “each man” is most guided by reason and hence most virtuously tenacious, it is then that they are “most useful to one another” (E IVP35C2).

Now, it is true that, in Spinoza’s view, anyone who lives “according to the guidance of reason” will “repay the other’s hate, anger, and disdain toward him, with love, or nobility” (E

IVP46). As Spinoza explains in the demonstration to proposition 43 of Ethics III, while hate is increased in being returned, it is destroyed by love, so that, as he shows in the next proposition, the hate “passes into love” (E IIIP44).151 Since rational persons strive not to be “troubled with affects of hate”, and (by E IVP37) unfailingly will for all others the good they will for themselves, rational persons seek to “repay the other’s hate” with love and generositas. Thus, as

Spinoza makes plain in the scholium to proposition 46 of Ethics part IV: “He who wishes to avenge (vindicare) wrongs (injurias) by hating in return surely lives miserably”.

But this is not to advocate a kind of defeatism or complacency in the face of evil. Spinoza is not saying the rational person must, in every case, turn the other cheek. For as Spinoza

150 I have amended E. Curley’s translation in one crucial respect. Agreeing with B. Pautrat’s French translation, I have translated “reliquos homines” as “all other men”, where Curley renders it as “other men”. Strictly speaking, Curley’s translation is not incorrect. But reliquus means ‘what is left over’, ‘the remaining’, ‘the rest’, and Spinoza is clearly using it in this context to refer to ‘the rest’ of humanity, aside from oneself (i.e., the ‘complete set’ of humans, not including oneself). It thus makes sense to emphasize the absolute universality of ‘reliquos homines’ in translation, and I have done so in every other passage in which the term is similarly meant to have the widest possible extension. 151 As we have seen, to hate something is to strive to eliminate or destroy it – i.e., to affect it with sadness – while to love something is to strive to do all those things that affirm its existence, and, hence, affect it with joy. Since love is simply an affect of joy with an “accompanying idea of an external cause” (E IIIP13C), it follows that to be loved and, hence, benefited by someone we hate is to see our hatred turn to love – the more so, the more intense the joy with which that person affects us. 204 explains, the rational person, “who is eager to overcome hate by love, combats joyously and confidently (ille sane laetus & secure pugnat), resists many men as easily as one (aeque facile pluribus hominibus, ac uni resistit), and requires the least help from fortune”. Most importantly,

Spinoza hastens to add: “Those whom he conquers (vincit) yield joyously (ii laeti cedunt), [and they rejoice] not from lack of strength (non quidem ex defectu), but from an increase in their powers (sed ex incremento virium)” (E IVP46S; Emphasis added). Granted, this passage does not specify whom the vir fortis – i.e., the rational person – might ‘stand up to’ (resistit) and ‘fight’

(pugnat) joyously. It may still be the case that the rational person, for reasons I have gone over at length in chapter 3, would never defy the Sovereign’s power to command.152 But it does seriously cast doubt upon the argument according to which the acquiescentia in se ipso that goes hand-in-hand with the fulfilment of reason in knowledge sub specie aeternitatis would amount to a laissez-faire indifference to political matters – indeed an end to all inter-human struggle in

152 It should also be noted that Spinoza believes that “the virtue of a free man is seen to be as great in avoiding dangers as in overcoming them (E IVP69), and that therefore, “in a free man, timely flight (fuga) is considered to show as much tenacity as fighting (pugna); or a free man chooses flight with the same tenacity or presence of mind, as he chooses a contest” (E IVP69C). But Spinoza’s argument for this has nothing to do with the nature of the ‘dangerous’ object – i.e., the object that is the actual or potential “cause of some evil” (E IVP69S) – to be fled from or confronted. Rather, Spinoza’s argument in this proposition (including its corollary and scholium) concentrates exclusively on the force of the affects to be overcome in either one’s evasion or one’s standing and fighting. If the affects to be overcome in one’s opting to flee are bellicose or pugnacious affects of courage and anger, then this course of action (retreat, evasion, etc.) shows just as much strength of character as opting to fight, in the event that the affects to be overcome were pusillanimous ones of fear, cowardice, trepidation, etc. It is curious that Spinoza should omit to mention nobility in the corollary in question. For if as much “strength of character” (E IVP69Dem) is required to overcome aggressive affects as to overcome fearful affects, presumably Spinoza should have written that “in a free man, a timely flight is considered to show as much tenacity and nobility as fighting”. I am not sure what to make of this omission. It may simply be an oversight on Spinoza’s part. Or perhaps it is an indication of the artificiality of the distinction between these two forms of strength of character in Spinoza’s own eyes, since to seek one’s own advantage from the guidance of reason is precisely to seek the advantage of all other human beings: tenacity, correctly understood, is, or necessarily involves, nobility. I certainly don’t think it should be interpreted to mean that the nature of the object to be fought or fled from is only a crucial factor in determining the virtuousness of an action (i.e., whether it is a manifestation of strength of character) with respect to nobility. Why I think the nature of the object to be fought (or fled from) matters in both forms of strength of character will become clear as we proceed. 205 some Spinozist gelassenheit or ataraxia. The rational person resists. This being the case, there must still be evil for the rational person, qua rational, to combat.153

4.3. Spinoza’s “Free Man” As Militant Joyeux: Resistance in the Ethics

Let us, for the moment, leave aside the question of the ethico-rational validity of political resistance. On the basis of Ethics IVP46 and its scholium, as well as a few crucial points from chapter 3 of this dissertation, we can already formulate two conditions which any act of resistance, understood along the general lines of the scholium to IVP46 as ‘combating’ or

‘standing up to’ one or more of our fellow human beings, must meet if it is to agree with the dictates of reason. These two first conditions that all acts of resistance must meet if they are to be considered ethico-rationally justified are of two types.154 The first of these types of conditions can, faute de mieux, be called ‘intentionalist’, insofar as it is concerned with the aims and motives of the agent(s) of the act of resistance. The second, by contrast, may be labelled

‘consequentialist’, since it has to do with the repercussions of the act in question. Hence, as will be made plain in what follows, the ethico-rational justification for resistance that can be culled from Spinoza’s ethical writings makes use of both ‘intentionalist’ and ‘consequentialist’

153 This is confirmation of the fact that the argument I sketched in section 5.3 of chapter 3 for the necessity of strict political obedience (or, it might be better to say in this context: ‘complacency’ or ‘acquiescence’) that was predicated on the non-existence of evil for the rational person, was, as I had already shown in chapter 2, based on a faulty interpretation of Spinoza’s (meta-) ethical teachings. If (again, as I showed in chapter 2) the rational person can boast true and certain knowledge of good and evil, it follows as a matter of course that there is still evil for the rational person – only the rational person has a positive and, for lack of a better term, ‘ambiguous’ or ‘mediated’ affective stance towards whatever s/he recognizes to be evil, one that is no longer totally crippling or disempowering. For further explanation: cf. chapter 2, section 4. Footnote 33 of chapter 3 should also be consulted. 154 As I stated at the very outset of this chapter (see footnote 2), there are in fact three broad and variously interrelated categories into which the conditions that all acts of political resistance must meet if they are to be deemed ethico-rationally justified fall. I am about to describe two of these: viz., the ‘intentionalist’ and ‘consequentialist’ conditions. The third category, which is inextricably linked to the first two (in ways that will become apparent as we proceed), might be called ‘contextual’, as it has to do with the political circumstances or ‘conditions’ that call for forms of resistance consistent with the first two categories. 206 criteria.155 The intentions and motives of the agent of resistance matter, but their harmonizing with the dictates of reason is not, of itself, sufficient to ethico-rationally validate the act of resistance undertaken by the agent of resistance: as we shall see, the actual consequences of the act of resistance must also be taken into consideration in the assessment of its ethico-rational validity.156

What are these two first conditions? The first, ‘intentionalist’ condition is discernible on the basis of the scholium to Ethics IVP46, and clear from section 4 of chapter 3: an act of resistance will only be justified if it is not motivated by sad affects and/or by any species of hatred (such as indignation). Though the demonstrative basis for the second, ‘consequentialist’ criterion is ultimately to be found in Spinoza’s proof for proposition 37 of Ethics IV, according to which rational persons seek for all other human beings the good they seek for themselves, the passage quoted above from the scholium to Ethics IVP46 also intimates that an act of resistance can only completely agree with the dictates of reason and, hence, be ethico-rationally justified, if it empowers both the act’s rational agent – the person carrying out the act of resistance or ‘taking up the fight’157 – as well as its target(s): i.e., the person(s) whom the rational agent is combating or standing up to.158

155 It should be stressed, however, that the boundary between these two categories is somewhat porous. For, as we shall see, the intentional component of an ethico-rationally justified act of resistance is, in part, nothing other than a conception of the anticipated, ethico-rationally sanctioned consequences of the act, which its agent(s) keeps directly in view and is (or are) motivated by, in actually carrying it out. 156 In fact, as I intimated in footnote 9, the actual, political circumstances that the act of resistance would seek to change must obviously factor into the evaluation of its ethico-rational legitimacy as well. In other words, as I will show (cf. infra, section 4), there are political conditions under which resistance is, and others under which it is not, ethico-rationally warranted. 157 It goes without saying that the agents of resistance can be plural. It is only for the sake of stylistic and grammatical convenience that I have referred to the ‘resistor’ in the singular in the passage to which this footnote is appended. 158 This brings up the question, which I first raised in footnote 2, as to whether it is possible for us to know, with certainty (or at least a high degree of probability) and ante factum, what means of resistance will actually empower both its agent(s) and, ideally, its target(s) in any concrete situation. I refer the reader to footnote 2, and must postpone further treatment of this question for the time being. Though I will develop certain elements of a possible answer in this chapter, my fullest treatment of this question will only be carried out in section 4 of the next chapter. 207

These two conditions alone raise many questions: How is it possible for the strong in character to strive joyously in the face of that which threatens or prevents their ability to act (i.e., saddens them), and for those whom they conquer to “surrender joyously” to that which apparently thwarts their conatus – the very definition of sadness? This last question can be rephrased in even broader terms: Why isn’t the act of resistance, a seemingly destructive act, evil? In other words: What type of act of resistance can possibly empower both its authors and those against whom it is directed?

Insofar as they are governed by reason, the strong in character cannot strive to resist joyously because they take pleasure in the destructive side of the act of resistance, for this would be a sign of a “weak mind” (E IVP45S) and, as we have seen in chapter 3, “hate can never be good” (E IIIP45). As Spinoza establishes in Ethics IVP63 and its corollary, a person guided by reason never acts directly (directe) out of fear or hatred – i.e., out of a desire to avoid or eliminate an evil. Rather, the rational person “directly follows the good”, and only wants to “flee” or

“destroy” the evil, to which the “free person” gives as little thought as possible, as an indirect by- product of this direct desire for the good. Thus, Spinoza’s noble and tenacious militants joyeux do not destroy out of any species of hate (indignation, rancour, jealousy, etc.), but solely out of a love of humanity (E IVP63S). The strong in character carry out provisionally and indirectly destructive acts joyfully because they associate these acts with the idea of their ultimately constructive purpose: i.e., an idea of the rational end such acts are meant to help realize. In this respect, the acts of resistance of the strong in character can instructively be compared to

Spinoza’s description of the Sovereign authority which, “bound by its desire to preserve peace”, punishes a citizen “who has wronged another”, not “because it has been aroused by hate to destroy him”, or because it is “indignant toward the citizen”, but “because it is moved by duty”(E 208

IVP51S; Italics mine).159 Thus, the person “guided by reason” to fight and resist evil is like the judge Spinoza describes in the scholium to the corollary of Ethics IVP63: “a judge who condemns a guilty man to death – not from hate or anger, and the like [e.g., indignation], but only from a love of the general welfare (sed solo Amore salutis publicae) – is guided only by reason

(sola ratione ducitur)”. The strong in character commit acts of resistance on the basis of a similar rational duty (understood in a Spinozist sense, of course) to tenaciously and nobly defend both their own advantage and, accordingly, that of their fellow human beings.

In explaining how, to Spinoza, the striving to resist of the strong in character can be joyous, we strike upon (at least part of) the answer to the question as to why the free person’s act of resistance is not evil. It should be recalled that, to Spinoza: “no action, considered in itself, is good or evil” (E IVP59 Alt. Dem.). Like any morally ambivalent act (considered absolutely: i.e., from the perspective of Nature as a whole), part of what makes an act of resistance good is its being associated with an idea of the good to be achieved by means of this act.160 Conversely, one condition that can, of its own, make an act of resistance evil is the latter’s only being associated with an idea161 of the object to be destroyed by the act, rather than the good this act might

159 The word E. Curley translates as “duty” is pietas, which can mean piety in the religious sense we typically ascribe to the term, but also duty in all its forms, or even the love of one’s country or the common weal. Spinoza has earlier defined it as a “desire to do good generated in us by living according to the dictates of reason” (E IVP37S1). But Curley there translates it as “morality”. 160 I say ‘part’ because, as should be clear by now, appropriate intentions and motives on the part of its agent(s) are necessary but not sufficient conditions for the ethico-rational validity of a given act of resistance. The actual consequences of the given act must also be taken into consideration – i.e., it is necessary to know whether the act in question can be foreseen to be, or has actually proven to be, empowering for both its agent(s) and its target(s). The ethico-rational justification of political resistance that can be derived from Spinoza’s ethical writings thus makes use of both intentionalist and consequentialist criteria. For the most part, we have thus far been considering the ‘intentionalist’ conditions of the ethico-rationally justified act of resistance, though we have also made mention of the consequentialist type of conditions, and alluded to the existence of what I have called ‘contextual’ conditions (about which I will have quite a bit to say in what follows). 161 To be precise, in the scholium to proposition 59 of Ethics IV, Spinoza writes that the ideas associated with an action are “images of things”. But he then goes on to say that the latter can be “images of things which we conceive confusedly” or “[images of things] we conceive clearly and distinctly”. As we have seen, to think by means of images is, in Spinoza’s technical sense of the term, precisely not to think “clearly and distinctly” (i.e., rationally or adequately). Hence, in this passage, Spinoza’s use of the term ‘images’ is somewhat looser, as a synonym for ‘ideas’ 209 accomplish.162 It is evil if it is motivated by a desire to debase, deprive, or destroy its target, if it is the product of indignation, ressentiment, or other such sad affects. Thus, Spinoza describes

Nero’s destructive act of matricide as evil because in it he only shows himself to be “ungrateful, pitiless, and rebellious” (Ep 23), whereas “the same outward act” of matricide committed by

Orestes “is not blamed”, because his act is intended to reconstitute a bond of familial love and piety which his mother, Clytemnestra, had severed in killing her husband (Orestes’ father)

Agamemnon (Ibid.).

What is the good or end, put forward by reason, which the vir fortis ‘looks to’ when engaged in joyful resistance? I would like to suggest that it is none other than the exemplar humanae naturae alluded to in the Preface to part IV of the Ethics, and which, as we saw in chapter 2, Spinoza refers to elsewhere as a concept of “a certain human nature much stronger than our own (naturam aliquem humanam sua multo firmiorem)” (TIE §13). The strong in character strive joyously to carry out their acts of resistance because the idea to which they look to guide their acts, an idea they themselves have freely generated out of the resources of their own mind, is empowering.163

(which to Spinoza can either be adequate or inadequate). I have thus opted to use the latter term in the passage to which this footnote is appended. This terminological note is important given what I am about to argue about the nature of the idea to which the acts of resistance of the strong in character are associated. 162 I say “of its own” because, since ‘good’ intentions are a necessary condition for the ethico-rational justification of an act of resistance, it suffices that an agent’s intentions or motives not agree with the dictates of reason – that they not meet the relevant ethico-rational conditions – for the acts carried out by that agent to be evil or ethico-rationally unjustified (at least insofar as the question is whether the agent’s actions are in accordance with the dictates of reason). 163 The reader is referred to chapter 2 for a more detailed examination of the nature, content, and function of the exemplar humanae naturae in Spinoza’s ethics. I there tried to ascertain its ontological and epistemological status in Spinoza’s philosophy. Among other things, I demonstrated that the exemplar humanae naturae is not, or at least not fundamentally or primarily, a product of the imagination (an image), but rather of reason (an adequate idea). In a nutshell, the content of the exemplar that the agent of an ethico-rationally justified act of resistance looks to realize (or at least help realize) through his/her resistance is simply that of the human being having, per impossibile, achieved a complete rational understanding of, and hence an absolute unity with, the totality of Nature’s causal order. The exemplar humanae naturae is thus a rational model or ideal of a human being having fully realized the highest human good. 210

As I explained in chapter 2, the purpose of much of part IV of the Ethics is to achieve certain knowledge of both the content of this model of a “more powerful” (firmior) human nature, and the means to its realization. One thing that clearly emerges from both the opening sections of the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect and much of part IV of the Ethics is that the actualization and enjoyment of this stronger human nature depends upon the production of a more collectively empowering society, one that is conducive to the most widespread enjoyment of this end as possible. In fact, not only is the empowerment of all members of society – indeed, wherever possible, of all of our fellow human beings – a means to the attainment of this “highest good”, but the sharing of this good “with others” wherever possible is also a constitutive part of our highest good (TIE §14; E IVP37Dem. & Alt. Dem.).

Hence, those who live according to the dictates of reason “seek for themselves the common advantage of all” and “want nothing for themselves which they do not desire for other men” (E IVP18S; cf. E IVP37). Accordingly, reason commands that we seek to deliver all other human beings from all forms of suffering “which we know certainly to be evil” – i.e., from all forces that are known to deplete or restrain their power to act, to keep them in bondage to the passions (E IVP50Dem). This alone may give the person guided by reason grounds for the justification of acts of resistance. In section 2.6 of the preceding chapter, I outlined the Spinozist argument for the ethico-rational necessity of obedience to the commands of the Sovereign that is premised upon the fact that no maxim can be considered a dictate of reason if it cannot be universalized without entailing either one’s own or, what amounts to nearly the same thing for the rational person, someone else’s harm. Provisionally bracketing the question of political resistance (which the argument I have just referred to would rule out), a similar argument can be constructed on the basis of the fact that reciprocity – ‘do unto others as you would have others do unto you’ – is a fundamental dictate of reason, to which every other dictate of reason, as such, 211 must conform, but this time in support of the claim that resistance is an ethico-rational imperative, whenever such an act of resistance would protect another person from something “we know certainly to be evil” (again, disregarding for the time being the question of whether such an act of resistance would be ethico-rationally justified, were it to challenge or run counter to the commands of the Sovereign).164

But what is it, more precisely, that we “know certainly to be evil”? And what kind(s) of acts of resistance might therefore be justified, keeping in mind the ethico-rational requirement that such acts benefit even those against whom they are directed? Proposition 27 of Ethics IV establishes that “we know nothing to be certainly (certo) good or evil, except what really (revera) leads to understanding or what can prevent us from understanding” (cf. E IV App. V).

Knowledge – which, given Spinoza’s monism, can only be knowledge of Deus sive Natura – is the highest good (E IVP28), since it is only insofar as we have adequate knowledge that we are active or virtuous (i.e., free, self-determining, adequate causes; E IVP23), and we have already seen in chapter 2 that virtue is an end in itself (E IVP22C).165 Hence, as Spinoza concludes,

164 The argument for the legitimacy of resistance based on the ethico-rational principle of reciprocity might also find textual support in a passage from chapter XVI of the TTP, in which Spinoza describes the social contract as a pledge, on the part of any number of individuals, “to be guided in all matters only by the dictates of reason (…) and [thus] to keep appetite in check insofar as it tends to another’s harm (damnum), to refrain from doing anything to anyone they would not want done to themselves, and finally to defend another’s right as if it were their own (jusque denique alterius tanquam suum defendere)” (§5). I will leave any discussion of the significance of this passage with respect to the ethico-rational legitimization of resistance to the Sovereign to section 4 of this chapter. All I will say about it at this juncture is that it appears to confirm what we have already learned from the Ethics about the validity of resistance taken in a general sense (i.e., when it is not directed against the Sovereign): viz., that it is a dictate of reason to repel, challenge, combat – in short, resist – any encroachment upon the interests of our fellow citizens (indeed, anyone’s interests). Of course, this is to assume that the defence of another’s right is synonymous with the defence of that person’s interests. Hence, much is riding here on the nature and content of the “right” at issue in this passage. It can be inferred that even if it is a purely civil right, granted by the Sovereign power or “the power and will of all together” (Ibid.), it must ex hypothesi truly serve the interests or be in the advantage of our fellow citizens (and thus in our own interest/advantage as well). For otherwise it would not be a dictate of reason to uphold it, as it is said to be in the passage, since the rational person – qua rational – does nothing that “tends” either to his own or “to another’s harm”. 165 To the extent that one is able to gain an understanding of the causes that underlie and account for all things in Nature, one’s mind achieves an understanding of its profound unity with Nature (TIE §13; E IV App. XXXII), such that Nature’s order (i.e., the totality of events that are produced in/by Nature according to its fixed laws) is no longer experienced as an external imposition to which one might be subject (as ‘fortune’ or ‘fate’), but rather as the 212

“from the guidance of reason (ex ductu rationis), we necessarily strive to bring it about that men live according to the guidance of reason” (E IVP37Dem). Indeed, because “nothing is more useful to man in preserving his being and enjoying a rational life than a man who is guided by reason”, the greatest possible display of skill in promoting one’s advantage, and, hence, of virtue, lies in “educating men so that at last they live according to the commands of their own reason” (E

IV App. IX). It follows that rational persons will, and that all humans are under an ethico- rational imperative to, militate against, and seek to deliver both themselves and as many others as possible from, whatever forces or conditions are known with certainty to prevent increases in their power to understand.

As we saw last chapter, scholars often cast the knowledge of God that Spinoza believes constitutes the apex of reason – i.e., the contemplation of the immutable order of nature, in which

“the better part of us” becomes eternal by participation in the eternity of its object – as a detached, solitary, and apolitical activity, in which we come to resign ourselves to what we see cannot be otherwise. The political correlate to this activity, it is claimed, is willing submission to the powers that be. As I also mentioned last chapter, one of the most forceful expositors of this position is H. De Dijn, who argues, contra A. Negri and his followers, that “thinking sub specie aeternitatis and the concomitant intellectual love of God” should not be “interpreted as manifestation of one’s own reason/will – and hence also as an expression of one’s own power. To Spinoza, this is what makes the knowledge of Nature’s causal order the highest good, for what we seek in and through all that we desire is, ultimately, to increase our potentia existendi. Hence, what separates Spinoza from other pioneers of modern philosophy – say, e.g., Francis Bacon or René Descartes – is that to him the cognitio causarum is not just a means to the increase of one’s power (cf. Zac 1972: 59). In Descartes’ epoch-defining vision of human progress, the technological application of our scientific discoveries held the promise of rendering us nature’s “maîtres et possesseurs” (Descartes Discours de la méthode, part VI). Spinoza did no doubt approve of the Baconian dictum that “knowledge itself is power” (“De Haeresibus” in Meditationes Sacrae) when taken in this ‘technological’ sense, in which the relation between knowledge and power remains an external one (such that Bacon’s aphorism could more properly be phrased: knowledge is a means to power). One need not look any further than §15 of the TIE for evidence of this. But more often than not, Spinoza’s understanding of the copula in the Baconian dictum is much more profound, denoting an identity, or inherent relation, between its subject and predicate: knowledge is power (Mara 95). If Bacon’s aphorism is the motto or clarion call of modern philosophy, the way Spinoza adopts it indicates that while he is a modern, he is also, to borrow H.A. Wolfson’s felicitous phrase, “the last of the medievals” (Pref. vii). 213 enlightened political activity” – i.e., “reduced to a contribution to the self-reflexive auto- production of the free, democratic multitude and the free flow of its collective power in democratic discussion and decision-making” (1993: 251). According to De Dijn, Spinoza did not take genuine freedom to consist in such “self-reflexive” political activity, but only in “the joyful experience of oneself as being the expression of the impersonal Life-force itself”. “To obtain this experience”, De Dijn continues, “the spontaneous anthropocentrism of man has to be broken, but in such away that the activity of knowing becomes a way of seeing oneself as being ‘clay in the hands of the potter’: a way of seeing which is at the same time self-distantiation and self- acquiescence in the Other, in God-Nature” (258). To De Dijn, the conatus of the philosopher is for joyful insight alone; everything else is merely secondary, a means to this highest good, and should not be mistaken for this final end (1985: 421). Once this ultimate good has been attained, all other concerns, especially those of a political nature, supposedly fall by the wayside.

Now, as W. Montag points out, it is no doubt true that the Ethics concludes “in the advocacy of an intellectual love of God (or Nature) that is an acquiescence in what can be loved precisely because there is no possible other to be preferred over it” (1999: 57). Accordingly, it is important not to overlook passages in which Spinoza insists that: “insofar as we understand, we can want nothing except what is necessary, nor absolutely be satisfied with anything except what is true (nisi in veris acquiescere possumus). Hence, insofar as we understand (…) things rightly, the striving of the better part of us agrees with the order of the whole of Nature (conatus melioris partis nostri cum ordine totius naturae convenit)” (E. IV App. XXXII). But we must be wary when commentators like De Dijn point to this and other passages to argue that cognition sub specie aeternitatis allows us to ‘rise above’, or ‘disengage ourselves from’, the troublesome world of politics, and to impassively embrace the present state of affairs. Granted, this is, ultimately, what the intellectual love of God entails, but only, as Spinoza says, “if we are 214 conscious that we have done our duty (si conscii simus nos functos nostro officio fuisse)” – and that we are continuing to do our rational duty – to tenaciously and nobly promote both our own advantage and that of our fellow human beings (Ibid.).166

We are “parts of nature” whose powers of acting and, hence, understanding are

necessarily limited and infinitely surpassed by forces over which we have little to no control (E

IVP4). As such, even Spinoza’s third kind of knowledge, in which we intuitively apprehend the

singular, eternal essences enveloped in God’s attributes, and which Spinoza sometimes

characterizes as the “more powerful” of the two forms of adequate knowledge (E VP36S), is not

an all or nothing affair, but always a matter of degree. In achieving even a very high degree of

intuitive – or, more broadly: adequate – knowledge, such that the “better part of us” may be said

to be eternal, we do not thereby become disembodied and atemporal spirits. And as long as we

remain living human beings, it remains incumbent upon us to seek to promote both our own

166 To approach this point from another perspective and expand upon it, amor intellectualis Dei, or the cognition of Nature sub specie aeternitatis, does, at the end of the day, amount to a kind of amor fati: an acceptance, indeed an affirmation, of what cannot be otherwise (see Montag 1999: 57). But, to Spinoza, given the extremely limited nature of our cognitive faculties, such knowledge usually takes a very general form, in which the myriad concrete causal factors contributing to the outcome of any particular event or phenomenon remain shrouded in obscurity. As I will explain in much greater detail in the next chapter (indeed I present all of this as a mere assertion for the time being), our adequate knowledge of any event or phenomenon in Nature comprises: (1) a recognition, in the most general terms possible, of the fact that it is necessary by relating this event or phenomenon to the general, but perfectly adequate concept of God as the ultimate and necessary cause of all things; (2) a knowledge, which can vary greatly in its specificity and comprehensiveness, of the causal laws responsible for the production of the event/phenomenon in question; and (3) a knowledge, which can also vary tremendously in its scope and exactness, of its particular proximate causes (the comprehension of the infinite matrix of causes that has given rise to this event or phenomenon being out of the question for our finite minds). When it comes to a past or present event/phenomenon, this is more than sufficient to grasp its rational necessity – and hence to affirm joyfully that es muss sein. When it comes to the future, however, while we can affirm, on the basis of the common notions we do possess, that what will be will (always) have (had) to be, our finitude prevents us from ever foretelling with absolute certainty what it (the future) has in store for us. It is this (illusion of) contingency or indeterminacy, which is ultimately only a function of our ignorance, which is the condition for the very possibility of resistance. Indeed, as we saw in chapter 2, it is our ignorance of the future (or past and present things insofar as they have a bearing upon the future), which is a symptom of our finitude (and, hence, of the imagination), which, to Spinoza, is the very condition for the possibility of ethics – i.e., of reason in its practical capacity as the source of dictates or imperatives about how one ought to strive to live. Hence, for Spinoza (just as, mutatis mutandis, for Kant), omniscience is incompatible with the existence of duty; we have a rational “duty” to tenaciously and nobly fight for our own and other people’s interests precisely because we don’t know what such a fight will bring (what we specifically choose to do to comply with that duty to ‘fight’ or ‘strive’ tenaciously and nobly may in fact make things worse, for all we know). I will develop these themes in greater detail, and with the needed textual support, in the next chapter. 215

advantage and that of our fellow human beings, where the only thing that is known with certainty

to be advantageous to us is that which increases our power of understanding.

But what, more concretely, are the means by which we may promote an increase in both

our own adequate knowledge and that of our fellow human beings (who, as such, are likewise

potentially rational beings)? Conversely, what – again, more concretely – are the obstacles that

are known to impede the development of adequate knowledge? A human being is a finite

modification of God’s attributes (E IIP10C), two of which are known to us: thought and

extension (E IIPP1&2). On the basis of Spinoza’s general doctrine of the identity of the “order and connection of things” (E IIP7) or “causes” (E IIP9Dem) within different attributes,167 it follows that each human being can be exhaustively described or causally analyzed either in terms of extension or in terms of thought. Or, in other words, “the object of the idea constituting the human mind is the body, or a certain mode of extension which actually exists, and nothing else”

(E IIP13). Hence, it should be possible to provide answers to the questions raised at the beginning of this paragraph in terms of both the human body and the human mind, as the two ultimately denote the same thing, only expressed in two different ‘languages’, two different fundamental ‘forms’ of being or, to use Spinoza’s terminology, two different attributes.

A consequence of the ontological identity of modes within different attributes is that “in proportion as a body is more capable than others of doing many things at once, or being acted on in many ways at once, so its mind [i.e., the same mode in the attribute of thought; the idea that has that mode of extension as its object] is more capable than others of perceiving many things at once” (E IIP13S). Now, as we have seen, the human mind is “nothing other than” the idea of an actually existing mode of extension: viz., the human body (E IIP13). This, in turn, entails that

167 I.e., on the basis of his claim that: “a mode of extension and the idea of that mode are one and the same thing, but expressed in two ways” (E IIP7S). 216

“the human mind is capable of perceiving a great many things, and is the more capable, the more its body can be disposed in a great many ways” (E IIP14). Furthermore, as Spinoza goes on to explain a little later in Part II of the Ethics, the greater the number and diversity of one’s perceptions – and thus also the greater the complexity of one’s bodily constitution (such that it is more polyvalent, more receptive to different stimuli, or, as Spinoza puts it, more capable of affecting other bodies and being affected by other bodies in a variety of ways) – the more one is able to form adequate ideas. For, as Spinoza explains, “if something is common to, and is a property of (proprium), the human body and certain external bodies by which the human body is usually affected, and is equally in the part and in the whole of each of them, its idea will also be adequate in the mind” (E IIP39). It should be recalled that the idea of any given object is adequate in us if it can be said that God has the idea of the same given object insofar as he constitutes the nature of our mind alone (E IIP11C). The idea of a given property, which ex hypothesi is common to our body and an external body, is thus necessarily adequate in us according to Spinoza’s technical definition of the term, since we needn’t think of anything outside of, in addition to, or other than, the idea that already constitutes our mind in order to think it; the internal, ideational resources of our mind, as the idea of our body, suffice (cf.

Sévérac 199). It should be clear now why “the mind is more capable of perceiving many things adequately as its body has many things in common with other bodies” (E IIP39C).

The upshot of this, in terms of the first of the two questions that were raised two paragraphs ago, is that we will only be able to sustain and extend our adequate knowledge, through which we realize our highest good and participate in God’s eternal nature, to the extent that our bodies are “capable of being affected in a great many ways, or of affecting other bodies”.

And whatever enhances our bodies’ ability to affect bodies and be affected by bodies in a multiplicity of ways is thus, by E IVP26 (according to which the only thing known with certainty 217

to be good or advantageous to us is that which increases our ability to understand), “good or

advantageous (utile)”. As Spinoza concludes:

He who (…) has a body capable of very few things (ad paucissima aptum), and very heavily dependent on external causes, has a mind which considered solely in itself is conscious of almost nothing of itself, or of God, or of things. On the other hand, he who has a body capable of a great many things (qui Corpus habet ad plurima aptum), has a mind which considered only in itself is very much conscious of itself, and of God, and of things (E VP39S).

A. Matheron captures Spinoza’s meaning when he writes: “pour que nos idées claires puissent se déployer sans entrave, il faut donc que notre champ perceptif soit équilibré et riche, c’est-à-dire que notre corps entretienne le plus grand nombre possible de rapports avec le monde” (1968:

253). This implies that rational persons must use the adequate knowledge they have so far acquired to improve the conditions of their physical environment (both natural – in the colloquial sense of the term – and socio-political), and that this, in turn, will promote their understanding.

Matheron puts this as follows: “Connaître pour mieux organiser le monde afin de mieux connaître encore, tel est le cycle complet de la vie raisonnable”. Contrary to what H. De Dijn alleges (1993: 250), this does not reduce knowledge sub specie aeternitatis to a means, for, as

Matheron astutely observes, the philosophical circle of contemplative withdrawal and socio- political engagement “nous donne bien, en raccourci: connaître pour connaître” (Ibid.). Hence, the free person, whose proper vocation and highest good undoubtedly lies in the vita contemplativa, can never fully escape the struggles and strivings associated with the vita activa

(cf. Ansaldi 2006: 151).

This brings us back, once again, to the two overarching questions we have been grappling with in this section, and which we are now in a position to answer in at least a preliminary way.

The first and most fundamental of these questions is, of course: What kinds of acts of resistance might be ethico-rationally justified, given that the one thing known with certainty to be “good or 218 advantageous” to us, i.e., to increase our potentia existendi, is an increase in our ability to understand? As we have seen, Spinoza thinks that a real increase in the powers of those with whom our lives are intertwined – which, as we have seen, necessarily amounts to an increase in their powers of cognition – ipso facto increases our own powers (of cognition). A concrete example of this general principle is the fact that our cognitive powers are encouraged by the exchange of ideas that takes place in conversation with other rational human beings. Hence, it is in our interest to promote an increase in their cognitive abilities, and any act of resistance ought to contribute to an increase in the power of understanding of the greatest number, including, in the best-case scenario, those against whom it is directed. Indeed, one of the basic criteria for the ethico-rational validation of any act of resistance is that an act of resistance is more rationally justified, the more it successfully contributes to an increase in our power – which, to repeat, ultimately means our power of understanding – and, hence, the greater the number of individuals it helps empower along with us (ideally: even those against whom it is levelled). To return to a point I made earlier, this means that those who are targeted by the acts of resistance of the rational person yield joyously, for they are thereby empowered. In sum, an act of resistance is at least partially justified, from an ethico-rational perspective, to the extent that it helps promote an increase in both our own power of understanding, as well as the power of understanding of our fellow human beings (the two being inextricably related and mutually reinforcing).168

168 In the last few paragraphs, I have been concentrating on what I earlier called the ‘consequentialist’ conditions for the ethico-rational justification of resistance: i.e., that any act of resistance actually empower both its agent(s) and, ideally, its target(s). But the conditions I identified earlier having to do with the character of the motives (affective dispositions) and aims behind an act of resistance, which must also be fulfilled if the given act of resistance is to be consistent with the dictates of reason, must not be lost sight of. And I have also alluded to the existence of ‘contextual’ conditions regarding the socio-political circumstances under which (and to which) resistance is ethico- rationally warranted, and these (in large part) remain to be examined. This is why, in the sentence to which this footnote is appended, I wrote that the fact that an act of resistance leads to the empowerment of both its agent(s) and its target(s) is only part of what justifies it ethico-rationally. Moreover, I wish to remind the reader at this juncture that the overarching aim of this chapter is to identify the general, ethico-rational conditions that an act of (political) resistance must meet in order to be ethico-rationally 219

The second fundamental question we have been looking to answer is: What kind(s) of act(s) of resistance can satisfy such seemingly impossible requirements (in particular, the requirement that an act of resistance should, ideally, lead to an increase in the power of understanding even of those against whom it is directed)? As I explained earlier, it should be possible to answer the question pertaining to the ethico-rationally justified conditions and means of resistance in terms of either the body or the mind. I will begin with the former.

We have seen how, according to Spinoza’s metaphysics and epistemology, the mind is the more able to develop adequate ideas, the greater the variety of ways in which the body of which it is the idea is able to interact with the world. To have a mind rich in adequate ideas, one must have a body that is complex enough to undergo a wide range of experiences. And the more open one’s body is to an array of different stimuli, the more ways it can be modified by other bodies and modify them in turn – in short, the more things it can ‘do’ (E VP39) – the more one’s mind will be able to achieve adequate knowledge. Conversely, the mind’s power of understanding reaches its nadir when the body of which it is the idea is: severely restricted in the movements it is allowed to carry out (such that, e.g., it is made to perform the same limited number of functions over and over again); deprived of sensory stimuli (or repeatedly exposed to only a narrow range

justified. It is not the central aim of this study to determine whether, and if so, how, a particular act of political resistance might be judged to be ethico-rationally justified ante factum – i.e., to explain how we can know in advance (or even post factum) that a given act of resistance meets the conditions that, as I am in the process of demonstrating, can be gleaned from Spinoza’s ethical and political writings for the justification of political resistance. Due to the natural limitations of our cognitive abilities, human affairs are opaque and uncertain to us (i.e., not in themselves; cf.: chapter 2, section 4, and chapter 5, section 4). This means that the evaluation of any particular act of political resistance in terms of the consequentialist-type criterion that it serve to empower both its agent(s) and its target(s) will always be easier post factum. Indeed, I think in the majority of, though perhaps not all, cases, it will only be possible post factum. Furthermore, if it is even possible, the evaluation of any particular act of resistance in terms of the ‘intentionalist’ conditions we have already outlined regarding the motives and aims of its agent(s) can certainly only be realized post factum – which is why, in any effort to determine ante factum the ethico-rational legitimacy of a given act of political resistance, the compliance of the motives and intentions of its agent(s) will have to be assumed. But the fact that such ethico-rational evaluations are only ever (or in the case of evaluations with regards to only the ‘consequentialist’ conditions of ethico-rationally justified resistance, perhaps only usually) possible post factum does not necessarily make them de facto: a post factum evaluation can remain essentially ethico-rational (rather than ‘realist-immanentist’: cf. sections 2 and 3 of my general introduction). 220 of experiences); or simply deprived of the nourishment it needs to ensure that its myriad parts are

“continually regenerated” (E II Post. IV), and that the ratio of motion and rest among its myriad parts, which defines it as the body it is, is preserved.169

If we continue to provisionally put aside the question of the ethico-rational validity of political resistance (defined as resistance, either passive or active, to the decrees of the

Sovereign), and extrapolate somewhat from what we have established thus far regarding (1) the aim of ethico-rationally justified resistance (sc.: increased power of understanding), and (2) the physical correlate(s) of the mental pre-conditions for adequate knowledge, we may draw the following conclusion: it is ethico-rationally legitimate for an individual or group to physically resist, by means that cannot be specified a priori as they depend upon the parameters of each particular case, efforts by another individual or group to impose those physical conditions, described in the previous paragraph, that impoverish the body’s field of experience, restrict its range of movements, or even deplete its vitality. For these physical conditions constitute known obstacles for the development of adequate knowledge, i.e., the realization of the highest human good, and we have already seen how the fight to remove such obstacles is sanctioned (indeed, elevated to the rank of a prudential imperative or “duty”) by Spinoza’s ethics. Though it is not possible to use Spinoza’s ethical doctrine to pinpoint the exact threshold where such deleterious physical measures or conditions warrant resistance, the legitimacy of resistance will be patent in the most extreme cases. Thus, by way of example, let us suppose that one individual or group keeps another individual or group in a state of abject poverty or starvation, and/or that one

169 To avoid any misunderstanding, it should be stressed that the relation Spinoza believes obtains between the diversity of a body’s experiences and the capacity of the mind that is the idea of that body to form adequate ideas is not a causal one. For, by Ethics IIP6, “the modes of each attribute have God for their cause only insofar as he is considered under the attribute of which they are modes, and not insofar as he is considered under any other attribute”. In other words, this relation is not that of a condition of possibility or enablement, at least not in any causal sense. It would be more accurate to call it a ‘relation of identity’, or a reciprocal relation of denotation: because the mind is nothing other than the idea of the body, an active body denotes an equally active mind, and vice versa. 221 individual or group severely curtails another individual’s or group’s freedom of movement, or forces this individual or group to perform the same very limited number of bodily movements (or to assume a very limited number of postures) nearly every waking hour. Such conditions would, by the standards of Spinoza’s ethics, qualify as oppressive. And resistance against such a state of affairs, either on the part of, or on behalf of, the oppressed individual or group, would be ethico- rationally justified. For the ultimate aim of such resistance would be to create a physical environment in which all are equally favoured in their pursuit of knowledge, and thus equally able to fulfil the highest human good.170

Without being able to determine a priori the means such resistance to physical oppression might involve in each concrete situation, it is still conceivable that under at least certain circumstances, such resistance might even meet the most difficult, ‘consequentialist’ condition of ethico-rationally justified resistance: viz., that it empower its opponents, such that they yield joyously. For it is possible to imagine many cases in which the oppressor would have imposed any number of the deleterious physical conditions I have previously described not only upon others, but also upon him or herself.171 And it is no less possible to imagine scenarios in which the physical means of resistance to such deleterious physical conditions would serve to emancipate both parties – the oppressor and the oppressed – from their oppression (whether self- imposed or not).

Admittedly, the preceding discussion of the ethico-rational legitimacy of physical resistance remained somewhat abstract. I will have more to say about the ethico-rational

170 Of course, it will be more ethico-rationally justified, the more it actually succeeds in creating (or can be known in advance to create) such an environment. Justification from an ethico-rational standpoint is not just a question of aims/intentions. See footnotes 23 and 24. 171 This is perhaps easiest to imagine in a religious context, in which the leader of a particular cult might not only subject others to a harmfully rigorous ascetic regime, but have subjected him/herself to this excessively harsh bodily discipline as well. 222 legitimacy of physical resistance when I take up the specific issue of the validity of political resistance as of section 4 of this chapter. I am afraid, however, that a considerable degree of abstraction will remain unavoidable. There are many reasons for this. As we saw in chapter 2, it is simply the case for Spinoza that, in being “universal”, rational ethical principles – the basic propositions of the “true knowledge of good and evil” – must always remain “abstract” (E

IVP62S). Our ignorance of the total “order and connection” of causes in Nature makes it next-to- impossible to identify the best course of action in any given circumstance with anything like the certainty with which we can rationally determine the first principles of ethics.172 Finally, the abstract nature of the preceding account is symptomatic of the fact that it was largely an extrapolation grounded in the basic principles of Spinoza’s ethics (as well as his metaphysics and epistemology).

The question concerning the ethico-rationally legitimate conditions and means of resistance can, as I have said, also be answered in terms of the attribute of thought. I will focus on the ethico-rationally justified intellectual form of resistance in the bulk of what follows for three reasons: (1) it is much easier to obtain a fairly detailed account of the mechanisms of this form of resistance on the basis of Spinoza’s works; (2) it is much easier to understand how this form of resistance meets the most difficult ‘consequentialist’ criterion of ethico-rational justification (viz., that it empower even those against whom it is directed, such that they “yield joyously” as a result of an increase in their own power); and, finally, (3) it will prove much easier to reconcile the fact that Spinoza’s ethics underwrites this specific form of resistance with what

172 This entails that while the preceding has served to demonstrate the ethico-rational justifiability of physical acts of resistance under certain conditions in principle – i.e., at a very high level of generality or abstraction – the ethico- rational justification of concrete instances of such acts, in particular social, historical, and political contexts, will, at least in most cases, have to be carried out post factum. 223 we have already seen Spinoza argue about the ethico-rational necessity of unconditional obedience to the Sovereign.173

With respect to the attribute of thought, or to that mode of the attribute of thought that constitutes the human mind, the ethico-rationally sanctioned act of resistance is the rational critique of prejudices.174 What Spinoza’s rational person “combats (pugnat)” and “takes a stand against” or “puts an end to (resistit)” are, first and foremost, the “illusions (figmenta)” or

173 Before I proceed to examine the conditions and means of ethico-rationally justified resistance in terms of the “attribute of thought”, and, accordingly, before I even begin to explicate what I mean by the “intellectual resistance” alluded in the paragraph to which this footnote is appended, I must make a few things clear. By speaking of one form of resistance pertaining to the body, and of another, ‘intellectual’ form of resistance pertaining to the mind, I in no way mean to suggest that each of these forms of resistance does not have its exact counterpart or correlate within each of the other attributes (which, as far as we humans are concerned, means: in the attributes of thought and extension, respectively). Spinoza’s belief in the identity or ‘parallelism’ of modes within all of God’s attributes means that each mode of thought has a mode that exactly corresponds to it in the attribute of extension, and vice versa – or, perhaps more accurately, that each mode within the attribute of thought just is the same thing as the same mode within the attribute of extension, only expressed according to a different, fundamental ‘way’ or ‘language’ of being, or seen from a different ontological perspective. What this entails is that any form of resistance on the part of a mode within the attribute of thought must have an exact correlate within, or also find expression in the ‘language’ of, the attribute of extension. Thus, my distinguishing between conditions and means of ethico-rationally justified resistance within the attribute of extension, and the conditions and means of resistance within the attribute of thought, is meant merely for heuristic and descriptive purposes. The ‘intellectual resistance’ I will outline in what follows must, according to Spinoza’s basic metaphysics, have an exact correlate in the realm of bodies, but Spinoza does not tell us what that correlate is, what shape it takes (i.e.: is its correlate a certain arrangement or movement of parts in the physical brain, or rather certain bodily movements, postures, actions, etc.?). Hence, to describe this form of resistance, it is best to do so in terms of the attribute of thought. However, as will become increasingly clear in what follows, the ‘intellectual’ form of ethico-rationally justified resistance that can be derived from, or discerned in, Spinoza’s writings is nevertheless associated with certain conditions in the realm of bodies.I will draw attention to these as we proceed, as they must not be lost sight of. 174 I am presenting the identifiable bodily and mental forms of resistance as equivalent – each being directed towards the same ultimate goal of rational understanding, though within separate attributes. The fact that both the resistance of the body and the resistance of the mind are ultimately justified in terms of their contribution to an increase in the power of understanding of both the agent of resistance and as many of his/her fellow humans as possible would seem to indicate that they are in fact not perfectly equivalent, not of equal standing. It is true that Spinoza’s description of the highest human good exalts our mental powers, seemingly granting the attribute of thought at least ethical primacy over the attribute of extension, and thus granting the body value only as a means to the maximization of our rational powers. However, such a hierarchical order among attributes, even if only from an ethical standpoint, is excluded by Spinoza’s ontology. Hence, there must be a form of virtue, power, or activity of the body that corresponds to, but is not caused by, the mind’s virtue (i.e., rational understanding). This entails that, from a narrowly ethical standpoint, these two forms of resistance may in fact be on par (though I am not thereby suggesting that they are ontologically parallel or identical, such that the physical resistance I have thus far described would be the exact same thing as the mental resistance I am about to describe, only within different attributes – though Spinoza’s ontology does require that each of these two forms of resistance have a correlate of some sort in every divine attribute; cf. previous footnote). This being said, I will argue in section 5 of this chapter that the rational critique of prejudices is the ethico-rationally justified form of political resistance par excellence. For, as mentioned earlier, it is the form of resistance that is most compatible with the many arguments Spinoza deploys, or that can be culled from Spinoza’s writings, for the ethico-rational necessity of strict obedience to political authority. 224

“prejudices (praejudicia)” that stand in the way of a proper understanding of God/Nature. One might say that the rational person does not combat or resist people, so much as the prejudices or

“inadequate ideas” to which they subscribe, and which they often, for a variety of reasons of which they are not always aware, look to propagate and impose upon others by an assortment of means, running the gamut from gentle persuasion to violent persecution.175

In a letter to Henry Oldenburg, Spinoza enumerates the principal factors that have moved him to write the TTP. The first of these is:

The prejudices of theologians (praejudicia theologorum). For I know that these are the main obstacles which prevent men from giving their minds to philosophy. So I apply myself to exposing such prejudices and removing them from the minds of sensible people (ea igitur patefacere atque amoliri a mentibus prudentiorum satago) (Ep 30; cf. E IP11S; TTP Pref. §8; VII.2; Italics mine).176

Hence, as I would like to suggest here, and as I will show more fully in chapter 6, Spinoza himself, in his stated endeavour to liberate as many as can be helped from the prejudices that hamper their rational powers, must be regarded as a prime example of the vir-fortis-cum-militant-

175 One major reason why some people, knowingly or not, have a stake in the proliferation of certain illusions is suggested by Spinoza in his Preface to the TTP: “the supreme mystery (arcanum: secret) of despotism, its prop and stay, is to keep men in a state of deception (deceptos habere), and with the specious title of religion to cloak the fear by which they must be held in check, so that they will fight for their servitude as if for their salvation (…)”. I cannot here analyze this passage in the detail that it warrants, nor show how, in the TTP and elsewhere, Spinoza demonstrates that such ‘voluntary’ slavery is upheld and made possible by a set of inadequate ideas (prejudices) that are ultimately grounded in one central misconception: viz., the belief in a divinely ordained, teleological ordering of Nature (I reserve these tasks for chapter 6 of this dissertation). Assuming this to be the case for the time being, my point is simply that if, as the preceding passage suggests, the causes of ‘willing subjugation’ must remain concealed to be effective, then any attempt to bring them into the light of day is a subversive act with respect to the political regimes or forces that depend upon them. This is especially the case if, as Spinoza maintains, the body and the mind are in fact numerically/ontologically identical, and “language is not external to the corporeal world” (Montag 59), such that the intellectual project of philosophical demystification has a tangible counterpart in the realm of bodies. The bulk of the content of this footnote anticipates and hastily summarizes the results of chapter 6 of this dissertation. In other words, the purpose of chapter 6 will be to demonstrate what this footnote merely asserts. But nota bene: this footnote has discreetly reintroduced the possibility that political resistance – i.e., the attempt to challenge the commands of the Sovereign, or to undermine a particular regime – may be in accordance with the dictates of reason, under certain circumstances. Section 4 of this chapter will confirm that such a justification is more than just a possibility. 176 In a note to S. Shirley’s translation of this letter, S. Barbone, L. Rice, and J. Adler conjecture that it was drafted in the autumn of 1665. See p. 185 of Spinoza: The Letters (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1995). 225 joyeux.177 For he knows that it is the rational duty (pietas) of a “wise man” to “educate

(educare)” as many as he can to question received wisdom (opinions endorsed and championed by figures of institutional or personal authority), and to live by the dictates of “their own reason”

(E IV App. IX; cf. TTP VII.22; Préposiet 1985: 373). Moreover, he knows that while “minds

(…) are conquered not by arms, but by love and nobility” (E App. XI), generositas itself involves parrhesia or ‘fearless speech’:178 speaking truth to those to whom it may not be palatable or convenient,179 but who – once conquered – yield joyously, since, to Spinoza, understanding is our highest good, and whatever certainly contributes to our understanding (e.g., the removal of prejudices) is good. Hence, Spinoza is confident that “he who strives from reason to guide others” to live according to reason, and thus to combat the prejudices to which they are prey, are not “hateful”: they act “kindly, generously, and with the greatest steadfastness of mind

(humaniter, & benigne agit, & sibi mente maxime constat)” (E IVP37S1).

4.4. Fighting in the Name of Libertas Philosophandi: Political Resistance in the TTP

I have shown in sections 2 and 3 of this chapter that it is possible to extract from the

Ethics arguments for the ethico-rational validity of two general types of resistance: viz., the

177 More specifically, I will, in chapter 6, demonstrate how, by Spinoza’s own reckoning, the critique of the teleological world-view and its various ideological offshoots, which he undertakes most clearly in the Appendix to part I of the Ethics and the Preface to part IV, must be regarded as an act of political resistance. As a kind of addendum to this primary claim, I will suggest that Spinoza may very well have understood his own philosophical project to constitute such an (indirect) act of (political) resistance. I will put forward this claim as a possible extrapolation from certain elements of Spinoza’s biography, understood in light of the ethico-rational doctrine of resistance that I am in the process of reconstructing in this chapter on the basis of the Ethics and a few key passages in the TTP. 178 ‘Parrhesia’ is not Spinoza’s term, though speaking truth fearlessly is, as I have tried to argue, one of the virtues of Spinoza’s wise person, as well as (as I will make clearer in chapter 6) one of the very admirable qualities of Spinoza’s own philosophical project. I found the term in the later works of M. Foucault, whose reflections on the Greek notion of parrhesia have no doubt helped shape the reading of Spinoza put forward in this chapter. See his posthumously published collection of English lectures: Fearless Speech (New York: Semiotext(e), 2001). 179 This is suggested by E IVP57Dem, in which Spinoza says of the proud that they: “will love the presence of parasites or flatterers (…) and will flee the presence of the noble, who think of them as is appropriate (& generosorum, qui de ipsis, ut par est, sentiunt fugient)”. 226 rational critique of prejudices, and the physical resistance to the socio-political and environmental conditions known to be harmful to the body.180 But there is little if any direct evidence in the

Ethics to contradict the claim made in chapter 3 of this dissertation that Spinoza regarded resistance of a directly political nature – i.e., either passive or active defiance of the Sovereign’s authority – as ethico-rationally illegitimate. For such evidence, we must turn to Spinoza’s TTP.

Given how emphatic I have shown Spinoza to be in the bulk of the TTP about the ethico- rational necessity of strict obedience (cf. chapter 3 of this dissertation, especially section 2), it will seem astonishing that its pages may contain even the slightest hint at the possibility of an ethico-rational justification for political resistance. In the majority of passages in which Spinoza addresses the question of the legitimacy of political resistance from an ethico-rational perspective, he argues along the following lines:

A person is (…) free to the extent that he is guided by reason. However (contrary to Hobbes) reason recommends peace without reservation (ratio pacem omnino suadet), and peace cannot be had unless the general laws (communia jura) of the state are maintained inviolate (inviolata serventur). Hence, the more a person is led by reason, i.e., the freer he is (quo magis liber), the more resolutely he will uphold the laws and obey the commands of the Sovereign authority whose subject he is (eo magis constanter civitatis jura servabit, et summae potestatis mandata, cujus subditus est, exequetur)(TTP Ann. 33; Emphasis mine).181

Spinoza is adamant that any act of resistance, any instance in which the Sovereign’s absolute

right is contested or usurped, even if it should prove to the commonwealth’s benefit (e.g., lead to

180 It must be recalled that the distinction between ‘intellectual’ and ‘physical’ forms of ethico-rationally justified resistance is artificial (cf. footnotes 28 and 29 of this chapter). It has been introduced for heuristic purposes. What we are really dealing with are two different forms of resistance, each of which must take place fully, or must find complete expression, within each of the divine attributes (the two attributes we humans are familiar with being thought and extension). But they may be designated and distinguished for heuristic purposes as ‘intellectual’ and ‘physical’, according to whether they can most easily be described within the attribute of thought, or within the attribute of extension. Thus, for example, the critique of prejudices can most easily be described as taking place within the attribute of thought, even though: (1) it must, according to Spinoza’s parallelism, find complete expression, or have an exact correlate, within the attribute of extension; and (2) it has, or is associated with, certain physical conditions, such as the freedom to ‘speak one’s mind’, or to enter into unconstrained conversations with others (though these conditions cannot influence the order of causes within the attribute of thought – i.e., they must themselves have an exact counterpart within the attribute of thought!). 181 Note that Spinoza is claiming to outdo Hobbes in his insistence on the absoluteness of the ethico-rational imperative of obedience to the Sovereign. 227

its winning a war) is rightfully condemned. Spinoza agrees that piety, i.e., the will to do good to

others from the guidance of reason, is a virtue, and that one should “defend another person’s

right as if it were [one’s] own” (TTP XVI.5). But lest anyone appeal to such principles to justify

resistance to the sovereign,182 he is eager to show that piety towards one’s country (erga patriam)

is the highest form of piety, and that it is the Sovereign who determines what is and is not in the

country’s interest,183 and which rights can safely be granted to its citizens – the Sovereign being

the legal bearer of all rights, and thus legally incapable of injuring a subject (TTP XIX.10-11).

And yet, the concluding chapter of the TTP gives weight to the claim that Spinoza did in fact consider political resistance to be ethico-rationally justified under certain circumstances.184

In other words, it seems to indicate that what I have said in section 3 of this chapter about the

ethico-rational legitimacy of resistance in general does in fact apply to the gravest and most

direct form of political resistance (again, under certain conditions): viz., resistance to the

Sovereign.

Admittedly, most of what Spinoza has to say about political resistance in chapter XX of

the TTP falls under his realist (i.e., morally neutral) study of the laws of political behaviour. In

this manner, Spinoza treats political resistance as the probable outcome of violent rule.185 More

precisely, Spinoza contends there are certain rights that it is simply impossible for the State to

exercise effectively, or for anyone to actually alienate: viz., the rights to free thought and free

speech. According to Spinoza, a State “can never succeed very far in attempting to force people

182 See footnote 19 of this chapter. 183 E.g., the Sovereign determines which forms of charity are in the interest of the State and, hence, licit, and which are detrimental to the State and, hence, to be outlawed. 184 These justifying political “circumstances”, which we are about to examine in some detail, are what I earlier referred to as the ‘contextual’ conditions of ethico-rationally justified resistance. They represent a third type of ethico-rational conditions for the justification of political resistance, though they are intimately connected to the other two: viz., to those I have called ‘intentionalist’ and ‘consequentialist’. 185 The advent of a particular act of resistance is, of course, only probable from our perspective, given the limits of our knowledge (for more on which see section 4 of the next chapter). It is, in the grand scheme of things, absolutely necessary and predetermined. 228

to speak as the sovereign power commands, since people’s opinions are so various and so

contradictory”, and because it is simply not in anyone’s power to choose to think one thing or the

other (TTP XX.4).186 The same can be said for the public expression of our thoughts, since “it is a universal failing in people that they communicate their thoughts to others, however much they should [sometimes] keep quiet” (Ibid.). Hence, by the end of the TTP, it becomes clear that what

one transfers in the social contract is the right to act according to one’s own decree, not the right

to reason and judge autonomously. Spinoza thus affirms that a citizen may openly criticize a

particular law, and offer rational arguments as to why it ought to be repealed. Indeed, this is

what the “best citizen (optimus civis)” should do (see below: pp. 230-234), and as long as he

continues to obey the laws he finds problematic, submitting his actions to the governance of the

Sovereign, he “deserves well of his country (bene sane de republica meretur)” (TTP XX.7).

A violent and consequently unstable regime is therefore one that attempts to repress its subjects’ natural right to “judge and think” as they see fit, as well as their corresponding

“freedom to speak and teach (libertas dicendi et docendi)”. Spinoza is prepared to admit certain exceptions to the latter, where the opinions expressed incite hatred or open revolt against the

Sovereign, or are incompatible with observance of the social contract: e.g., the opinion that promises should not be kept, or that all should live according to their own judgements, irrespective of the Sovereign’s commands (TTP XX. 7 & 9; cf. TP VI.40). But he maintains that all other encroachments upon these rights will, as a matter of simple, natural fact, prove too much for citizens to tolerate: for it is “far from possible to make everyone speak according to a script”,

186 Though see pages 241 and 242 of this chapter for the indirect ways in which, according to Spinoza himself (in earlier sections of the TTP: XVII.2), the Sovereign may nevertheless succeed in bringing about near total uniformity of thought in his subjects. It just isn’t possible for the Sovereign to obtain this uniformity through a simple command or blunt interdiction (i.e., by direct legal fiat and the violent enforcement of this decree). 229

and “the more one strives to deprive people of freedom of speech, the more obstinately do they

resist (quo magis… eo contumacius contra nituntur)” (TTP XX.11; cp. XVII.2).

Granting that this is the dominant mode in which Spinoza addresses the question of resistance in chapter XX of the TTP, there is nonetheless quite a bit in chapter XX to indicate that

Spinoza also regards resistance to such repressive regimes as ethico-rationally justified: something which all ought to do, though some, as a matter of simple, natural fact, do not. For example, the passage I have just quoted in the previous paragraph lends the impression that resistance is simply a predictable, natural reaction to oppressive rule that is common to all human beings. But Spinoza’s account is more complex than this. For he immediately goes on to say that it is only those “rendered freer” by “a good education, moral integrity, and virtue (bona educatio, morum integritas et virtus)”, who offer such resistance (Ibid.). By contrast, those “who have no moral character (impotentes animi: the weak-souled or those without strength of character)” will not resist such attempts upon their liberties. These people, who are guided by their passions rather than by reason, believe their greatest good or comfort (summa salus) lies in money, sensual pleasures, or reputation. Spinoza casts such people as spineless sycophants who will do anything to ingratiate themselves with the Sovereign, and are quite prepared to cast away their freedoms in exchange for “bags of money”, “full bellies”, or simply the Sovereign’s favour

(an honorific title, a nod of approval, etc.).187

187 Anyone familiar with the history of moral philosophy in or before Spinoza’s day will recognize wealth, honour, and sensual pleasure to be the three classical examples of ‘false goods’. Most often, such a designation was not meant to deny that these are goods at all, only that any one of these (properly subordinate/relative) goods can rightfully be regarded as the highest or supreme good. Another very important passage in Spinoza’s writings in which he deals explicitly with this trinity of false goods (when perversely treated as absolutes, to be desired for their own sakes) is in the loosely biographical proemium to his Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect. The latter begins with a traditional and thus heavily stylized conversion narrative, telling the story of Spinoza’s struggles to turn away from an excessive preoccupation with these three subordinate goods (i.e., his persistently substituting them for, or treating them as, the supreme good: viz., cognitio causarum/Dei). There, Spinoza explains that these ‘false goods’ are evil insofar as they tend to distract, divide, or alienate (three possible meanings of the verb used by Spinoza: distrahere) the mind – ‘pulling it away’ from its true good (the understanding of God/Nature), ‘separating’ 230

The “best citizens (cives optimi)” (cf. TTP XVII. 18), on the other hand, will “reject the

laws” that trespass against the political rights or freedoms that, to Spinoza, figure among the

necessary conditions for the realization of the “highest human good”, the adequate understanding

of God/Nature: viz., freedom of thought and expression (TTP VII.22). They are the best citizens because it is precisely insofar as such oppressive laws prevent those individuals upon whom they are imposed from realizing the summum bonum that they share in common – and that they can and should partake of in common, as their doing so constitutes an integral part of their very summum bonum – that such laws run counter to the purpose of the State. At the outset of chapter

V of the TP, Spinoza declares the latter to be “nothing other than peace and security of life”. But he is quick to specify that by peace and security, he does not – as Hobbes by contrast does (De

Cive I.12)188 – mean the mere “absence of war” (TP V.4), in which the State’s citizens have been

rendered docile, pliable to the will of the Sovereign, through fear and ignorance alone. Such a

“State”, says Spinoza, “whose peace depends on the sluggish spirit of its subjects who are led

like sheep to learn simply to be slaves can more properly be called a desert (solitudo) than a State

it from itself (its true function and potential; pace Sévérac 239, 311), and ‘alienating’ it by subjecting it to external causes (reversals of fortune, the fickleness of popular opinion, the fleetingness of sexual gratification or physical beauty). But when this passage is read together with the one I have been analyzing from Ch. XX of the TTP, in which Spinoza draws a connection between viciousness or weakness of character – i.e., the inordinate pursuit of any or all of these three lesser goods – and the refusal or inability to resist tyranny, it becomes possible to extract from it a distinctly political message (one that would not have been noticeable otherwise): citizens whose minds are distracted by the lure of riches, fame, or sensual pleasure, will not be vigilant in the defence of their rights to think and express themselves freely. Spinoza’s insistence that “attention must be paid to Moral Philosophy and Instruction concerning the Education of children” (TIE §15) must thus be taken, in part, as a prescription for an antidote to tyranny. Moreover, since, as we have seen, the rights of free thought and expression are integral to the realization of that “stronger and more enduring” human nature that Spinoza also introduces in the proemium to the TIE (and whose defining traits are wisdom and autonomy), vicious citizens will not be vigilant in the defence of their own true interests. Finally, citizens whose minds are estranged or divided from themselves will also be divided among themselves: for, as we have seen in section 2 of chapter 3, it is only to the extent that their minds are distracted by these three ‘false goods’ (i.e., to the extent that they are governed by passions) that they can be opposed to one another or enemies. For all these reasons, if one of the necessary means for the fulfilment of a ‘stronger’ human nature – i.e., the model of the rational and (hence) free person – is a society that empowers as many people as possible to pursue this end together (TIE §14), the condition for the possibility of such a society is that its citizens be imbued with (Spinoza’s) moral philosophy. 188 S. Barbone and L. Rice provide this reference in a note to this passage (which they describe as a “veiled critique of Hobbes”) in their edition of the TP. 231

(civitas)” (Ibid.). Indeed, there is “nothing more wretched for mankind”, nothing more

antithetical to a truly flourishing “human life”, which is “characterized not just by the circulation

of the blood and other features common to all animals, but especially by reason, the virtue and

life of the mind” (TP V.5), than such a condition of “slavery, barbarism, and desolation

(solitudo)” (TP VI.4). The purpose of the State is not to transform humans, from the “rational beings” they are (or at least ought to be) by nature, into “beasts or automata, but rather to allow their minds and bodies to fulfil, in complete security, their proper functions [as defined by their essence], and to enable them to enjoy the free use of reason (…tuto suis functionibus fungantur et

ipsi libera ratione utantur)” (TTP XX.6). In other words, “the true purpose of the State is in

fact” to enable its citizens to achieve “freedom”, understood in the fullest sense Spinoza’s ethics

grants the term, as a synonym for the true happiness, virtue, and strength of character that comes

with the enjoyment of amor intellectualis Dei.189

189 It is only in promoting, in providing the necessary conditions for the realization of, our highest good (freedom, or cognitio Dei; cf. chapter 2) that the State can also provide genuine peace and security. For the latter cannot be obtained by force of arms, through which only a temporary cessation of hostilities can be won. The true peace of a State depends upon the “virtue” of its citizens, which “comes from strength of character”; it consists in the “union or harmony of minds” that, as we saw in chapter 2, is the result of the realization of our highest good: viz., “the knowledge of the union that the mind has with the whole of Nature” (TIE §13). Hence, in Spinoza’s view, it is ultimately all the same to say that the highest end of the State is “peace and security”, or to say that it is “freedom” or the realization of our summum bonum (our carrying out the “functions” that define us: notably, in the free exercise of our reason). Of course, were this highest aim of the State ever fully realized, it would paradoxically mark the end of the State. Spinoza is explicit about the fact that if, per impossibile, all of the citizens of a particular State were to come to fully realize their highest good in the rational comprehension of Nature, that State would ipso facto be dissolved (as it would cease to serve any purpose, to have any function or instrumental necessity). The highest end of the State is thus, paradoxically, its own self-overcoming or abolition. This could be taken to militate against the claim that Spinoza regards the State as a finite mode, since, by Ethics IIIP6, no finite mode is self-negating. But I do not think this particular argument is tenable. After all, the same argument could be used to demonstrate that humans are not finite modes (whereas Spinoza clearly takes it to be the case that we are). For if, once again per impossibile, an individual human were to fully realize his/her inherent striving for absolute knowledge of God (and, hence, fully realize the highest human good of amor intellectualis Dei), s/he would thereby also cease to exist qua finite mode: s/he would very literally achieve a perfect unity with the whole of Nature. Thus, there is a sense in which it must be acknowledged that the conatus essendi of at least one form of finite mode, viz., human beings, is a striving for self- transcendence – or, perhaps more accurately, a striving to become, or unite with, the Absolute Self that encompasses, but also infinitely exceeds, one’s ‘self’ as finite mode, through intellectual contemplation. The striving for rational understanding that is our very essence insofar as we are human is a striving for self-transcendence. But this self- transcendence is dialectical: it is not a simple negation of self, but rather, to use a Hegelian term, its aufhebung or ‘sublation’, in which, qua finite, the self is overcome/negated, but qua finite expression of Nature’s infinite causal 232

It is because the ultimate purpose of the State is freedom or the realization of the “highest

human good” that, when the political freedoms required to achieve the latter are in peril, it is the

best citizens – and only the best citizens – who “dare to act against the magistrate”, and “regard it

as most honourable (honestissimum) and not at all shameful (nec turpe) to provoke seditions and

attempt any sort of deed for this cause (seditiones hac de causa movere et quodvis facinus

tentare: the cause in question is of course their libertas philosophandi)” (TTP XX.11).190 The

wicked are not troubled by laws imposing uniformity of belief, or restraining freedom of

power, preserved at a higher level (i.e., in its fully-realized unity with the absolute causal power of Nature as a whole). 190 Every translation of this passage I have been able to consult makes it seem as though – immediately after having spoken glowingly of the virtuous character of those “best citizens” who are moved to resist tyranny – Spinoza suddenly disapproves of such acts by rendering “quodvis facinus tentare” variously as: “to resort to any outrageous action” (Shirley); “[to] attempt any kind of misdeed” (Silverthorne & Israel); “[to] attempt any outrage whatever” (Yaffe); “[to] perpetrate any sort of crime” (Elwes); “de provoquer n’importe quel trouble” (Lagrée & Moreau). The only exception (if we can call it that) is the slightly more neutral translation proposed by M. Francès and R. Misrahi in the Pléiade edition of Spinoza’s complete works: “de mettre n’importe quelle violence [in the service of one’s convictions]”. It is very common for the Latin noun facinus to take on a pejorative sense. It does indeed often mean ‘misdeed’, ‘outrage’, ‘villainy’, and the like. But its neutral or even positive sense of ‘deed’, ‘action’, or ‘achievement’ is also quite common (it is the very first entry for the term in the Latin dictionaries with which I am familiar). What has to determine our translation and, hence, interpretation of this passage is thus its context – i.e., its place in the argument of chapter XX of the TTP. As I intimated at the beginning of this footnote, the discussion that precedes the passage in question would seem to require that we read it as speaking favourably of “acts (facinora)” of resistance, whenever the latter are a response to the tyrannical attempt to suppress freedom of thought and/or expression. Further support for this reading is to be found in what follows the passage in question. For on the very next page (in the Gebhardt edition; one section later in Silverthorne & Israel’s), Spinoza asks: “What can be more calamitous than that men should be regarded as enemies and put to death, not for any crime or misdeed (scelus neque facinus), but for being of independent mind?” (TTP XX.13). It is clear from the context that the people Spinoza is referring to are sent to the scaffold not merely because they held and/or expressed beliefs forbidden by the Sovereign, but because their tenacity in holding such a belief was itself an act of resistance towards the Sovereign (and quite likely accompanied by other deeds meant to combat/resist his rule and thus safeguard their freedoms). In other words, it was the sort of ‘deed’ or ‘act’ spoken of in the first passage (the proper translation of which we are trying to determine here). Hence, the second ‘facinus’ passage – i.e., the one I have just quoted from section 13 of Ch. XX – tells us that the facinus of the first passage should not be cast as a misdeed or outrageous act, for it is the expression of the strength of character of free persons (those of “independent mind”). Final confirmation of the need to interpret the passage in question as part of Spinoza’s affirmation of the ethico-rational validity of resistance to tyranny comes just after this passage from section 13. Having noted earlier (i.e., in the first ‘facinus passage’) that the truly meritorious citizens, those who are strong in character, do not consider it shameful to organize seditions in response to flagrant and massive violations of their basic freedoms, Spinoza now contends that it is in fact those who seek to impose uniformity of thought and expression who are the real rebels, and that it is the “best citizens” who are “hated by the seditious”(TTP XX.13; Italics mine). For reasons that I will go over more fully in the next chapter, Spinoza believes that the “seditions” (i.e., acts of resistance) carried out by those who, from strength of character, cannot endure tyranny, should not even be called seditious. And if this is the case, then neither should the “deeds” to which the vir fortis is ready to resort to be labelled misdeeds. Or if they are so labelled, it ought to be with the understanding that they are ‘misdeeds’ only from the standpoint of the tyrant qua tyrant, not from the standpoint of reason. 233

expression, for such laws merely encourage the vices to which they are either already prey, or at

least not averse: fraud, hypocrisy, cowardice, etc. Such laws only “provoke” or “afflict” persons

who are “free-minded (viros ingenuos)” and “honest (honestos)”, and only these persons, who

“love virtue (qui virtutes amant)”, will revolt against them. Punishing people merely “because they are of free character (quia liberalis ingenii sunt)” and cannot stomach the thought of becoming hypocrites or flatterers – i.e., because they feel franc-parler is an ethico-rational duty – merely casts “the deepest reproach” upon the Sovereign, and turns the scaffold into “a magnificent stage on which to exhibit to all the highest model of constancy and virtue (…ad summum tolerantiae et virtutis exemplum)” (TTP XX.13).

It is worth paying careful attention to the conclusion of Spinoza’s description of these

philosopher-martyrs, ready to die for the sake of the freedom to philosophize (libertas

philosophandi), for it provides the best indication that Spinoza isn’t just making a de facto point about the inevitability of resistance under certain circumstances: in this, one of the very last sections of the TTP, Spinoza is led to champion resistance to tyranny as an ethico-rational imperative. Spinoza tells us that: “those who know themselves to be honest (honestos: innocent), do not fear death as wrongdoers fear it and plead to escape punishment” (Ibid.; Italics mine).

This is because, says Spinoza: “their minds are not tormented by remorse for shameful actions”.

In fact, Spinoza maintains that the strong in character don’t even consider such treatment a punishment. On the contrary, they consider it “an honour to die in a good cause: they deem it glorious to die for freedom. And what an example to give!”. In Spinoza’s view, nothing else can be retained from such an exemplum of virtuous conduct “except that it ought to be imitated or at the very least extolled (nisi ad imitandum vel saltem ad adulandum)” (Ibid.).

The most important thing to note is that, in these climactic sections of the TTP, Spinoza

states explicitly that the persons strong in character who resist tyranny do not consider it 234

shameful or dishonourable to do so. They consider their resistance to tyranny “honest”, and

glory in it. As I have shown, Spinoza elsewhere defines as honest or honourable “that which

men who live according to the guidance of reason praise” (E IVP37S1). If this definition can be

taken to apply to Spinoza’s use of the term in the TTP, it is significant that, in the sections I have

just presented, Spinoza states clearly that the strong in character – i.e., the “free persons” guided

by reason – who resist praise such actions. Hence, it must be concluded that Spinoza believes

active resistance to tyranny is ethico-rationally justified, indeed a duty (in the Spinozist sense) for

rational human beings. Such acts of resistance are justified from the perspective of Spinoza’s

ethico-rational analysis of politics, even where, as in the scenario Spinoza describes, they meet

with no success, and are quashed by the repressive apparatus of the State.191 In other words,

even if, ex hypothesi, such a movement of resistance hasn’t the power to prevail over the

Sovereign – and, hence, according to Spinoza’s political immanentism, hasn’t the right to bring

about whatever changes it sought to bring about – its resistance is still justified ethico-rationally.

In Spinoza’s ethico-rational analysis of politics, the fact that one ought to resist does not imply

that one can do so successfully (cf. Miller 2005: 161).192

The reader may wonder how the tenacious and noble pursuit of what may very well be a

lost cause, especially where failure entails a public execution, can possibly be ethico-rationally

justified in Spinoza’s view (indeed, an imperative of instrumental reason). After all, isn’t the

very foundation of Spinozist ethics the conatus essendi or striving to persist in being (E

IVP18S)? Doesn’t Spinoza himself argue that “no one can desire to be blessed, to act well and to

191 I.e., the philosopher-rebels are executed, without having provoked the government to change its policies or practices. 192 See the following paragraphs for an account of how this lack of success (in political terms) nevertheless does not contravene the ‘consequentialist’ condition for the ethico-rational justification of resistance, as long as this condition is understood to include situations in which a failure to resist on the part of the rational/wise person would compromise his or her virtue (i.e., his or her potentia agendi). 235

live well, unless at the same time he desires to be, to act, and to live (i.e., to actually exist)” (E

IVP21), and that “no virtue [in Spinoza’s sense] can be conceived prior to this [virtue] (viz., the

striving to preserve oneself)” (E IVP22; Italics mine)? Simply put, shouldn’t the striving for bare existence trump any other dictate of reason, as the sine qua non of all virtue? A completely

satisfactory answer to these questions would require revisiting Spinoza’s exposition of his

conatus doctrine in much greater detail (cf. section 2 of chapter 1), as well as delving deeply into

Spinoza’s conception of the eternity of the mind – tasks that will have to wait until next chapter.

But I can at least gesture towards a possible answer in the present chapter.

It will be recalled that Spinoza’s “free man thinks of nothing less than death” (E IVP67).

Accordingly, Spinoza’s philosopher-rebels “do not fear death” (TTP XX.13). On the contrary,

they consider it “an honour” and “glorious” to give their lives in the struggle for freedom. It is

this impassivity in the face of death that loosens the Sovereign’s hold upon them, and enables

them to resist in the first place. For the obedience the Sovereign obtains from his citizens is

predicated primarily upon his ability to induce fear in them: (1) fear of the coercive/retributive

power at his disposal (his ‘sword’, which really amounts to the strength of all the individuals who

will fight for him); and (2) fear of the “state of nature” (i.e., the condition they would be left in,

in the absence of his stabilizing authority/power). In this respect, Spinoza’s “wise men” are

much like Christ’s disciples, whom Spinoza portrays as having defied Roman law and preached

Christianity precisely because Christ had assured them not to fear death (TTP XIX.13; cf.

XVI.22).193 Now I would like to suggest (and I offer this as no more than an educated guess, to

help make sense of what Spinoza does say in the last sections of the TTP) that the reason

Spinoza’s philosopher-martyrs don’t fear death is that the superlative virtue (honestissimum) they

193 For a helpful discussion of Spinoza’s views on the issue of Christ’s disciples seditious preaching, see: M.A. Rosenthal (1999). 236

exhibit in fearlessly standing up to tyranny is a manifestation of their having achieved as great a

level of understanding and perfection, and thus having come as close to realizing the ideal of the

rational person put forward by Spinoza in part IV of the Ethics, as is possible for an actually

existing human being. I do not think it is a coincidence that Spinoza describes the philosopher-

martyr as a supreme model or exemplar of virtue and strength of character. The person who

resists from true strength of character is the flesh-and-blood realization of the exemplar humanae

naturae alluded to in the Preface to Ethics IV, and of the “much stronger human nature (naturam humanam multo firmiorem)” Spinoza envisions in section 13 of the TIE.

If I am right about this, then it explains why such a person would no longer fear death, and would indeed consider the sacrifice of his/her life for the sake of freedom a noble and rational duty (something consonant with the dictates of reason). For, as Spinoza explains at the end of the Preface to Ethics IV, “no singular thing can be called more perfect for having

persevered in existing for a longer time”. Life may be a necessary condition for the possibility of

achieving perfection – i.e., of maximizing one’s capacity to act through understanding – but the

persistence of this perfection in time does not add anything to the degree of perfection one has

attained. To Spinoza, the part through which we act, the intellect, is eternal (E VP40C). To the

extent that one comes to know things sub specie aeternitatis, to that extent also will one’s mind

be eternal (E VP31S). If one’s knowledge of things sub specie aeternitatis reaches such a point,

that “clear and distinct” ideas come to constitute the “greater part” of one’s mind, then the greater

part of oneself will be eternal, and one will cease to be preoccupied by the fear of death (E

VP38).194 Yes, the flipside to this is that one’s “wisdom [becomes] a meditation on life” (E

194 The question of the nature of the relation between time and eternity is one of the thorniest in Spinoza’s philosophy – as in much of the ancient and medieval philosophical tradition in which Spinoza was steeped. In part V of the Ethics, Spinoza appears to introduce the possibility that one might become or even somehow become more eternal. This suggestion has baffled more than one reader. Some have simply dismissed it as unintelligible, or as the 237

IVP67). But what ultimately matters to the wise person isn’t the continuation or duration of this

state of maximal virtue in time. What matters is that this maximal state of virtue or perfection

not be compromised (cf. McShea 169; pace Zac 1972: 66).195

If the Sovereign wants to control the expression of opinion and impose belief in

something false, and acting from virtue implies shunning hypocrisy and fearlessly speaking truth

to whoever opposes it, then the strong in character must defy the repressive edicts of the

Sovereign, lest their virtue be compromised. What’s more, they must fight for a public space –

an uncensored press, deliberative assemblies, open and independent universities,196 etc. – in

sudden and regrettable reappearance in part V of the religious and metaphysical fantasies Spinoza had, until then, taken such pains to banish from his Ethics (cf. Bennett 372-375; Feuer 224). I will attempt to make sense of this very puzzling aspect of Spinoza’s philosophy in the following chapter. The reader is also urged to consult C. Jaquet’s magistral Sub specie aeternitatis: étude des concepts de temps, durée et éternité chez Spinoza (Paris: Kimé, 1997). 195 The time has now come for me to resolve a dilemma that had emerged in section 2.6 of chapter 3. In that section, I had reconstructed an argument for the ethico-rational necessity of unconditional obedience to the commands of the Sovereign on the basis of proposition 72 of Ethics IV, in which it is demonstrated that rational persons never break faith, but always honour contracts, even if they should perish as a result (whereas they could – ex hypothesi – ‘save their skin’ by acting dishonestly, or not keeping their word). It seemed at the time as though such an injunction conflicted with Spinoza’s conatus-doctrine, and, hence, represented something very close to an absolute moral imperative whose obligatory nature would not be grounded in, and would thus be independent of, one’s inclinations. I have just shown how Spinoza can claim that one ought to resist tyranny, even if the likely result is death by execution, without contradicting his claim that the first foundation of ethics is the conatus essendi (or the general ‘consequentialist’ condition of ethico-rationally justified resistance). It seems to me that for the very same reasons (mutatis mutandis), it is also possible for Spinoza to remain faithful to his doctrine of the conatus while maintaining that one ought to obey one’s Sovereign even in cases where this is likely to lead to one’s demise. As McShea explains: “The essence of the decision to choose death in certain contingencies is the decision not to sacrifice the degree of salvation – autonomy – one has attained merely to preserve, at a lower level, a physical existence” (66). But of course this still leaves us with the basic tension between the two panels of the diptych that is the centrepiece of this dissertation: viz., the fact that one can draw from Spinoza’s philosophical writings both arguments for the ethico-rational necessity of strict obedience to the Sovereign (as I showed in chapter 3), and an ethico-rational justification for political resistance (as I have been labouring to show in this chapter). I will offer some reflections on the manner and extent to which these two strands of Spinoza’s political thought may be reconciled in the next section of this chapter. 196 At the very end of chapter VIII of the TP, Spinoza remarks: “Academies founded at public expense are established not so much to encourage natural talents as to restrain them (…non tam ad ingenia colenda quam ad eadem coercenda instituuntur)” (§49; Emphasis mine). Spinoza was once offered an academic position in philosophy at the University of Heidelberg, an institution that was financially supported by the Elector Palatine (Ep 47). Spinoza turned down this offer, on the grounds that it could not be guaranteed that he would enjoy complete libertas philosophandi in his lecturing (Ep 48; for more on this offer and Spinoza’s response, see section 6 of chapter 6). When this anecdote is taken in conjunction with the passage I have just quoted from the TP, it becomes clear that, to Spinoza, academic institutions cannot be – or are at least highly unlikely to be – “independent” if they are publicly funded (though one presumes that he would say the same about privately funded schools, whenever the number of benefactors is too limited, and/or when there is too great a discrepancy in the value of its benefactors’ 238

which the critique of prejudices (prejudices that may often underlie, or be declared dogma by, the

Sovereign’s decrees) is permitted. To Spinoza, the untrammelled flow of information, the open

exchange and rational critique of ideas (whether novel or time-honoured), are all vital to the

advancement of the arts and sciences (TTP XX.10), as well as to the general progress of society in terms of stability, equity, and prosperity (TP VII.27-29; XI.14). Furthermore, as we have seen, the freedom to think (which, inevitably, means the freedom to question authority or opinions regarded as authoritative) and the freedom to give voice to one’s thoughts, are no less vital to the realization of the highest good for individual human beings: viz., the rational comprehension of the causes operative in Nature. The possibility of one’s attaining true and lasting (indeed: eternal) happiness in and through the knowledge of God depends upon the

“supreme right to think freely” – i.e., upon the effective power to exercise “one’s own free judgement” (TTP VII.22) – as well as upon the right that is, according to Spinoza, indissociable from the former: viz., the right to share one’s views with others and to openly debate their merits.

Hence, the fight for libertas philosophandi is for the ultimate benefit of both the vir fortis

(making it a manifestation of the virtue of tenacity) and society as a whole (making it a manifestation of the virtue of nobility). No civitas can fulfil its own essential function, which, as we have seen, is to enable its citizens not just to live, but to live well – i.e., to realize the “highest human good” – without offering legal and institutional protections for libertas philosophandi.197

contributions). On the contrary, Spinoza believes that “in a free republic (libera republica), arts and sciences will be best fostered (optime excolentur) if anyone who asks leave is allowed to teach publicly at his own expense and with his own reputation at risk” (Ibid). Hence, to Spinoza, a university can only be inclusive and autonomous as an institution if its mandate is simply to provide a neutral and secure venue for the meeting of would-be lecturers and curious audiences. The directors of Spinoza’s free universities are thus mere caretakers, playing no part in the selection of lecturers and students, or the determination of lecture content, course curricula, and grades. 197 Clearly, on the basis of the preceding, it is fair to say that Spinoza’s ethico-rational politics bears a number of key liberal features. However, there is a tendency among Spinoza’s commentators to misconstrue these liberal features by anachronistically interpreting them in light of modern-day versions of liberalism, which are allergic to any government initiatives to promote a given way of life as best (as morally superior). Thus, by way of example, G. Mara goes too far when he asserts: “Spinoza’s optimism about the role of reason in securing a happy human life 239

In section 3 of this chapter, provisionally bracketing the question of the validity of

resistance to the decrees of the Sovereign, I explained that the philosophical critique of

prejudices (or, more broadly: of error) is an ethico-rationally justified form of resistance.198

Now, as I also indicated above (see footnote 30), and as I will demonstrate in detail in chapter 6,

the philosophical critique of prejudices that is part and parcel of libertas philosophandi can

sometimes serve to undermine the disempowering regimes that depend upon them, and thus

constitutes an effective means of political resistance in its own right. If this is the case (and I

will prove it to be the case in chapter 6), then, based on the findings of the previous paragraph,

we may conclude that it is an ethico-rational imperative – which only the strong in character heed

(since only they have the virtue needed to brave the dangers associated with doing so) – to

physically combat or resist tyranny so as to create a safe ‘space’, free from government control,

for perpetual political resistance in the form of philosophical critique. In other words, the strong

in character fight to secure, by whatever means necessary, the physical correlate of, and the

enabling institutional framework or conditions for, resistance as philosophical critique – a form

coexists with a principled (not simply a practical) pessimism about the possible contribution of politics to the achievement of that life. (…) Spinoza’s political pessimism denies that politics, even at its best, can lead human beings away from (…) passion or bondage and toward reason or freedom” (101). According to Mara (contra Préposiet 1985: 373), while “Plato and Aristotle agree that human beings need [political] assistance if they are to become ethically or morally virtuous” (99-100), Spinoza “is firm that the unhindered individual conatus is the adequate cause of all possible blessedness” (100) – i.e., that political power can count for absolutely nothing (beside providing a requisite minimum of security and material well-being) in a given individual’s realization of the highest human good. Granted, Spinoza thinks it is impossible to (if I may paraphrase Rousseau) ‘force anyone to be free’ (cf. TTP VII.22). But, in Spinoza’s eyes, this doesn’t necessarily preclude – i.e., render imprudent, futile, or illegitimate – the effort, on the part of wise rulers, to “[encourage] the pursuit of certain personal goals and the avoidance of others” (96), as long as these efforts don’t curtail libertas philosophandi. In other words, Spinoza nowhere says that the government cannot have a voice in the public debate on such issues as the best way life, and that all it can do in fulfilling its own purpose – i.e., the realization of freedom or the good life – is to institutionally facilitate such a free and open debate. Spinoza’s political thought subordinates the Platonic/Aristotelian conception of political rule as soul-craft (the care of souls) to a more liberal conception of the role of a good government; but it does not altogether theoretically exclude it. There is room in Spinoza’s political theory for governments to do more than simply defend their citizens both from each other and from external threats, provided the means they use to enable their citizens to live virtuously (i.e., according to the guidance of reason) are compatible with the freedom to philosophize and the institutional mechanisms that enable its expression. 198 Assuming that individual instances of such philosophical critique also meet the ethico-rational conditions of justified resistance that pertain to the intentions and motives (affective dispositions) of their agents. 240 of continuous political resistance (as intellectual ‘vigilance’ or ‘prudent suspicion’ with respect to le bien-fondé of the Sovereign’s policies and statutes) which, as we have seen, the “best citizens” not only carry out under normal circumstances as part of the regular functioning of the well-ordered State, but also fight to maintain when their ability/right to do so is threatened.

Furthermore, we may conclude that the “best State”, the State that really lives up to its essential definition and vocation, includes, as part of its fundamental structure (‘constitution’) and normal functioning, provisions for the perpetual resistance to its laws and/or figures of authority in the form of libertas philosophandi. And if this is what is required of the “best State”, then the “best citizens” in any State are those prepared to struggle, by whatever means necessary, against whatever obstacles stand in the way of perpetual/normal resistance in the form of libertas philosophandi. The “best citizens” resist any attempt to turn peace into “slavery, barbarism, and desolation (solitudo)”.

If the preceding account of the ethico-rational legitimacy of active political resistance in defence of libertas philosophandi involved some amount of extrapolation, it was nevertheless shown to follow quite directly from some of the basic principles of Spinoza’s ethics, and to be supported by a few key passages in the TTP (especially those from chapter XX). However, if we follow the political implications of some of these basic ethical principles still further, beyond where Spinoza himself may, I think, plausibly be said to have followed them, certain even more radical claims may be made regarding the means of active political resistance, and the conditions under which such resistance (i.e., open revolt against the Sovereign) becomes ethico-rationally legitimate – claims Spinoza himself would likely have been extremely reluctant to endorse, even though they may be inferred from his ethical and political writings.

To draw out these further implications, we may begin by briefly examining the set of means by which the Sovereign may “ensure that [at least] a very large part of the people believes, 241 loves, hates, etc. what the Sovereign wants them to” (TTP XVII.2). Spinoza makes plain that such uniformity of thought cannot successfully be obtained by means of simple legal interdictions, even where compliance with the latter is encouraged by an assortment of incentives and threats. But he nevertheless maintains that such uniformity of thought can be “the effect of the sovereign’s power and governance”, that this is “abundantly attested by experience”, and that it is quite possible to “conceive of men whose beliefs, love, hate, contempt, and every affect is under the sole control of the governing power” (TTP XVII.2). How is this possible?

In section 3 of this chapter, I explained how, according to Spinoza, the human mind is nothing other than the idea of the body to which it corresponds; the two are the exact same thing, determined to act according to the same “order and connection of causes”, only expressed in two different ways, within two different attributes. This entails that the Sovereign may succeed in imposing a very high degree of uniformity of thought among his subjects – i.e., may succeed in making a high percentage of them think only what it is in his perceived interest to have them think – by strictly regulating the range of their possible bodily movements in ways that appropriately correspond to the thoughts the Sovereign wishes to induce in them. If the mind is the idea of the body, then each of the ideas the mind comprises has its bodily correlate, its parallel manifestation as a mode in the attribute of extension. To make his subjects hold the views he wants them to hold and be prone to the affects he believes advantageous to him, the

Sovereign must see to it that his subjects repeatedly perform the bodily movements, assume the postures, or make the gestures, that constitute the bodily correlates or ‘parallel expressions’ of these views and affects. For instance, if the Sovereign wants his subjects to revere him as a god, or God’s earthly representative, and thus obey his every command without reservation, then he must ensure that his subjects take on the bodily postures (kneeling, bowing, invoking, etc.), and perform the bodily rituals (kissing his feet or ring, pledging allegiance to him, etc.), that 242

correspond to such a belief, whenever they are in his presence, or (if applicable) whenever his

name is uttered and/or his image is displayed.

I have argued that, according to Spinoza, active political resistance vis-à-vis the

Sovereign is justified, whenever the latter attempts to abolish libertas philosophandi, and thus

impose uniformity of thought and expression. Now, as I have just explained, one of the truly

effective means by which such uniformity may be achieved is through the imposition of a strict

bodily discipline, one that fits the views and affects the Sovereign wishes to see universalized.

The upshot is that, for the same reasons it is ethico-rationally justified to fight, by whatever

means necessary, for the establishment and preservation of the legal protections and physical

institutional frameworks required to carry out the perpetual intellectual resistance199 that is integral to libertas philosophandi, it is likewise ethico-rationally justified to combat (i.e., to seek to disrupt, dismantle, put an end to, etc.) oppressive forms of bodily discipline.

And a Spinozan in politics, or, more precisely, someone who subscribes to the basic principles of Spinoza’s ethico-rational analysis of politics, need not stop here. As we have seen, the ultimate grounds for the ethico-rational justification of active political resistance in defence of libertas philosophandi is that the latter is vital to the realization of the highest human good: viz., the rational knowledge of Nature’s causal order. Moreover, we have seen how, since it is the ultimate purpose of the State to encourage the realization of this highest good, those who fulfil their ethico-rational “duty” and engage in such acts of resistance should be considered the

“best citizens”. Now, as I demonstrated in section 3 of this chapter, from the fact that the human mind is the idea of the human body, and that the mind is more able to form adequate ideas, the more the body of which it is the idea is able to both affect many bodies and be affected by many bodies in a variety of ways, it follows that there are certain physical conditions that can be

199 See footnotes 28, 29, and 35 of this chapter. 243

determined to be deleterious or evil – i.e., to prevent the increase of our power of understanding,

and thus the greater realization of our highest good. As we saw, these negative physical

conditions may run the gamut from starvation, to insufficient exposure to a broad range of

sensory stimulus, to compulsion to perform the same severely limited number of rudimentary

bodily tasks. The upshot, of course, is that, from an ethico-rational standpoint, active resistance

to any attempt on the part of the Sovereign to impose such conditions upon his subjects will be

justified,200 and this, for the same reasons it is justified to seek to resist any and all efforts to

suppress the freedoms of thought and expression.

4.5. Conclusion

This chapter marks the continuation of my investigation into the status of political

resistance in the ethico-rational politics of Spinoza’s “wise person”. In the last chapter, it was

shown that there is no shortage of argumentative strategies to be found in Spinoza’s

philosophical writings in support of the claim that unconditional obedience to the decrees of the

Sovereign is ethico-rationally necessary. By contrast, in this chapter, I showed how it is no less

possible to find in Spinoza’s writings an argument for the conditional ethico-rational validity of

political resistance. One such condition, it turns out, is that no act of resistance may be

considered ethico-rationally justified if it is directly motivated by any species of hate (i.e., by sad

affects). As I explained, this does not mean that Spinoza’s “wise person” does not experience

sad affects. If wise persons resist or fight, it is because there is evil to be resisted or fought – i.e.,

there is something that they know with certainty affects them negatively. What this does mean is

that the impetus behind an act of resistance that agrees with the dictates of reason must be the

200 Provided, of course, that any such attempt also meets the ‘intentionalist’ conditions for ethico-rationally justified resistance. 244

empowering (and, hence, joyful) contemplation of the good that the act of resistance is intended

to achieve. Hence, while “wise persons” strive to resist joyfully, what they delight in is never the

potential, destructive aspect(s) of their resistance. On the contrary, an act of political resistance

may only be considered to be in accordance with the dictates of reason if every effort is made to

ensure that as many people as possible be empowered by it – even those individuals against

whom the resistance is directed. This is why Spinoza refers to the individuals targeted and

ultimately conquered by an ethico-rationally valid act of resistance as “yielding joyously”.

On the basis of my exposition of the conditions that any act of resistance must meet if it is

to be in absolute agreement with the dictates of reason, and anticipating the results of chapter 6, I

argued that, to Spinoza, the rational critique of prejudices is the ethico-rationally justified form of

(political) resistance that can be conceived under the attribute of thought.201 The Spinozist

summum bonum is the rational understanding of the causal order of Nature (amor intellectualis

Dei). As we have seen, Spinoza believes that the enjoyment of this good with others whenever

possible is in fact an integral part of this highest good. Furthermore, he believes that the free

exchange of ideas between as many individuals as possible is a necessary condition for the

possibility not only of a stable and peaceful society, but also (in part because it allows for peace)

for the development of reason, and, hence, for the attainment of our highest good. According to

Spinoza, it is therefore in our interest to promote, through the rational critique of prejudices or

‘emendation of the intellect’, an increase in the understanding of as many of our fellow human

beings as possible. On this basis, it became possible to discern in Spinoza’s works an imperative

201 Indeed, I even went so far as to suggest – but to do no more than suggest – that Spinoza regarded his own project of philosophical demystification as such an (indirect) act of (political) resistance. I must postpone the more detailed examination of this suggestion until chapter 6. The reader is urged to return to footnotes 28, 29, and 35 of this chapter for an explanation of precisely what I mean when I refer to “rational critique” as the ethico-rationally justified form of (political) resistance “under the attribute of thought”. As it stands, such a statement may seem indefensible, as it appears to contradict Spinoza’s doctrine of the identity or ‘parallelism’ of modes within each of the divine attributes. 245 or duty (in the Spinozist sense, of course) for resistance in the form of such a rational critique.

As we saw in chapter 2, and as the next chapters will make even clearer, we are subject to illusions or errors in so far as we think solely by means of the imagination. To think exclusively through the imagination is to think only in terms of the way our body is affected by the objects in its environment. As finite embodied beings, this is an inclination against which we must constantly struggle, and to which we always, to varying degrees, give in. Hence, the task of philosophical demystification, the task of correcting the intellect, the task of opening the mind to a higher standard of cognition besides the ‘spontaneous’ or ‘primitive’ standard of the imagination, is an unending one.

Bearing in mind the sheer number and diversity of the arguments that, as I showed in the last chapter, can be gleaned from Spinoza’s writings for the ethico-rational necessity of unconditional obedience, and given that this conservative voice undoubtedly predominates in

Spinoza’s ethico-rational analysis of politics, it seems to me that, if we are to do justice to both the spirit and the letter of Spinoza’s political writings, it is the ethico-rational imperative for the perpetual critique of prejudices that must be made to accommodate itself to the ethico-rational imperative of strict obedience. By this I mean the following. As I showed in this chapter, all citizens are under an ethico-rational imperative to independently question (e.g.,) the rationality of their Sovereign’s decrees. In the event that they should thereby come to disagree with the

Sovereign’s edicts, it is their ethico-rational duty to articulate their critical position as clearly and compellingly as possible, to make their case known to as many of their fellow citizens as possible, and thus to try to persuade the Sovereign to repeal the edicts to which they object. But, as we saw last chapter, all citizens also have an ethico-rational duty to act in accordance with the

Sovereign’s commands, even if these commands should strike them as absurd, or run counter to their personal convictions. Hence, it seems that what wise persons will never countenance is 246

action in a manner prohibited by the Sovereign, even if the fulfilment of their ethico-rational duty

to question the decrees of the Sovereign has led them to believe that the Sovereign’s decrees are

misguided or irrational (TTP XX.7).

In sum, on the basis of much of what we have seen in this chapter and the last, it appears as though Spinoza’s Sage would see the wisdom in, and thus unreservedly endorse, the words

Kant attributed to Frederick II of Prussia in his opuscule Was ist Aufklärung?:“Argue as much as

you like and about whatever you like, but obey!” (1999: 55). After all, one of the stated

objectives of the TTP is to convince people of the need to preserve a distinction between an

almost unrestricted freedom of thought and expression on the one hand, and, on the other hand,

the strict necessity to obey the Sovereign’s commands in all of one’s actions. Such a distinction

allows us to reconcile much of what Spinoza has to say about resistance when he approaches the

issue from an ethico-rational standpoint: i.e., Spinoza can be taken to be saying that all citizens

are simultaneously under an ethico-rational imperative to resist the decrees of the Sovereign

through rational critique,202 and under an ethico-rational imperative to obey the Sovereign’s

decrees in their actions.203 Indeed, if our objective is to present as harmonious and as consistent

a picture of Spinoza’s thinking on the issue of the normative boundaries and ethico-rational

foundations of political obligation, then we would have to go one step further and assert that,

from this standpoint, philosophical critique is the ethico-rational form of political resistance par

excellence. For it fits neatly into the distinction upheld throughout much (though, as we have

seen, not all) of the TTP, between obedience in one’s actions, and dissent/resistance only in the

202 What, in the short essay referred to above, Kant calls the “public use of one’s reason” (1999: 55). 203 What, in the same essay, Kant calls the “private use of reason”: i.e., its use in executing the orders one is obliged to carry out, given one’s place or function in the hierarchy of State-power (Ibid.). 247

form of, or through, one’s rational critique (which includes the communication of one’s critical

ideas to others and the entering into public debate over their truth/cogency).204

If this distinction were all Spinoza had to say on the issue of the ethico-rational validity of

resistance, then there might be little or no contradiction to speak of.205 But, while S.B. Smith is

right to say that Spinoza could very well “have used as an epigraph for his [Theologico-Political]

Treatise Kant’s motto for the Enlightenment: Sapere aude, ‘Dare to know’” (1997: 29),206 it

would be a serious mistake to suppose that Spinoza goes no further than Kant on the question of

204 Though the text of Spinoza’s TTP sometimes lends it this impression, the distinction captured in the sentence to which this footnote is appended cannot amount to a simple and clear-cut separation between obedience in one’s bodily actions and resistance in and through one’s thoughts. This is for two reasons. First, as I have already explained on several occasions (cf. footnotes 28, 29, and 35), Spinoza’s basic metaphysical doctrine of the parallelism of modes within each of the divine attributes entails that rational critique must have an exact correlate, or find complete expression, within the attribute of extension – though exactly what the corporeal counterpart of rational critique (as such) might be is left unspecified by Spinoza (cf. also the following footnote). Second, even supposing the act of philosophical critique were strictly and exclusively ‘intellectual’, we have seen how it is, according to Spinoza himself, necessarily associated with certain physical practices (writing, speaking, reading, listening, etc.), certain embodied, institutional frameworks (classrooms, parliaments, town halls, courtrooms, etc.), and certain corporeal objects (books, pens, paper, etc.). Hence, what this distinction must really mean is that the “actions” that every subject must ensure conform to the decrees of the Sovereign (even if these same subjects express critical reservations regarding the wisdom of these very decrees in exercising their libertas philosophandi) include all those deeds that constitute either the act of philosophical critique itself or the necessary conditions and media for its deployment. These deeds are perhaps most easily thought of as bodily (which is why Spinoza sometimes gives the impression that they are exclusively such), but they must, according to Spinoza’s ontology, have an exact correlate or ‘parallel expression’ within the attribute of thought. 205 Or at least there might be little or no contradiction to speak of at the level of Spinoza’s ethico-rational analysis of politics (and, more specifically, of the rightful limits of political obligation) per se. In his book, Bodies, Masses, Power: Spinoza and His Contemporaries (New York: Verso, 1999), W. Montag has argued (cf. Balibar 1985: 390- 393) that the ‘two-spheres’ doctrine implicit in the notion that one may argue as much as one likes, as long as one continues to obey – i.e., the doctrine that the sphere of thought is totally separate from, and is not the mirror-image or alternate expression of, the sphere of bodily behaviour – contradicts Spinoza’s ontology (i.e., his belief in the identity of modes within different attributes). To prove that Spinoza was guilty of such a contradiction in the TTP, Montag would have to show that Spinoza’s so-called ‘parallelism’ entails that the critique of the Sovereign’s edicts will automatically play out, in the ‘sphere’ of bodies, as disobedience or rebellion. But this claim would be an overstatement and oversimplification, and I am not sure that Montag himself actually makes it. After all, as Montag appears to acknowledge, the direct parallel or correlate in the realm of bodies of the idea that decree x of the Sovereign is unjust or misguided is not necessarily disobedience or revolt (23; 59). Disobedience or revolt might very well be the direct physical correlate of the very different idea (or, more precisely, chain of ideas): that an edict ought to be resisted/disobeyed if it is unjust/misguided (or that the injustice of an edict justifies open revolt against the Sovereign who promulgated it); that the time is ripe for such revolt; that such revolt would be prudent; etc. The most that can be said is that critical insight into the flawed character of the Sovereign’s policies “may” (or will “tend” to) find a parallel expression in the physical resistance to the implementation of those policies. 206 In fact, I would add that Kant’s Sapere aude wouldn’t have been out of place as an epigraph to Spinoza’s corpus, or even as his personal motto (indeed the interpretation of Spinoza’s “Caute” which I will advance in chapter 6 will bring it very close to Kant’s motto for the Enlightenment (1999: 54): I will argue that it ought to be regarded as a summons to courageously bring all conventional beliefs before what, in the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant calls the “court of reason” (A501/B529; cf. Axii; Bxiii)). 248

the rightful limits of the imperative to seek knowledge. For as I have argued in this chapter,

there is strong textual support for the claim that Spinoza believed that all human beings are under

an ethico-rational imperative – i.e., have a duty – to fight to put in place and defend the

institutions through which the rights of free thought and expression are exercised. Through the

virtues of tenacity and nobility, the vir fortis is prompted to resist and to combat, by whatever

means and to whatever degree he deems prudent/necessary, any attempt on the part of the

Sovereign or other factions within the State to impose doctrinal uniformity and silence dissenting

or heterodox voices. In other words, where Spinoza goes much further than Kant is that, to

Spinoza,207 civil disobedience or active resistance to the Sovereign – which may even result in

the Sovereign’s being violently deposed – is ethico-rationally justified if208 it serves to secure the legal protections and institutional channels or venues (people’s assemblies; universities; uncensored news media and communications networks; etc.) in and by means of which the task of unending resistance in the form of rational critique may be carried out safely.

There are thus, in a sense, two major forms or modes of ethico-rationally justified resistance for Spinoza. The first should, according to Spinoza, play a central role in the normal functioning of any libera republica – i.e., of the “best state”. It is this first form of perpetual/normal resistance by way of philosophical critique that Spinoza sought to secure in writing the TTP. The second should be exceptional and temporary: it consists in the struggles necessary to enable the operation of the first form of resistance. Both ought, if they are to be

207 Or rather, to a certain Spinoza: the Spinoza who, as I will explain in chapter 6, is said to have drawn himself in the guise of Masaniello, the radical Neapolitan freedom fighter. 208 If we wish to minimize – without being able to altogether eliminate – the conflict between Spinoza’s ethico- rational doctrine of unconditional obedience and his ethico-rational justification of political resistance, we should perhaps say: ‘if and only if’. However, as I will point out shortly, such a move may be excluded by the very argument that can be formed on the basis of Spinoza’s ethico-rational analysis of politics to justify whatever form of resistance would serve to either defend or re-establish the right to perpetual resistance in the form of libertas philosophandi. In other words, the argument that confirms the legitimacy of the conditional proposition (resistance is ethico-rationally justified if it secures a ‘safe-space’ for resistance in the form of rational critique) may exclude this proposition from being reformulated as a bi-conditional (resistance is ethico-rationally justified if and only if…). 249

ethico-rationally justified, to seek the empowerment even of their targets. But the likelihood of

the target of resistance actually being personally empowered in cases where the second form of

resistance is deemed necessary is slim. It is much more likely that tyrannical regimes, or

repressive factions within society, will not see that the free exchange of ideas is to their ultimate

advantage as well,209 and will thus refuse to cede peacefully to demands for liberal reform.

Rational persons seek for all persons the good they seek for themselves. But where resistance

fails to reform a tyrant (such that, in the best case scenario, the tyrant is no longer a tyrant), even

the resistance of the wise person must take on a destructive or harmful character towards/for the

tyrant. Spinoza’s wise persons are prepared to ‘dirty their hands’ because they accept the

ambiguity or complexity of action in the world (i.e., the fact that the struggle against evil must

almost always itself involve an element of evil or destructiveness); they are not the ‘beautiful

souls’ Hegel describes in the Phenomenology of Spirit (§§632-671), who retain their ethical

purity – their conformity to an abstract ideal – only by abstaining from all concrete action.210 In

other words, they recognize that: “it is by violence alone that [the tyrant’s] subjects can resist his

violence” (TP VII.30).

My reading of chapter XX of the TTP has shown that – on at least one occasion – Spinoza

advocated political resistance as ethico-rationally legitimate, provided such resistance were

intended to safeguard the right to the “public use of one’s reason” (to borrow Kant’s phrase).

But while chapter XX of the TTP may be the principal example of such an explicit endorsement

of political resistance by Spinoza, it is no anomaly, for I have demonstrated it to be entirely

209 Cf. what Spinoza has to say in the TP (VII.27) about the harmfulness of secrecy for the stability of any regime. 210 For a contrasting view, see F. Haddad-Chamakh (1980: 288), who argues that since violence or harm toward anyone is never in accordance with the dictates of reason, any act of resistance that comprises a destructive dimension can never be ethico-rationally justified, even if it is not motivated by this destructive facet. I will have more to say about this and other objections that similarly trade upon a flawed (i.e., excessively ‘rigorist’) understanding of Spinoza’s dictates of reason in the next chapter. 250

consistent with an important strand of Spinoza’s teachings in the Ethics regarding the political conduct of the rational person. This being said, it is simply impossible to completely reconcile

Spinoza’ advocacy of political resistance in the name of libertas philosophandi with the fact that

Spinoza most often argues as if the dictates of reason absolutely forbid political resistance – i.e., as if they call for unconditional obedience to the decrees of the Sovereign. A small but striking example of this tension in Spinoza’s political thought is his willingness, professed both at the opening and at the close of the TTP, to retract whatever aspect(s) of this work the civil authorities should take offence to. For this offer, which S.B. Smith characterizes as an “apparently mouselike submission of [Spinoza’s] reason to the political rulers” (1997: 51-52), both prefaces and concludes a work whose stated purpose is to plead for the right to virtually unlimited freedom of thought and expression, and which, as we have seen, culminates in an eloquent vindication of political resistance in the defence of these freedoms.

As was just mentioned, it is difficult if not impossible to square Spinoza’s championing of active political resistance in defence of libertas philosophandi with the multiple arguments that are either put forward by Spinoza himself, or that can be derived quite straightforwardly from

Spinoza’s writings, for the ethico-rational necessity of absolute obedience to political authority.

We must conclude that there is a latent and irresolvable tension at the very heart of Spinoza’s ethico-rational analysis of politics in general, and of the foundation and rightful limits of political obligation (or, conversely, of the grounds and legitimate boundaries of the imperative to seek to enhance one’s power to understand) in particular. The severity of this conflict became all the more apparent when, at the end of section 4 of this chapter, we drew out the most extreme political implications of the ethical principles that serve to support the claim that active political resistance is legitimate when its aim is to establish or safeguard the rights of free thought and free 251

speech.211 These implications, which Spinoza did not make explicit, and may never even have

foreseen, are that it is no less valid, from an ethico-rational standpoint, to engage in active

political resistance in order combat the imposition of oppressive forms of bodily discipline, or of

any of the other physical conditions that can be determined on the basis of Spinoza’s ethics and

epistemology to be deleterious to the powers of understanding of those subject to them.212

Finally, in the course of this chapter, I have alluded to various objections that can be levelled against the suggestion that Spinoza regarded political resistance as ethico-rationally warranted. In the next chapter, I will deal with the many possible objections that have either not yet been raised, or not yet been adequately addressed. This will lead me to explore, and, I hope, shed light on, a few of the more nebulous aspects of Spinoza’s epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics. For one of the reasons why the question of the status of political resistance in Spinoza’s ethico-rational analysis of politics is so important – and thus one of the reasons why it deserves more careful study than it has been given until now – is that it touches upon some of the most problematic and obscure aspects of Spinoza’s philosophical edifice, especially regarding the relation between its different components (ethics, epistemology, metaphysics, etc.).

211 And the more so, the more it actually serves to establish or safeguard these rights (according to the ‘consequentialist’ condition of ethico-rationally justified political resistance). 212 Given the extremely conservative character of much of Spinoza’s ethico-rational analysis of political obligation (as exhibited in chapter 3 of this dissertation), it is very likely that Spinoza would have felt uncomfortable endorsing these ultimate implications of his own ethical principles. That being said, they are not that much more radical than the position I think he did envision and at times even endorsed: viz., that all means of resistance are justified in order to safeguard libertas philosophandi. 252

Chapter 5

Resistance is Rational (II): Objections, Problems, and Clarifications

5.1. Introduction

The aim of chapters 3 and 4 was to ascertain whether Spinoza’s ethico-rational analysis of

politics condemns or vindicates political resistance. It proved to be very difficult – indeed,

altogether impossible – to reconcile all of what Spinoza has to say on the issue of the ethico-

rational validity of political resistance. For whereas chapter 3 identified a slew of arguments in

Spinoza’s writings for the claim that only strict obedience to the commands of the Sovereign is

ever in accordance with the dictates of reason, chapter 4 unearthed no less compelling textual

evidence for the claim that Spinoza regarded political resistance as itself commanded by reason:

(1) perpetually/normally in the form of rational critique; and (2) exceptionally/temporarily as the

struggle – violent if need be – against any attempt to suppress freedom of thought and speech

(and thus to prohibit the first form of rationally-sanctioned resistance).213 However, the

conditions for the ethico-rational justification of resistance I was able to derive from Spinoza’s

writings, coupled with the distinction Spinoza upholds in (much of) the TTP between an almost

unlimited freedom of thought and speech on the one hand, and, on the other hand, an

unconditional imperative to obey the dictates of the Sovereign in one’s actions, served to

minimize apparent tensions between the two strands in Spinoza’s thinking on the question of

political obligation upon which I have focussed in chapters 3 and 4 respectively. But this tension

213 In fact, I went a little bit further than this, arguing that the same ethical and epistemological principles that justify resistance to any effort to abolish libertas philosophandi also justify resistance to any effort to impose bodily conditions demonstrably detrimental to our power of understanding. However, I had to concede that this further political ramification of the basic tenets of Spinoza’s ethics is not one that Spinoza ever points to explicitly, nor is it a claim that Spinoza himself would likely have been comfortable making (given what we have seen in chapter 3 to have been the highly conservative character of much of his ethico-rational analysis of political obligation), even though it is really not far at all from the claim that, from an ethico-rational standpoint, every attempt to suppress the freedom of thought and/or freedom of speech ought to be resisted. 253

could not be completely eliminated: for sitting alongside passages in which Spinoza asserts an

unconditional ethico-rational imperative of obedience are passages that argue in favour of the

conditional validity of even the second form of resistance listed above (viz., when the

fundamental personal freedoms of thought and speech are put in peril, either by the Sovereign-

turned-tyrant, or by some group of individuals within the State, from whose oppressive agenda

the Sovereign cannot or will not protect the rest of the citizenry).214

The suggestion that Spinoza regarded political resistance as ethico-rationally justified under certain circumstances brings up many questions and potential objections, not only when considered in light of the arguments for the ethico-rational necessity of political obedience studied in chapter 3, but also in light of certain other elements of Spinoza’s philosophy. A few of these questions and objections have already been discussed, or have at least been gestured towards, in the previous chapter. But many have yet to be mentioned. The purpose of this chapter is to address the chief questions and puzzles that are raised by the notion that Spinoza’s ethical teachings might serve to legitimate political resistance. As such, it will cover an array of topics that have little in common besides being cause for reflection upon the tenability of the argument put forward in chapter 4, according to which Spinoza’s ethico-rational analysis of politics would justify political resistance under certain conditions. Thus, for example, while I will present two separate responses to a possible objection based on the argument for the ethico- rational necessity of obedience stemming from proposition 72 of Ethics IV,215 I will also present

214 And, of course, this tension was heightened by the discovery – made in the previous chapter and alluded to in the previous footnote – that an argument for the justification of resistance by any means to physical oppression (as I defined it in the previous chapter on the basis of Spinoza’s ethics) can also be culled quite straightforwardly from Spinoza’s ethics (and epistemology). 215 This argument has already been outlined in section 2.6 of chapter 3. I am returning to it here as an objection to the argument of chapter 4 in order to consider in detail two strategies that can be employed, on the basis of Spinoza’s texts, to counter such an objection: the first is rooted in Spinoza’s ‘contractualism/constitutionalism’; the second, in his conception of the asymmetrical relation between the good and the rational (such that the rational is always good, whereas the good is not always perfectly rational). 254

objections grounded in, or problems posed by, such things as Spinoza’s predominantly negative

view of the masses, or his conception of the ineradicable uncertainty of action.

5.2. Ethics IVP72 and the Ethico-Rational Necessity of Obedience: Two Responses

I will begin with what is probably the most obvious, but perhaps also the most serious

objection to the claims made in chapter 4. This objection basically consists in holding firmly to

the argument for the ethico-rational necessity of strict obedience that was outlined in section 2.6

of chapter 3. This argument was based primarily on proposition 72 of part IV of the Ethics,

which establishes that the rational person always acts honestly even if behaving with such

integrity should lead to his/her death. We have seen how Spinoza sometimes writes as if the

State were founded in an agreement between any number of individuals to obey a designated

third party (i.e., the Sovereign) in all things, and as if the preservation of the State’s authority

required that this contract be entered into, explicitly or tacitly, by individuals who subsequently

wish to join, or have been born in, the particular State in question. However, we have also seen

how Spinoza’s ‘contractualism’ is not the predominant strand in his political writings, and how it

is greatly complicated – indeed, by the time of his writing the TP, almost totally nullified – by

the fact that Spinoza equates right with power. The argument for the ethico-rational necessity of

obedience that was sketched in section 2.6 of chapter 3 is made more easily on the basis of

Spinoza’s most straightforwardly contractualist moments (e.g., TTP XVI.5; XIX.4; XX.8). But it

is not entirely dependent upon them. For as we have seen, Spinoza’s contractualism can be

reduced to the claim that the rational person would always be willing to enter into a contract to

found, or justify the legitimacy of, the Sovereign power to which s/he, as a matter of fact,

answers. The wise person regards him or herself as always having been under an ethico-rational

imperative to do so (see section 2.6 of chapter 3). Hence, for all intents and purposes, the 255

rational person may always be assumed to have contracted to obey the Sovereign.216 And if this is the case, then it seems to follow that, to Spinoza, we are all under an unconditional ethico- rational obligation: to regard ourselves as having contracted to obey the Sovereign; and thus also

– by E IVP72, which tells us that we are under an ethico-rational obligation to keep contracts – to obey the Sovereign in all things, without exception. It would therefore seem as though any endeavour to resist the decrees of the Sovereign should simply be interpreted as a symptom of our irrationality, of our being subject to passions (e.g., the ‘passion of revolution’: indignation) that do not accord with the dictates of reason.

It is not hard to see how this objection calls into question the consistency of Spinoza’s ethico-rational analysis of politics, or at least the compatibility of the ethico-rational arguments pro and contra resistance that I have derived from his writings. A response to this objection will therefore take us a little further towards determining as precisely as possible the degree to which the two positions I have identified in his works regarding the validity of political resistance when considered from an ethico-rational perspective can be reconciled. I contend that two possible responses to this objection may be discerned in Spinoza’s political writings. Ironically, the first can be said to make use of some of the same contractualist and, to a lesser extent, constitutionalist elements in Spinoza’s political philosophy that give rise to the objection it is meant to counter. The second response is based on the asymmetrical relation between the good and the rational in Spinoza’s ethics that D. Garret (1990; 1996) has done the most to elucidate.

216 Properly speaking, this claim is an inference derived from such passages as the one from chapter XX of the TTP, in which Spinoza writes that: “as long as a man is acting in accordance with the Sovereign’s decrees, he cannot be acting against the decrees and dictates of his own reason; for it was with the full approval of reason that he resolved to transfer to the sovereign his right to live by his own judgement” (§8; Italics mine). 256

5.2.1. The ‘Contractualist/Constitutionalist’ Response (Spinoza and Locke)

The first response to the objection based on the ethico-rational imperative of faithfulness

draws upon the contractualist and constitutionalist aspects of Spinoza’s political philosophy (and,

more specifically, the contractualist/constitutionalist aspects of his theory of resistance). As I

have already intimated, and as I will make even plainer in what follows, the contractualist and

constitutionalist elements in Spinoza’s political writings fall primarily under the rubric of

Spinoza’s ethico-rational analysis of politics. This is to say that they are operative on the basis of

Spinoza’s dictates of reason, rather than upon a juridical conception of rights as distinct from

power. But as I will also show, the role these elements sometimes play in Spinoza’s theory of

resistance brings the latter as close as it ever comes to the tradition of contractualist and

constitutionalist theories of resistance in early modern Europe that culminates in John Locke’s

Second Treatise of Government. Indeed, it is interesting to note that the contractualist and/or

constitutionalist aspects of Spinoza’s political theory serve to defuse an objection regarding the

legitimacy of resistance very similar (mutatis mutandis) to the kinds of objections 16th and 17th

century contractualist and constitutionalist theorists of resistance were generally anxious to

refute: viz., that resistance to the Sovereign involves a breach of contract or faith, and hence can

be countenanced neither juridically nor morally.

As a final introductory note, it should be pointed out that I have placed the terms

‘contractualist’ and ‘constitutionalist’ under scare quotes when applied to Spinoza’s political

thought, both when I first introduced them, and in the title to this sub-section (2.1). The

Contractualist/Constitutionalist Response makes use of elements in Spinoza’s political thought

that one can regard, for lack of a better term, as belonging to the rich tradition of contractualist

and constitutionalist thinking in early modern Europe. However, in treating right and power as

coextensive, Spinoza – as the reader will have gathered from earlier parts of this dissertation, and 257

as will become even more apparent in what follows – is very far from belonging to this tradition

in the clear-cut way in which John Locke, the so-called ‘Monarchomachs’ like François Hotman

or Étienne Junius Brutus (the pseudonymous author of the Vindiciae contra tyrannos),217 or even

Hugo Grotius all do.218 The scare-quotes were thus meant to alert the reader from the outset to

the anomalous character of Spinoza’s contractualism/constitutionalism.

Before I turn to the Contractualist/Constitutionalist Response that can be derived from

Spinoza’s writings, I want to make these introductory points clearer by highlighting the principal

tenets of the early modern tradition of contractualist and constitutionalist resistance-theory to

which I have been alluding. I will do so through a very brief analysis of the work I have pointed

to above as representing the fulfilment of this tradition: John Locke’s Second Treatise of

Government.219 As they often do in the history of early modern resistance-theory, the

contractualist and constitutionalist elements in this work overlap. It is also typical of early

modern theories of resistance that these elements go hand-in-hand in Locke’s thinking with what

I have been calling a ‘juridical’ outlook, according to which right transcends power. An

217 I say “so-called” because the term ‘Monarchomach’ (literally: King-killers) was coined as a term of abuse by William Barclay in his treatise De regno et regali potestate, adversus Buchananum, Brutum, Boucherium et reliquos Monarchomaquos, which, as its sub-title indicates, is a fierce and meticulous critique of Huguenot resistance theories (Salmon 235; Bove 1996: 279). For an educated guess about the authorship of the Vindiciae (published under the pseudonym: “Étienne Junius Brutus”) see pages I-V of the introduction by A. Jouanna (et. al.) to the French translation published by Droz (Genève: 1979). 218 The reader may be surprised by my assertion that Grotius belongs to this tradition in a “clear-cut” manner, since he is quite emphatic about the illegitimacy of resistance under most circumstances (see, e.g., what he has to say about the opinions of “certain erudite men of this century” – Grotius is referring to the pseudonymous author of the Vindiciae, among others – in Bk. I, Ch. IV, § V.1 of his De jure belli ac pacis). However, Grotius does recognize the validity of resistance in certain “exceptional” cases, and it is his analysis of these cases that places him squarely within this tradition. See: De jure belli ac pacis, Bk. I, Ch. IV, §§ VIII-XIV. 219 Because doing so would take me too far afield, I will make no attempt to demonstrate, but merely take it for granted that the core claims of Locke’s Second Treatise belong to this tradition, and that they in fact constitute its most complete articulation. Q. Skinner argues convincingly to this effect in “The Origins of the Calvinist Theory of Revolution” in After the Reformation (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1980). For a detailed but still readable overview of the history of early modern theories of resistance, the best place to turn is the second volume of Skinner’s The Foundations of Modern Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1978). The entries on Calvinist and Catholic resistance-theories in The Cambridge History of Political Thought: 1450-1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1991; pp. 193-253) are also a good place to start. 258

examination of these points in Locke will help us get a better grasp not only of the specificity of

Spinoza’s contractualism and constitutionalism but also of the specificity of his resistance-theory

as a whole.220

Locke’s theory of resistance ultimately rests on the claim that self-preservation, as well as the preservation of the “rest of Mankind” where this second obligation does not conflict with the

duty of self-preservation, is a “law of nature”, which God has promulgated, and which it is the

duty of every individual human being to uphold, even in the state of nature. Locke characterizes

the state of nature as that condition in which there exists no overarching authority to whom all

have pledged obedience, and to whose judgement all are therefore expected to defer in cases of

conflict. Hence, every individual in the state of nature has an equal right to judge whether the

law of nature has been violated and to punish perceived transgressions (T II, § 8). The consequence of this is that, almost inevitably, peaceful co-existence within the state of nature gives way to a “State of War”. The solution to this problem of equal jurisdiction is the formation of civil society. The transition from the state of nature to civil society is achieved by means of the consent of the society’s prospective members to be determined by the will of the majority.

This passage therefore involves the transfer to the community of each individual’s natural right:

(1) to judge all alleged transgressions of the law of nature; and (2) to enforce these judgements

(though the community may establish institutions, and appoint individuals, to carry out these functions).

This brings me to Locke’s doctrine of the right of resistance. To Locke, it is morally and legally permissible for the community to revolt when the trust it has placed in its representatives

220 The content of Locke’s theory of the right of resistance is well known. I will devote no more space to it than is required for my present purposes. 259

is breached.221 Locke never tires of repeating that the ultimate end and measure of all political

power is the “publick good”, i.e., the preservation of property in the widest sense of the term.

Locke encapsulates this essential limitation upon all political power by making use of a dictum

ubiquitous in medieval and early modern political treatises: “Salus Populi Suprema Lex [Est]” (T

II, §158).222 In appointing its deputies, the political community trusts that the latter will govern

with this maxim in mind. Now, where the interests of the people and rulers diverge – i.e., where

the rulers seek their own interests, over and against those of the people – the rulers thereby cease

to be legitimate rulers and become tyrants. Because the rulers have acted contrary to the end for

which they were empowered, their government is legally dissolved, and their powers (again: in

principle, if not always in practice) revert to the political community as a whole (which remains

intact, despite the legal disintegration of the government). Where these conditions obtain, the

people have the right to resist the aggression of their ruler(s) by any means necessary to

safeguard their lives, liberties, and estates.223

I mentioned earlier that perhaps the most pressing question for early modern political

theorists arguing in favour of a right of resistance within a contractualist framework was whether

the act of resisting the decrees of the Sovereign, or, graver still, the effort to subvert the rule of

the Sovereign, constituted a breach of faith. By today’s standards, early modern European

society was still deeply imbued with Christian teachings. One of the most central of these

221 The question of whether Locke ascribes the right of resistance to both the community and the individual, or whether he restricts this right solely to the community, is a source of controversy in the secondary literature. There is no need to settle the matter here, since all parties agree that in Locke’s view this right is always retained by the political community as a whole, and the illustrative point I am trying to make regarding the juridico-contractualist nature of Locke’s theory of resistance remains valid, regardless of whether or not Locke felt this right also extends to individual citizens. For a good overview of this debate, see J.F. Spitz (2001). The foremost representatives of the individualist and collectivist camps are, respectively: J.A. Simmons (1993) and W. Kendall (1965). 222 The adage originally comes from Cicero’s De Legibus, III.3.8. 223 In Locke’s words: “Whosoever in Authority exceeds the Power given him by the Law [i.e., the positive law which is in harmony with the law of nature], and makes use of the Force he has under his Command, to compass that upon the Subject, which the Law allows not, ceases in that to be a Magistrate, and acting without Authority, may be opposed, as any other Man, who by force invades the Right of another” (T II, §202). 260

teachings was of course that one must honour one’s engagements.224 From a contractualist

perspective, resistance on the part of a citizen to the commands of the Sovereign certainly

appears to be a violation of the pact of obedience at the foundation of the State. When this fact is

coupled with the passages in the New Testament that preach unconditional submission to all

figures of political authority – on the grounds that they “have been instituted by God” and that

“therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed”, such that “those who resist

will incur judgement” (Romans 13. 1-8; cf. 1 Peter 2. 13-22) – powerful prima facie evidence is

yielded for the moral/religious impermissibility of political resistance. Such prima facie

evidence was bound to be compelling to most early modern minds. For example, it is the kind of

evidence that moved Luther to argue, in a distinctly Augustinian vein, that while tyrannical

commands to commit evil or ungodly actions ought never to be carried out, the consequences of

such passive disobedience must simply be endured. To Luther, the tyrant’s rule is still ordained

by God as a punishment for the wicked and as a trial for the righteous, or perhaps finally for

reasons that are inscrutable to human minds. As such, it “is not to be resisted” (1962: 112;

quoted in Skinner 1978: 17).225

And yet, during this same period, many Christian theologians and political theorists – both Protestant and Catholic, depending on the context – developed specifically religious justifications for resistance. Appealing to Peter’s enjoinder to “obey God rather than any human authority” (Acts 5.29) whenever the commands of the one might conflict with the will of the other, they argued that any impious ruler, any ruler who does not practice or defend the true

224 Cf. Matthew 5.33-37, which records that section of the Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus confirms, but also radicalizes, the teachings of the Prophets on this score (these teachings are to be found, e.g., at Num. 30.2 and Deut. 23.23). See also: James 5.12. 225 This position became typical of all but Luther’s most radical followers. Thus, Melanchthon wrote that “deliberate disobedience against worldly authority, and against true or reasonable laws, is deadly sin, sin which God punishes with eternal damnation if we obstinately continue in it” (1965: 333; quoted in Skinner 1978: 67). 261

religion (as each author envisioned it), ought to be opposed. To some, even violent insurrection

was justified in the defence of what they conceived to be the one true faith. No amount of fancy

argumentative and hermeneutical footwork could reconcile this doctrine with the theory that,

regardless of their religious affiliations or moral proclivities, all political authorities rule by

divine right. Hence, at the level of Christian scriptural politics,226 the conservative and radical camps, both of which included both Catholics and Protestants, were locked in an irresolvable stalemate, since both sides could marshal equally solid scriptural support for their respective positions. However, it was possible to neutralize objections to the validity of political resistance grounded in a contractualist account of the foundations of society from within the contractualist paradigm.

Though Locke’s justification for political resistance is considered by some to be “wholly secular” (Skinner 1980: 310),227 his Second Treatise offers a clear example of such a strategy for the contractualist defence of the right to resist. Indeed, one of the most politically shrewd features of Locke’s theory of resistance is that while it proclaims a right of resistance on behalf of the political community, it is very cautious about whom it holds accountable for the subversion of the government. Locke writes: “(…) Rebellion being an Opposition, not to

Persons, but Authority, which is founded only in the Constitutions and Laws of the Government; those, whoever they be, who by force break through, and by force justifie their violation of them, are truly and properly rebels (II, §226). Thus, if “they who are in Power” exercise force without authority, it is they who rebel, for it is they, not the political community, who “introduce a state

226 By “Christian scriptural politics”, I mean the effort to found political doctrines or policies upon the Christian Bible. It would be hard to overstate the importance of this rhetorical and argumentative strategy in the political debates of the early modern period. 227 For arguments that Locke’s justification is in fact deeply rooted in certain strands of Christianity, see: J. Dunn (1969) and J. Waldron (2002). 262

of War”.228 To Locke, the ruler who forcefully attempts to impose decrees that run contrary to

the fundamental laws or constitution of the realm, and/or to the very purpose for which he has

been entrusted with his powers, is thereby guilty of violating the contract through the adherence

to which alone he remains a morally and juridically legitimate ruler, and thus of introducing a

state of war between himself and the rest of the political community. We have seen how,

according to Locke, every individual has a duty, and thus also the right, in the state of nature

generally, and thus also in the context of a state of war, not only to defend by whatever means

s/he deems necessary his/her natural rights from any and all perceived encroachments, but also to

protect others from such encroachments. Hence, what Locke is alleging is that active resistance

to the ruler-turned-tyrant on the part of the political community229 is not a breach of contract at

all. For, to Locke, the contract upon which all legitimate political authority (i.e., power that is

not merely reducible to brute force) rests is conditional: in and through it, the people appoint and

vow to obey their rulers, provided the latter’s rule remains in accordance with the essential aims

of the contract itself, as well as with whatever other conditions are stipulated therein (these

provisions might be regarded as the State’s constitution or fundamental and inviolable laws).230

The conditional nature of this contract – i.e., of the vesting of the people’s authority or power in a

228 Here Locke plays on the etymology of the verb ‘to rebel’, for the Latin rebellare means to wage war again. It should be recalled that, to Locke, two parties are in a State of War with respect to one another when: (1) the one has expressed a “sedate setled Design” upon the other’s property (understood in the extended technical sense of one’s “Life, Liberty, and Estate” (II, §87)); and (2) there exists no third party that the two antagonistic parties recognize as a final arbiter, and to which either may appeal for protection (“relief”) or to settle their quarrel. 229 See footnote 9. 230 It should be stressed that, according to Locke, it is the political community as a whole – i.e., “the people”, and certainly not the rulers it designates to rule over it – that is entitled to judge whether the individual(s) to whom it has entrusted Sovereign power has (or have) lived up to his/her (or their) end of the bargain (II, §240). In a relationship of trust, it is the party placing the trust that decides whether or not the trustee is acting in good faith – i.e., pursuant to the ends for which s/he has (or they have) been entrusted with whatever powers are needed to achieve these ends. And in this case, it is the people that have placed their trust in the authority or authorities they have appointed. Hence, in a very real sense, Locke conceives of Sovereignty as ultimately and inalienably residing in the people as a whole. While the people may choose to delegate its powers to a particular individual or group of individuals, such that this individual or group may perform the role of Sovereign as a caretaker or trustee, the principle of Sovereignty rests in the community as a whole, since it always retains the right to judge, and hence revoke or reclaim, whatever powers it has delegated. 263

designated representative – entails that, as opposed to Hobbes, Locke regards the Sovereign as a

party to the covenant through which s/he comes to power.231 Thus, to repeat this most crucial

Lockean claim, if the particular person who has been appointed by the community to occupy the role of Sovereign breaks the conditions upon which his/her authority rests, then s/he thereby ceases to be Sovereign, and no one remains under a juridical and/or moral obligation to obey him/her.232 And in such instances, the active resistance of the political community to the

tyrannical ambitions of its ruler(s) merely represents its attempt to reinstate, or prevent the

overthrow of, the government it has consented to (the consent of society being the origin of all

authority (II, § 134; §155)). Though it may seem paradoxical, the function of resistance is thus

essentially conservative to Locke.

Finally, what makes Locke’s theoretical justification of resistance ‘juridical’ is that it

works on the basis of a distinction between right and power. In Locke’s view, the law of nature

stands as a yardstick against which one can assess the legitimacy both of positive legislation, and

of specific deeds. Where power fails to respect the boundaries established by the law of nature, it

is arbitrary and unjust. Locke deems the victims of such abuse of power to have the right to

resist its perpetrators, even if the former do not in fact have the power to do so successfully.

Locke’s theory thus depends on the priority and transcendence of right over power, that is, on the

possibility of appealing to something beyond the existing relations of force. After all, one can

only speak of arbitrary exercises of power, and, hence, of a legal warrant for revolt irrespective

231 In fact, this claim would have seemed a manifest absurdity to Hobbes, whose theory of Sovereignty can be regarded as working out the full implications of the basic insight that Sovereignty is absolute by definition (i.e., that a juridically limited Sovereign – a Sovereign with legal obligations towards his/her subjects – is a contradiction in terms). 232 I have, for reasons of grammatical and stylistic convenience, been referring to the Sovereign in the singular (as ‘him’ or ‘her’). But Locke believed the office of Sovereign could be held by any fraction of the citizenry, or by all citizens together. In such cases, the view of the majority of voices within the People’s Assembly (in the case of a democracy) or Supreme Council (in the case of an aristocracy) would be regarded as the will of the Sovereign. 264

of one’s capacity to effectively carry out such a revolt, if one conceives of power as conditioned

by something beyond it: by a norm whose coincidence with the real is by no means guaranteed.

Nothing could be further from Spinoza’s immanentist (i.e., de facto) theory of resistance.

As we saw in the general introduction to this dissertation, the right of resistance that can be

extracted from Spinoza’s political theory (and underlying metaphysics and anthropology) is not

independent of the resisting subject’s situation in a concrete nexus of forces. It has been said that

Spinoza theorizes politics within a framework or “plane of immanence” (Deleuze 2003: 164).

This is a way of saying that, to Spinoza, right is not something external to power, which could

therefore be used as a transcendent standard to orient and judge its applications (i.e., justify

resistance to its extra-legal uses). If, as Spinoza maintains, one’s right extends only so far as

one’s power, then one cannot be said to have the right to resist unless one has the power. Put

more positively, Spinoza’s immanentism entails that the power by which one, in effect, resists, is

one’s right to do so: where one has the power to resist, one also, by that very fact, has the right to

resist. Rights are resistance.233 Conversely, from the perspective of Spinoza’s

realist/immanentist analysis of politics, with respect to the justification of a movement of

resistance, it does not matter whether or not this movement constitutes a violation of a real or

supposed social contract, or whether or not it is directed against a ruler who has failed to rule in

accordance with the aims and statutes of this contract. The only relevant question is: What is the

strength of the movement of resistance relative to the strength of the ruler’s disciplinary

apparatus (i.e., the means by which the ruler might counteract this movement)? For where there

is superiority of power, in Spinoza’s eyes there is also superiority of right.

233 I owe this striking formulation to Willi Goetschel, who used it in his response to a paper I delivered at the Spinoza Symposium hosted by York University in February 2008. 265

It is true that Spinoza cannot justify resistance by pointing to a right to do so that would supersede the actual play of forces in a given political conjuncture. In this respect, he differs from Locke. But, as I hope to have shown, Spinoza’s ethico-rational analysis of politics does supply norms by reference to which one might evaluate, and justify efforts to change or defy, actual relations of power. And, most crucially, the coincidence of these norms with the real are no more guaranteed for Spinoza than they are for Locke. As we have seen, Spinoza’s realist analysis of politics is predicated upon the notion that all human phenomena are no less a part of

Nature than raindrops or the fields they fall on, and that they are, as such, both necessarily determined by, and understandable on the basis of, Nature’s all-encompassing causal order (its system of unchanging laws). As a necessary product of this rationally intelligible causal order, every State, like every human being, is as rational (i.e., perfect or powerful) as it can be. In terms of the universe or Nature as a whole, it is no less true for Spinoza as it was for Hegel that the real is rational: cosmos is logos. But this doesn’t mean that, when considering matters from the finite standpoint of the genuine interests of human beings, Spinoza would have concurred with the rest of the Hegelian dictum, according to which the rational is also real.

We are mere parts of Nature, subject to a necessary causal order that, while rationally apprehensible, is not directed by a providential deity for our benefit, such as to only enable, and never impede or threaten, our conatus essendi (TP II.8). As parts of Nature, our powers are necessarily dwarfed by innumerable other finite modes, whose powers we simply cannot help but be affected by (E IVA1). Some of these may affect us positively. In such cases, our potentia existendi is increased through our encounters with them – though, since it is they who are largely responsible for this increase, the joys they engender are merely passive/passional. But it will always be the case that myriad others affect us negatively, such that they are the irresistible cause of our disempowerment, perhaps even of our destruction (Ibid.). It is thus as mere parts of 266

Nature that we necessarily fall short of that paragon of rationality – and hence of power –

referred to in the preface to part IV of the Ethics as the exemplar humanae naturae,234 and thus

also of the full expression or actualization of our own singular nature.235 And the same goes for

States. Like individual human beings, a State is most autonomous or “most completely in control

of its own right (sui juris)” when it is “most guided by reason” (TP V.1; cf. III.7; IV.4). Hence,

“the laws of the best state (optimi imperii) (…) ought to be established in accordance with the

dictates of reason” (TP II.21). It will be recalled that, to Spinoza, the striving to persevere in

being is the “foundation of virtue” (i.e., ethics), and that “happiness (felicitatem) consists in a

man’s being able to preserve his being” (E IVP18S). Since the best way to aid or promote our conatus essendi is to “live in the way that reason prescribes”, Spinoza thinks it follows that

“those actions are best (optimum) which are done by a man or commonwealth when it is most completely in control of its own right (quatenus maxime sui juris est)” (TP V.1). Lest anyone mistake Spinoza to be arguing that whatever is done by right – i.e., whatever one has the actual power to do – is done sui juris, and thus optimally or ‘in the best way’ (i.e., “in the way that reason prescribes”), Spinoza hastens to add:

We are not asserting that everything that is done by right is also done in the best way (optime); it is one thing to till a field by right [i.e., to have the effective power to do so], another thing to till it in the best way. It is one thing, I say, to defend oneself, to preserve oneself, to give judgement, etc., by right, another thing to defend and preserve oneself in the best way and to give the best judgement (judicium). Consequently, it is one thing to rule and to take charge of public affairs by right, another thing to rule in the best way and to direct public affairs in the best way (TP V.1).

234 The content of which is supplied by the various dictates of reason introduced throughout part IV of the Ethics and elsewhere. 235 The reader is referred to chapter 2 of this dissertation – especially section 6 (“Appendix”) – in which it is explained how it is partly in failing to live up to an ethical ideal, formed on the basis of a rational apprehension of the “universal human nature”, and thus applying to all humans, that one fails to realize or deploy one’s singular nature (a doctrine which, without further explanation, may seem contradictory). 267

It is true that, in the TP,Spinoza considers the rights of political regimes in a rigorously realist/immanentist mode. But Spinoza’s chief concern in the TP, though it only really comes to

the fore after the transition marked by this opening section of chapter V, is the question of how

political regimes ought to be organized so as to achieve stability (persevere in being), and thus

also to achieve the essential aims of the State: i.e., maximize the power of its citizens by ensuring

at once both peace and freedom (the one being impossible without the other, according to

Spinoza). The subsequent analyses of the best forms of organization for each of the three

principal types of States (monarchy, aristocracy, democracy) are undertaken in accordance with

the spirit of realism Spinoza celebrates at the very opening of the TP. However, this important

passage from the opening of chapter V signals to the reader that the immanentist perspective that

largely characterizes the analyses of natural right, sovereignty, and the rights of the sovereign

carried out in the earlier chapters of the TP will increasingly be supplemented, though certainly

not eclipsed or replaced – Spinoza would no longer be Spinoza were he to deny the identity of

right and power – by what can be regarded as an ethico-rational standpoint. As the passage cited

above indicates clearly, such an ethico-rational perspective introduces a norm that transcends,

and serves to appraise the ‘value’ of, relations of power. In this manner, what is best and what is

real – i.e., what is most rational and what one has the right to do at the given moment – cease to

coincide.

It is important that my exact meaning be grasped here. It therefore bears repeating that

the introduction of a properly ethico-rational perspective in the later chapters of the TP does not

contradict the realist cri de guerre that Spinoza utters at the very start of the TP. For what

Spinoza had criticized there is the fact that “for the most part it is not ethics that [the 268

philosophers have hitherto] written, but satire; and they have never worked out a politics236 that

can have practical application” (TP I.1; Italics mine). Thus, the later chapters of the TP, which lay out blueprints for the “best way” to organize the different possible forms of political regimes, do not thereby reintroduce the “fantasies” that “could be put into effect [only] in Utopia or in that golden age of the poets (…)” (TP I.1). For these blueprints are based on a realist (i.e., morally neutral) study of humans, as they really are, with their natural limits and possibilities – not as one might wish them to be. Presupposing only humans that are all-too-human, Spinoza’s blueprints are thus (intended to be) perfectly realizable.

But, while these blueprints get their bearings from, or are framed by, Spinoza’s realist study of human nature, they carry further the ethical project of which Spinoza’s realist study of human nature is but an all-important building-block:237 they describe how political regimes ought

to be structured so as to conform to the dictates of reason, and, hence, optimize the potentia

existendi of their constituents. Hence, the fact that the TP is consistently realist in its outlook does not undermine the specific contrastive and explanatory point I wanted to make in focussing on the pivotal opening of chapter V of the TP: viz., that while Spinoza’s ethico-rational justification for political resistance is not juridically- or legally-minded like Locke’s (since it does not rely on the appeal to a right that would transcend the power-relations one wishes to challenge; it does not, for the most part, operate on the basis of legal contracts and alleged violations thereof), it is nevertheless important not to overstate their difference. For both operate on the basis of a gap between political norms and political reality – between what is and what

236 Politicam: i.e., a political theory or system. 237 More precisely, Spinoza’s realist (i.e., morally neutral) study of politics should be regarded as an anthropological part or sub-field of the study of metaphysics and physics which Spinoza considers the foundation for his ethics (Ep 27), and hence also for his ethico-rational politics (see TTP IV.4, where Spinoza explains that it is on the basis of a rational understanding of both our highest good, and the “rules of living” or “conduct” that will enable us to achieve this end, that we can derive “the fundamental principles of the best State (optimae reipublicae) and social organization”– “all of which”, he says, “belongs to a general treatise on Ethics (ad universalem ethicam pertinet)”). 269

ought to be. Hence, both rely on a criterion (or set of criteria) that transcends mere relations of

force. We have seen how, Locke’s juridicism allows him to regard political resistance as

justified – i.e., to regard subjects as having a right to resist their rulers – under certain

circumstances, even where such resistance proves, in practice, to be completely futile (the

subjects haven’t the actual power to resist their rulers effectively). As I showed last chapter by

focussing on the account of resistance one gets in certain passages of the TTP (when read

alongside the Ethics), Spinoza’s ethico-rational analysis of politics sometimes allows for a justification of resistance on the part of subjects similarly lacking the power – and hence, to

Spinoza, also the right (which is where Spinoza differs from Locke) – to do so with success.

This brings me, after what has proven to be a rather lengthy detour, to the issue I

originally set out to examine in this section: viz., the Contractualist-Constitutionalist Response to

the objection against the possibility of an ethico-rational justification of political resistance in

Spinoza’s philosophy that relies on Spinoza’s ethico-rational imperative of faithfulness.238 This detour through Locke, whose theory of resistance in many ways stands as the most complete expression of the entire early modern tradition of contractualist-constitutionalist legitimizations of resistance, has already proven helpful, as it has allowed us to get a better sense of the uniqueness of Spinoza’s ethico-rational justification of resistance. But it was also necessary in order to understand the specific character of the Contractualist-Constitutionalist Response that can be gleaned from certain passages of Spinoza’s writings.

Of the admittedly small number of passages that provide textual support for this

Response, I am thinking first and foremost of the beginning of chapter VII of the TP. Having, in the previous chapter, “described” the proper foundations (fundamentis) of the monarchical regime, Spinoza now sets out to “give [these foundations] a precise explanation in good order”.

238 See the top of the present section of this chapter for a short presentation of this objection. 270

What is of interest for our present purposes, is that Spinoza thinks it “must be especially noted”

at the outset that “it is in no way contrary to practice for laws to be so firmly established that not

even the king can repeal them”, and that there are no cases of which he is aware “of a monarch’s

being chosen on absolute terms without any explicit conditions” (Italics mine). When one recalls the number and vigour of the arguments Spinoza puts forward for the unconditional ethico- rational necessity of obedience,239 it is striking that Spinoza immediately goes on to assert that

none of these seemingly universal practices are “in contradiction with reason or with the

absolute obedience due to a king” (Italics mine). In light of the many arguments I have

unearthed in Spinoza’s writings for the claim that only absolute submission to the commands of

the Sovereign is in accordance with the dictates of reason, these statements appear rather

puzzling. Spinoza seems to foresee his readers’ likely perplexity, as he goes on to offer a rather

helpful explanation – one from which the Contractualist-Constitutionalist Response is easily

extrapolated. Spinoza writes that: “the fundamental laws of the State (fundamenta imperii) should be regarded as the king’s eternal decrees, so that his ministers are entirely obedient in refusing to execute his orders if he commands something that is opposed to the fundamental laws of the State” (Italics mine). Spinoza compares the disobedience or passive resistance of the king’s ministers to the case of Ulysses’ shipmates, whom Ulysses had commanded to tie him to his ship’s mast to prevent him from giving in to the Sirens’ song, and not to untie him until the danger had passed, even if he should fall prey to the Sirens’ enchantments and command them to do so. Kings, Spinoza observes, are far from impervious to the Sirens’ wiles: i.e., the temptation to exploit their position of supreme power to cater to their every fancy at the expense of their subjects – a course of conduct that will likely lead to the downfall of their regime. Hence,

Spinoza concludes, “if a monarchy is to be stable, it must be so organized that everything is

239 Cf. chapter 3 of the present study for a comprehensive overview of Spinoza’s arguments to this end. 271

indeed done only by the king’s decree – that is, that all law is the explicit will of the king – but

not everything willed by the king is law” (Italics mine; cf. VIII.3).

So why doesn’t the passive resistance posed by the king’s ministers240 to a decree that

would contradict the fundamental laws, and hence presumably also the fundamental aims of the

State, contradict the dictates of reason? With respect to the specific ethico-rational imperative of

faithfulness with which we are, at present, most concerned, Spinoza’s quasi-contractualist and

constitutionalist answer is that the passive resistance posed by the king’s ministers isn’t a breach

of contract or faith. Rather, it is a conservative effort to defend the conditions of the contract

through which the king acceded to power in the first place, or, alternately, to uphold the rights

and protections enshrined in the constitution (the State’s founding document, which articulates its

essential structure, values, legal procedures, etc.). It is the king whose commands have violated

the conditions of the pact, and hence, in relation to these specific, illicit commands only,

‘temporarily’ relinquished his binding authority (i.e., his ministers are, with respect to these

specific provisions, not obligated to obey). It isn’t much of an extrapolation to extend this

argument such that: (1) it justifies the disobedience of all subjects to such unconstitutional

commands (this seems perfectly in keeping with the logic of Spinoza’s argument in this passage);

and (2), it justifies attempts to actively resist the king, should he persist in his attempts to bypass

or infringe upon the State’s fundamental laws. Hence, we find in Spinoza’s writings the

rudiments of a kind of Contractualist-Constitutionalist Response to the objection I outlined

earlier that is based on the ethico-rational imperative of faithfulness (to be found at E IV P72).

240 It should be noted that there is nothing in this passage that directly affirms a right on the part of the king’s ministers – whom, in the parlance of the time, would also commonly have been referred to as the State’s ‘lesser’ or ‘lower’ magistrates – to actively resist the king (i.e., to seek to depose him, or even more seriously, to change the form of the State). 272

This Response brings Spinoza as close as he ever gets to the early modern tradition of

contractualist-constitutionalist thinking on the issue of resistance whose foremost representative

is Locke (cf. Bove 1996: 284). The surprising proximity between Spinoza in this section of the

TP and this tradition in early modern political theory is evinced by his treatment, a little later in

chapter VII, of an historical example to illustrate the theoretical claim we have seen him make in

the first paragraph of that chapter. Spinoza’s example is taken from the history of medieval

Aragonese politics. Spinoza relates that when the Aragonese “had rid themselves of the slavish

yoke of the Moors they resolved to choose themselves a king” (TP VII.30). The details of

Spinoza’s telling of this story need not preoccupy us. What is important is that Spinoza approves

of their ultimate decision to “bring into being a supreme council, like the Ephors of the Spartans,

which would provide a counterbalance to the kings and which would possess the absolute right to

decide any disputes that might arise between the king and citizens” (Italics mine). Furthermore,

he enthusiastically describes how this supreme council “at one time even had the right to (…)

depose the king”. To grasp the full significance of this passage, it is necessary to know that the

Ephors of Sparta were the standard reference or symbol for a major strand within the tradition of

early modern resistance-theory to which I have been alluding: viz., those authors who tended to

attribute a right to resist either exclusively, or first and foremost, to so-called ‘inferior

magistrates’ who, in Calvin’s words, were “appointed to restrain the wilfulness of kings”

(Institutes, Bk IV, Ch. 20, §31; quoted in Skinner 230).241 As Skinner and others have shown,

those early modern authors who championed a right of resistance on the part of inferior

magistrates almost invariably pointed to the Spartan Ephorate as an example of such powers.

Thus, Melanchthon, Zwingli, Calvin, Beza, Hotman, Althusius, Mariana, and the anonymous

241 These lesser magistrates were usually, though not always (see Zwingli’s 1534 treatise/sermon, The Pastor, by way of example), thought of as popularly elected – which in large part explains why they were conceived to be representatives and defenders of the interests of the people before the king. 273

author(s) of Vindiciae contra tyrannos all did so (Skinner 230-233; 314-316; 319; H.A. Lloyd

290; Kendall 48).242 As background to Spinoza’s use of the term, it is perhaps even more pertinent and instructive that William of Orange, in seeking to justify the leading role he and other members of the Dutch nobility were playing in the revolt against Philip II of Spain (though he cast it as a revolt against Philip’s viceroy, the Duke of Alva), wrote in his famous Apologie

that it was incumbent upon the States General and the grandees of the realm “de servir à nos ducs

ce que les Éphores servaient à Sparte à leur roi, c’est de tenir la royauté ferme en la main de leur

prince et faire servir à raison celui qui contrevient à son serment” (Bove 284; originally cited in

Mercier 49).243

It cannot be demonstrated with certainty that Spinoza was aware of the significance that

references to Sparta’s Ephorate had to this early modern tradition of resistance theory. In their

notes to the TP, S. Barbone and L. Rice suggest that Spinoza may have derived his account of the

function of the supreme council in Aragonese politics from Antonio Perez’s Relaciones de Rafael

Peregrino, and it may very well be the case that Spinoza also found the parallel between the

Aragonese supreme council and the Spartan Ephorate already established in this work (92 fn.

73).244 It is also possible that Spinoza drew the parallel himself, through independent

acquaintance with the concept of the medius magistratus in such ancient sources as: Plutarch’s

Lives (e.g., “Lycurgus” 7); Aristotle’s Politics (1313a27); Cicero’s De legibus (III.16); Polybius’

242 Juan de Mariana even anticipates Spinoza’s account by equating the Aragonese supreme council (“The Seventeen”) with the Spartan Ephors (Braun 55). 243 This passage does not appear in the excerpts from the “Apologie” published in Texts Concerning the Revolt of the Netherlands (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1974), 211-215. 244 As C. Ramond points out in his edition of the TP, this work would have been contained in a posthumously published anthology of Perez’s works entitled Las obras y Relaciones de A. Perez (Geneva: 1644), of which Spinoza possessed a copy (294 fn. 22). 274

History IV, 45-7; or Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War (ubique).245 But Spinoza

owned a Spanish translation of Calvin’s Institutio Christianae Religionis,246 and I find it unlikely

that someone as interested in political theory as Spinoza was – especially when it came to the

theoretical positions and debates informing Dutch politics – would have been unfamiliar with this

commonplace of early modern political thought. Hence, it seems clear that not only with his

discussion of the constitutional justification for resistance as a whole in chapter VII of the TP,

but even in the seemingly minor detail of his equating the Aragonese supreme council with the

Spartan Ephors, Spinoza is, in this particular instance at least, placing himself in the camp

(broadly speaking) of the early modern constitutionalist and contractualist theorists of

resistance.247

The rapprochement between Spinoza and this early modern tradition in political thought

in chapter VII of the TP is especially evident in the way he approvingly observes that the

Aragonese people via their representatives/defenders – i.e., the seventeen members of the

supreme council who were selected from the people by lot – had the “absolute right to decide any

disputes that might arise between king and citizens”, as well as to judge whether any of the

king’s decrees violated the constitution and/or, it can be assumed, did not have the welfare of the

people in mind, and hence, ultimately, to determine when it was permissible to disobey the

commands of the king. Interestingly, this is in stark contrast to what Spinoza had said earlier in

the TP. At the close of his exposition of the rights of the Sovereign in chapter IV, Spinoza

writes: “The contract or laws whereby a people transfers its right to one council or one man

245 I owe my knowledge of the first three sources to Braun (55 fn. 45). I am not asserting that Spinoza was acquainted with these sources. I am merely enumerating some of the places Spinoza might have found a discussion of the Ephors in classical literature (of which we know him to have been an avid reader – at least in Latin). 246 See the inventory of his book collection published in B. Pautrat’s bilingual (Latin-French) edition of the Ethics (Paris: Seuil, 1998), 648. Calvin’s treatment of the concept of ephoral authority is to be found in Bk IV, chapter 20, §31 of the Institutio. 247 In making this point, I am confirming a claim made, somewhat in passing, by L. Bove (1996: 284). 275

should undoubtedly be broken when this is in the interests of the general welfare”. However, to

prevent anyone from using this as a justification for political resistance, Spinoza is quick to point

out that “the right to judge whether or not it is in the interests of the general welfare to do so

cannot rest with any private person [and one gets the impression Spinoza also meant: any medius

magistratus] but only with the ruler of the State” (TP IV.6; Italics mine). And since “no private

person has the right to enforce these laws”, Spinoza there concludes that “in actual fact they are

not binding on the ruler of the State” (Ibid.). Spinoza’s conclusion at this juncture of the TP is so

opposed to the position that we have seen him take later in chapter VII, that one could with some

justification speak of the ‘two Spinozas’ of the TP: the Hobbesian Spinoza who subscribes to an

absolutist conception of Sovereignty, and the ‘Aragonese’ Spinoza who sees no contradiction in,

but, on the contrary, seems in favour of, institutionalized bridles on Sovereign power.

In an attempt to resolve this apparent discrepancy, some commentators have argued that

Spinoza more or less consistently maintains a distinction between Sovereignty as a principle and

the Sovereign (McShea 191),248 or between Sovereignty, as the ultimate seat of authority/power,

and its exercise or care (Mugnier-Pollet 152). Both R. McShea and L. Mugnier-Pollet see these

distinctions as the means by which Spinoza ushers in a possible justification for resistance. Thus,

McShea considers this distinction as “pointing to a right of revolution” since it enables subjects

to “revolt against the sovereign in the name of the sovereignty” (Idem.), while Mugnier-Pollet

thinks it entails that Spinoza “reste dans l’horizon de pensée des Monarchomaques” (Idem.) –

which is true, as long as this “horizon” is taken to include figures in the history of early modern

resistance theory not ordinarily included under the Monarchomach label, such as Althusius

(Kendall 48) and, above all, Locke.

248 In so doing, R. McShea is, by his own admission, merely picking up on an underdeveloped remark by T.V. Smith, to the effect that Spinoza “was feeling his way to a distinction between government and sovereignty” (39). 276

I hope to have shown that McShea has good reasons for contending that Spinoza’s

contractualist-constitutionalist moments point to “a right of revolution” (cf. Bove 1996: 286).

But this is only true in a kind of loose or extended sense of ‘right’. Strictly speaking, Spinoza’s

equation of right with power precludes the possibility of a right of resistance understood in a

properly juridical/Lockean sense.249 While it is true that Spinoza comes closest to the

Monarchomachs in the sections of chapter VII analyzed above precisely because he seeks to

institutionalize or normalize – i.e., inscribe into civil law or right – the practice of resistance to

Sovereign power (cf. Bove 1996: 281),250 Spinoza’s “pointing to a right of revolution” in these

sections is ultimately not a juridical or legalistic move à la Locke. It simply cannot be. For if

this were the case, Spinoza would, in positing such a right, be abandoning, or flagrantly

contradicting, the most fundamental tenet of his political philosophy: viz., that right and power

are coextensive.

To appreciate what Spinoza’s ‘right of revolution’ really amounts to, it is necessary to

understand exactly what Spinoza is up to from chapter V onwards in the TP. At the risk of

repeating myself, I will therefore remind the reader of what I have argued above: viz., that it

would be far too simplistic to say that the TP is nothing more than a realist (i.e., morally neutral) study of politics. Granted, Spinoza begins the TP by chastising all previous philosophers for their failure to produce a political theory that would yield tangible results in the real world – i.e., that would be practically applicable, because based on knowledge of humans as they are, rather than how philosophers might wish them to be. But, as mentioned earlier, if Spinoza rebukes all previous political philosophers, it is also because they have written satires ridiculing humans for

249 This being said, it is hard to see how McShea could mean anything else when he claims to catch glimpses of a right of revolt in Spinoza’s writings. 250 In this respect, therefore, I disagree with C. Ramond when he alleges that Spinoza only ever thinks of the right of resistance as belonging to the right of war, and thus totally inimical to, or at odds with, civil right. For Ramond’s argument to this effect, see pp. 296-297, footnote 52, of his edition of the TP. 277

their failure to live up to impossible ideals, rather than a viable (i.e., realizable) ethics.

Accordingly, Spinoza’s aim in the TP, particularly as of chapter V, is to describe, on the basis of

a realist understanding of human nature, how one ought to organize each type of political regime

such as to maximize its stability and hence also one’s own power as either a ruler or subject

within such a State. These chapters prescribe a certain course of action; they outline what

political structures are most in accordance with the precepts of reason and, hence, most

conducive to the realization of its citizens interests (to making them “all live as reason

prescribes” (TP VI.3), even if they themselves are not rational).

Spinoza’s ascription of a ‘right of resistance’ to the king’s ministers (inferior magistrates)

in a monarchy is one particular ethico-rational prescription within this larger study of state-forms

that is simultaneously and complementarily both ethico-rational and realist. To ‘legally’ grant

such a ‘right’ to lower magistrates within a monarchy is “[not] in contradiction with reason” (by

which we may understand: is in accordance with reason), because it is, paradoxically, the only

way to ensure the stability of such a State. For, as Spinoza explains, the “administration of the

State” should never be “entrusted absolutely to the good faith of any [one] man” (TP VI.3). This

is because “no man is so vigilant that he does not sometimes nod, and no one has ever been so

resolute and upright as not sometimes to break down and suffer himself to be overcome just

when strength of mind is most needed” (Ibid.).251 Moreover, if, as Spinoza believes, right and power are identical, then it is just not physically possible for a single person to “hold the supreme right of the commonwealth”, since “the power of one man is far from being capable of sustaining so heavy a load” (TP VI.5). As a matter of simple fact, the monarch’s power – and hence right –

251 Similarly, in chapter I of the TP, Spinoza writes that because it is to dream “of the poets’ golden age or of a fairy tale” to think that “those who are busily engaged in public business can be persuaded to live solely at reason’s behest” (§5), it follows that “if the safety of a State is dependent on some man’s good faith, and its affairs cannot be properly administered unless those responsible for them are willing to act in good faith, that State will lack all stability” (§6; Italics mine). 278

depends on the willingness of concentric circles of subordinates to obey his commands (he needs

advisors to keep him informed, bodyguards to protect him, police to enforce his edicts, etc.).

Spinoza’s attribution of a ‘right’ of resistance to lower magistrates under a monarch is thus

actually an ethico-rational prescription, made on the basis of such realist analyses of the

workings of power generally, and the specific dynamics of power within different regime-forms.

This is why, in the TP, Spinoza does not talk of an institutionalized ‘right’ of resistance within any of the other forms of government (aristocracy or democracy): he does not think their characters require it in order to endure (i.e., so that they might enjoy stability).

Finally, it might be objected that, as I have presented it, the Contractualist-

Constitutionalist Response is not very convincing, since it seems to be based exclusively on an extrapolation from Spinoza’s very limited attribution of a right to resist to inferior magistrates in what amounts to a constitutional monarchy. I have chosen to focus on this discussion in chapter

VII of the TP, because it represents Spinoza’s most explicitly contractualist and constitutionalist argument for the rationality of the disobedience of (certain) subjects to their rulers under certain circumstances (i.e., for the fact that such conduct is in accordance with the dictates of reason).

Through a reading of this section, we see how Spinoza envisioned the possibility of a contractualist-constitutionalist reply to the objection against the ethico-rational validity of resistance based on the imperative of faithfulness (E IV P72). But if we turn to the contractualist moments in chapters XVI and XIX of the TTP with the argument of chapter VII of the TP in

mind – i.e., the argument through which the ‘objection from the imperative of faithfulness’ can

be countered – it becomes possible to conceive of a Contractualist-Constitutionalist Response

with much greater range (i.e., that is not just limited to one form of political regime). For the

contractualist account of the origins of the State that we get in, e.g., chapter XVI of the TTP 279

applies to all types of States. But this, admittedly, becomes a reconstructive argument, much more than a simple exegetical claim.

5.2.2. On the Asymmetry of the Good and the Rational in Spinoza’s Ethics: The Garrett Response

There is a second possible response to the argument against the ethico-rational legitimacy of political resistance that is based on proposition 72 of part IV of the Ethics. Because it draws

so heavily on, such as to basically consist in an extension of, an argument made by D. Garrett, I

have labelled it the ‘Garrett Response’. In a paper entitled “‘A Free Man Always Acts Honestly,

Not Deceptively’: Freedom and the Good in Spinoza’s Ethics”,252 Garrett asks how it can be possible for Spinoza to hold the following three propositions without contradicting himself: (1) A free man always acts honestly, not deceptively; (2) It is always good to act so as to best preserve one’s own being; and (3) One can sometimes best preserve one’s own being by acting deceptively, not honestly (1990: 221). The first proposition is taken verbatim from Ethics

IVP72, whereas the second, as Garrett shows, encapsulates well the findings of E IVP39 and its accompanying scholium. The scholium to Ethics IVP72 is incontrovertible textual evidence that

Spinoza envisioned cases in which an otherwise certain death could be avoided only by actions that would typically be considered deceptive (1990: 226). Thus, as Garrett argues, “Spinoza could deny [proposition] (3) only by holding either (a) that preserving one’s physical life in such cases does not constitute ‘best preserving one’s being’, or (b) that preserving one’s physical life in such cases does not constitute ‘deception’” (Ibid.).

Garrett acknowledges that there are passages in Spinoza’s writings that might lead one to believe that Spinoza did in fact maintain a version of (b). On a number of occasions in both the

252 Section 2 of Garrett’s entry in the Cambridge Companion to Spinoza (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996) on “Spinoza’s Ethical Theory” contains a condensed version of the argument originally made in greater detail in the above-cited paper (see pp. 290-295). 280

TTP and the TP (see Ch. XVII of the former and Chs. II-III of the latter), Spinoza argues that

since it is (physically/metaphysically) impossible to completely alienate or transfer one’s right of

self-preservation by contract, it follows that any contract ceases to become binding the moment it

reveals itself to be detrimental to one’s interests – and thus, most emphatically, when it reveals

itself to imperil one’s very persistence in being. But Garrett concludes that while the right to

break any contract that no longer appears advantageous follows trivially from Spinoza’s equation

of right and power (assuming one has the power to do so), Spinoza cannot be said to deny that

such conduct nevertheless constitutes a form of deceit or breach of faith, since, as Garrett points

out, Spinoza clearly says the contrary on at least one occasion (1990: 228).253 In other words, in

Garrett’s opinion, Spinoza did not hold (b).

In his attempt to ascertain whether Spinoza maintained anything like (a), Garrett begins

by observing that, to Spinoza, the more one achieves adequate knowledge, the more one’s mind

accedes to, or is constituted by, ideas that are eternal – i.e., ideas that are the same in one’s mind

as they are in the mind of God – such that eventually the greater portion of oneself might be

unaffected by death. But Garrett insists that complete impassivity before, or invulnerability to,

death, must remain a regulative ideal, which our constitutive finitude precludes us from ever

fully realizing. Even if we succeed in greatly minimizing the ‘space’ that imaginary ideas

253 Garrett refers to TP III.17, without quoting a specific passage. I think the passage Garrett has in mind is one in which Spinoza explains that if a Sovereign comes to realize that a pact he has entered into jeopardizes the welfare of his subjects, “he is surely bound to break his word” (Italics mine). Spinoza’s example involves only a Sovereign breaking faith with another Sovereign for the good of his people. But the more general discussion this example is meant to illustrate, in which Spinoza states clearly that reason does not enjoin us to “keep every pledge we make”, would seem to apply to subjects in their relation to their Sovereigns as well, such that this passage could be used as further corroboration of my claim that Spinoza regarded political resistance as ethico-rationally justified (under certain circumstances). Though this may be the case, it should also be noted that the application of this passage to the question of the ethico-rational validity of political resistance runs counter to the argument I presented in the preceding sub-section, according to which resistance to the Sovereign’s commands on the part of the subject could be ethico-rationally vindicated (or at least entertained as a possibility), in Spinoza’s view, precisely because it does not – again, in Spinoza’s eyes – constitute a breach of faith. For in this passage (i.e., TP III.17), it is suggested (though only as an implication of what Spinoza says explicitly) that Spinoza would regard such resistance as: (1) a breach of contract or faith; and yet nevertheless (2) rationally sanctioned. 281 occupy in the total set of ideas that literally is our mind, this imaginary facet of our existence in time is irretrievably lost at death. Inevitably, there is a part of us that is not preserved in death, when the myriad smaller bodies of which we are composed no longer stand in that singular ratio of motion and rest that defines us. Furthermore, death puts an end to any progress in our understanding, and hence to any hope of ensuring that an even greater ‘portion’ of our minds is

(or ‘becomes’) eternal. Garrett concludes that while the significance of death is minimized as we become wiser, “any actual human being who acts, even deceptively, so as to save his physical life will always preserve his being better to at least some extent than one who does not” (1990:

227). In other words, in Garrett’s estimation, Spinoza did not hold (a).

In chapter 4, I argued that there is textual support for the claim that Spinoza regarded political resistance as ethico-rationally justified – indeed, as something akin to an imperative or duty – under certain circumstances, even when such resistance proves to be a lost cause (e.g., its agents are seized and executed, without having successfully implemented any of its liberal reforms). I do not wish to recapitulate this argument in its entirety here. I will merely point out that the reading I put forward in chapter 4 conflicts with Garrett’s, insofar as I alleged that, to

Spinoza, it is indeed sometimes the case that preserving one’s physical life is not the best way to preserve one’s being: viz., when ensuring one’s continued duration in time, i.e., preserving one’s bodily existence, would involve a marked compromise of one’s virtue, or precipitous decline in one’s power. To Spinoza, it is possible, however rare and difficult, to reach a threshold of adequate understanding or virtue – the greater portion of one’s mind having become eternal – beyond which one’s concern ceases to be so much persisting in one’s bodily existence

(differences in the duration of which contribute nothing to the degree of perfection one has attained – see E IV Pref.), as ensuring that the preservation of one’s bodily existence does not come at the expense of the virtue or rationality one has attained. I thus take Spinoza to mean it 282

when he declares that: “the human mind can be of such a nature that the part of the mind which

we have shown perishes with the body (see P21 [of part V]) is of no moment (nullius sit momenti) in relation to what remains” (E VP38S; Emphasis mine). Garrett is right to say that, even in the case of wise persons, the facets of their being that are inextricably related to the body and, thus, to the imagination – viz., the idiosyncrasies of their ‘personalities’, formed by habit or memory – are lost at death. But where these facets have become almost totally “insignificant”, then surely their loss should not be considered ‘of any moment’ or import either. Hence, while

Spinoza often explains that death is “less harmful to us, the greater the mind’s clear and distinct knowledge” (E VP38S; Italics mine), such that wise persons “hardly fear death (mortem vix

timeant)” (E VP39S; Italics mine), he also occasionally goes so far as to assert that those who are strong in character simply “do not fear death” (TTP XX.13).

In the scholium to proposition 39 of Ethics part V, from which I have just cited a passage,

Spinoza states that it is necessary, if these things are to be elucidated further, to note that “we live

in continuous change, and that as we change for the better or worse, we are called happy or

unhappy (felices, aut infelices)”. It is noteworthy that to shed light on his conception of unhappiness, Spinoza gives as an example of an unhappy person “he who has passed from being an infant or child to being a corpse” (Italics mine). By contrast, Spinoza says we ought to consider ourselves happy “if we pass the whole length of our life with a sound mind in a sound body”. Already, in setting up the contrast between happiness and unhappiness as he does,

Spinoza seems to intimate that what counts with respect to one’s happiness isn’t simply staving off death as long as one is capable of doing so – ‘persisting in being’, understood in a minimal, physical sense. As is confirmed by what Spinoza immediately goes on to say in this scholium, what matters isn’t dying tout court, but dying without having developed a body “capable of a great many things” (as an infant’s body is not), such that one also has “a mind which considered 283

only in itself is very much conscious of itself, and of God, and of things” – i.e., a mind that is, so

to speak, ‘filled’ with the intellectual love of god. Accordingly, Spinoza concludes this scholium

to the antepenultimate proposition of the Ethics by explaining254 that what we strive for

“especially (apprime: above all; first and foremost)” is not so much to survive, but to survive in

order that:

(…) the infant’s body [which is not at all the exclusive property of the new-born or the developmentally challenged] may change (as much as its nature allows and lends itself to) into another, capable of a great many things and related to a mind very much conscious of itself, of God, and of things. We strive, that is, that whatever is related to its memory or imagination is of hardly any moment (vix alicujus fit momenti) in relation to the intellect (…) (E VP39S).

And once this has been achieved, it is barely “of any moment” at all when we should physically

die – our continuation in this high degree of perfection adding nothing in itself to the degree of

perfection achieved. While we can, of course, continue to strive to enhance our understanding,

and thus to attain ever greater degrees of power, virtue, and (thus) indifference to death, what

becomes of greatest consequence at a certain point (which of course cannot be identified with

precision a priori), and when faced with certain situations, is warding off the possibility of

regressing: i.e., of compromising one’s virtue or rationality (e.g., by acting deceptively) because

of an excessive attachment to the pleasures of the body, one of which is simply the pleasure

inherent in one’s continued bodily existence. Spinoza never condemns the pleasures of the body

in themselves, and he firmly rejects any notion that bodily existence is, again in itself, an evil;

bodily pleasures have their recreational and restorative purposes (E IVP45C1), and the body is

most certainly not a prison to Spinoza. But Spinoza can be placed within the Stoic tradition insofar as he believes that, at a certain (unspecified) point, the realization of wisdom in the rational contemplation of eternal truths precludes certain forms of behaviour (such as deceit),

254 Spinoza has proclaimed his objective in this scholium to be to help his reader gain “a clearer understanding” of exactly why it is that the rational person barely fears death, if s/he fears it at all. 284

where such actions would have to be resorted to simply in order to prolong one’s bodily

existence.

Spinoza regards suicide as logically, and therefore also physically, impossible.255 The

conceptual and (meta-) physical impossibility of suicide follows straightforwardly from Ethics

IIIP4 (as well as IIIP6). This impossibility is explicitly asserted on numerous occasions in the

Ethics (IIP49S; IVP18S; IVP20S), and implied in Spinoza’s correspondence with Blyenbergh

(Ep 23). It is a contradiction, and hence impossible, “that a man should, from the necessity of his

own nature, strive not to exist, or to be changed into another form” (E IVP20S). All suicide

(self-destruction) is only ever apparent; it is really always altericide: a question of being

overcome or “defeated” by forces external to one’s conatus or essence. But none of this conflicts

with my claim that, according to Spinoza, the wise person will sometimes choose noble self-

sacrifice (apparent suicide) over debasing herself in view of prolonging her physical existence

(pace Matson 255).

The fact that my claim is in keeping with Spinoza’s views on suicide may be inferred

from what Spinoza has to say about Seneca at E IVP20S. In the midst of a discussion about how

those who commit suicide are always compelled to do so by external causes (i.e., suicide is never

the result of internal determination alone; it is never an expression of one’s nature, and hence of

one’s power/agency), Spinoza remarks that Seneca’s suicide was the result of his having been

commanded by the tyrant Nero “to open his veins”, or, in other words, of Seneca’s “[desire] to

avoid a greater evil by [submitting to] a lesser” (something Spinoza regards as perfectly rational:

cf. E IVP65). The wise person does not want to die: “No one (…) avoids food or kills himself

from the necessity of his own nature” (Ibid.). But in circumstances in which, as in the case of

255 Detailed discussions of the issue of suicide in Spinoza’s thought may be found in the works of: Barbone and Rice (1994); Matson (2001); and Miller (2005). 285

Seneca, continuing to live would mean facing a more gruesome and demeaning death (e.g., at the

hands of Nero’s soldiers), the wise person may choose to open his/her veins as the lesser of two

evils. Similarly, in circumstances within which, as in the case of the philosopher-martyrs of

Spinoza’s TTP, continuing to live would involve living in a lie – sustained hypocrisy in order to

conform to a tyrant’s attempt to impose uniformity of belief or speech – the wise person may

regard death as a result of an endeavour to resist the tyrant’s commands, in which what is lost

will be “of no moment”, as the lesser of two evils. This would be a forced choice, a ‘choice’ that

the rational person has been compelled to make by external causes. For this reason, it would not

technically be suicide. But nor would it simply be the result of a “weak mind” being utterly

overpowered by external forces (E IVP18S). On the contrary, it would, at least in some measure,

be an expression of strength of character – i.e., of tenacity and/or nobility – because it would,

given the circumstances (over which the Sage has no control), be a function of the Sage’s

rationality. In other words, it would be a ‘choice’ that only the Sage could be forced to make.

A further reason why the noble self-sacrifice of the Sage who fights in the name of a lost

cause is not tantamount to suicide in Spinoza’s eyes – and therefore does not contradict

Spinoza’s conatus-doctrine, as Garrett would seem to suppose – is that the ‘self’ of the wise

person is not the same as the ‘self’ of the ignorant (i.e., the person whose mind is made up mostly

of inadequate or imaginary ideas). The ‘self’ of the rational person coincides very little with

what is perishable in her: her memories, or imaginary ideas. The individual rational person, qua

rational, has become, or has become aware of her always having been, absolutely “trans-

individual”.256 The Sage is no longer simply, or no longer so much, this transient assemblage of

smaller bodies defined by a particular ratio of motion and rest, or the ideas he has in virtue of his

256 This felicitous term was first applied to Spinoza’s thought by É. Balibar in a study entitled Spinoza: From Individuality to Transindividuality (Delft: Eburon, 1997). 286 thinking via the imagination (i.e., via the way the body is affected by the bodies it encounters), as the entire eternal causal order of Nature apprehended with greater and greater simultaneity, and in greater and greater detail or concreteness, as the Sage progresses in knowledge of the second and third kinds. In other words, the rational person’s intellectual love of God does not just have

God/Nature as its object, but also as its subject: the Sage’s understanding of God/Nature is God or Nature’s self-understanding (such that the intellectual love of God is to be taken in both the objective and subjective genitive senses). It is as if the Sage’s conative ‘centre of gravity’ were transposed, such that she no longer seeks to persist merely as this physical assemblage at a certain moment in time, and in a certain set of transient dispositions, but as its eternal determinations – the adequate ideas that now form the greater part of her – such that the ‘self’ that is nobly sacrificed in resistance to tyranny becomes “of no moment”.

I have allowed myself another rather lengthy digression in order to pinpoint exactly where

I disagree with Garrett, and hence further clarify my own position on these crucial questions.

But the rest of Garrett’s argument – which I will now show presents the possibility of a second response to the ‘objection from the imperative of faithfulness’ I sketched earlier – can still be salvaged and made use of, even if Garrett is wrong to say that Spinoza regarded the drive to physical survival as trumping all other rational precepts (e.g., that of honesty or faithfulness).

For my real interest in Garrett’s argument lies in the fact that it depends upon a rather astute observation: viz., that there is an asymmetry, or discrepancy in extension, between the good and the rational in Spinoza’s ethics. As Garrett demonstrates, and as my overview of Spinoza’s ethical teachings in chapter 2 also established, Spinoza treats actions carried out “under the guidance of reason” or “from the dictate of reason” as coextensive with those performed “from virtue” (or which “are virtuous”), as well as with actions “a free man” would undertake (1990:

229). Garrett remarks that most commentators typically regard Spinoza as using yet another 287 evaluative term for actions – “good” – entirely interchangeably with the three I have just enumerated, such that every action that is good may also be considered as conforming to the dictates of reason, as something a free person would do, and as an expression of virtue. Garrett, on the other hand, argues that Spinoza does not treat all four of these evaluative terms as coextensive. He alleges that, to Spinoza, while everything that it is rational to do it is also good to do, not everything that it is good to do is necessarily in accordance with the dictates of reason.

The same asymmetry obtains, according to Garrett, in the relation between the good and the two other evaluative terms listed above. Garrett supports this claim by pointing to the use of these evaluative terms in relation to yet another pivotal ethical concept in Spinoza’s thought: viz., the concept of human perfection. As Garrett explains, Spinoza believes that one is more perfect, the more one comes to approximate the model or exemplar of human nature that Spinoza alludes to in the preface to part IV of the Ethics, and whose content is “developed gradually throughout the course of part IV, culminating in the portrait of the free man at IV P67-72” (1990: 230). To know “how the perfect man acts”, we must know “how the free man acts” (Ibid.).

The crux of Garrett’s argument is that while Spinoza defines human perfection as conformity to the model or ideal of the “free man”, Spinoza qualifies something as good “to the extent that it aids us in becoming like this model or ideal” – and there is no reason why the actions that should allow one to become rational should be perfectly coextensive with those which one would perform as expressions of one’s rationality (i.e., once one has become rational).

By analogy, Garrett reasons that if one’s standard for perfection were the life of the idle rich, the actions one would perform to achieve this lifestyle would, in large part, not be the same as those that actually embody this lifestyle (i.e., that one would perform once one has achieved it).

Garrett’s answer to the question of whether it is contradictory to say that the free/rational person always acts honestly, never deceptively, on the one hand, while insisting, on the other hand, that 288

it is good to preserve one’s being, and that one can sometimes best preserve one’s being by

acting deceptively, is thus that while the ideal free person does not act deceitfully, “deception

may [under circumstances in which physical existence can only be secured through it]

nevertheless be good for actual human beings who have not fully achieved this ideal” (Ibid.).

I have explained in some detail how I think Garrett overplays the fact that humans may

never fully realize the ideal of the free person since they are parts of Nature, forever susceptible –

though to varying degrees – to passions (i.e., to the influence of overpowering natural forces).

Thus, I think there are instances in which persons who are predominantly rational (something

Spinoza regards as “rare” and arduously achieved, but not impossible) will ‘choose’ to sacrifice

their continued physical existence – e.g., in the struggle against tyranny – rather than

compromise their virtue. However, while certain elements of my argument for the ethico-

rational validity of political resistance clash with Garrett’s interpretation of Spinoza’s ethics, it is

nevertheless possible to make use of Garrett’s argument as a second possible response to the

‘objection from the imperative of faithfulness’.257 This response would concede that resistance to the decrees of the Sovereign-turned-tyrant still constitutes a breach of faith, and thus conflicts with the rational precept of honesty or faithfulness. Hence, it would preclude regarding resistance as an expression of rationality – as an action one could perform insofar as one

conforms to the model of the free/rational person – but condone it as a necessary means to one’s

becoming rational. In other words, under its banner, resistance is no longer itself a rational act,

but is still justified ethico-rationally as a ‘good’ act, since (as I have tried to show in the previous

chapter, but as I will simply postulate here) it enables one to create an environment more

conducive to the fostering of reason (and hence also of freedom and virtue). To rephrase this

257 And it is possible to do so, regardless of whether or not Garrett is ultimately correct to say that the drive for the preservation of one’s physical existence (which, of course, is sanctioned by reason, since the latter, in Spinoza’s view, can command nothing contrary to nature) always trumps all other rational interests or precepts. 289

crucial point once more: this second response has a different approach than (and, to a certain

extent, exclusive of) the one I have regularly taken to the issue, for it can cover, and deflect

objections against the ethico-rational validity of, only those cases of resistance that are not

carried out as expressions of a rationality that has already (in large part) been realized – as I

have argued resistance can be – but rather as a means to enable one to become rational (or become more rational) by removing political impediments to the development of reason. While this may appear to limit its scope, the very fact that no human being is perfectly rational – perfectly incarnates the ideal of the free person – means that this response could cover all cases of resistance, though admittedly it still sits in some amount of tension with much of my argument for the ethico-rational validity of political resistance, which has often operated from the perspective of a rationality that, in large measure, is already achieved.

5.3. Spinoza and the Masses

It was intimated in chapter 4 that, by Spinoza’s own account, the development of adequate

knowledge can in itself constitute an act of resistance. As I will show in greater detail in the next

chapter, this is the case wherever the complex of inadequate ideas dismantled or ‘neutralized’ by

such knowledge provides ideological support vital to the survival of a disempowering political

regime.258 Having merely asserted this to be the case in chapter 4, I went on to argue that, in

Spinoza’s view, resistance in the form of such a rational critique of prejudices or illusions is

258 Such a regime is necessarily disempowering, if only because its very survival is predicated upon the perpetuation, and hence the cultivation, of inadequate ideas. Inadequate ideas can, of course, be concomitant with joyful passions, which, while they are not expressions of our power or nature alone, are ‘empowering’ in a certain sense. I have already explained how this is the case in general, and I will supply concrete examples of how even certain sad affects can – under certain conditions – be beneficial or ‘empowering’ in what follows. Ultimately, however, inadequate ideas are never as empowering as adequate ideas, since they are neither the product of our power alone, nor do they necessarily enable an increase in our power, as adequate ideas do (since, to Spinoza, adequate ideas give rise only to other adequate ideas). For this reason, a political regime that depends upon them for its survival is ipso facto disempowering. 290

ethico-rationally justified – indeed, a kind of prudential imperative. After explaining how such

rational critique is necessarily an unending task and establishing that the “best regime”

accommodates this form of resistance within its normal functioning, I then argued that resistance

to the commands of the Sovereign, perhaps even attempts to overthrow a particular regime, are

ethico-rationally warranted whenever the government endeavours to curtail its citizens’ basic

rights to free thought and free speech: i.e., whenever it attempts to prohibit the first form of

resistance. It might, however, be objected that these claims presuppose or entail ascribing to

Spinoza views regarding the capabilities and dispositions of the masses far more optimistic than

those which he actually espoused.

Many readers of Spinoza’s political writings have been struck by how bleakly and

unflatteringly Spinoza portrays the masses, which he alternately refers to as the “vulgar

(vulgus)”, the “mob (turba)”, and, especially, the “multitude (multitudo)”. I have already had the

opportunity to point to some of the many passages in which Spinoza states, in terms completely

unequivocal, that the majority of human beings “are led by blind desire more than by reason” (TP

II.5; cf. II.18; TTP XVII.4), and that, given its inherent difficulty, “those who believe that ordinary people (…) can be persuaded to live solely at reason’s behest are dreaming of the poets’ golden age or of a fairy tale” (TP I.5). Most crucially, perhaps, given what I have been arguing,

Spinoza has been accused of elitism for passages in which he bluntly asserts that “the masses can no more be freed from their superstition than from their fears” (TTP Pref. §15). In the same vein,

Spinoza frequently distinguishes between “the few” who are able, for example, to discern “the true purpose of [civil] law”, and “the great majority who are able to do nothing less than to lead their lives according to reason”. The latter, Spinoza contends, are unable to grasp the functional necessity of the law – i.e., the rationality of obeying the commands of the Sovereign. 291

However, the very irrationality of the multitude, which is attested to by its inability to

perceive the aim of, and need for, the civil law – i.e., by its inherent tendency towards

lawlessness and internecine strife – is also what makes it an object of apparent fear to Spinoza.

In an oft-cited passage from part IV of the Ethics, Spinoza tersely declares (paraphrasing Tacitus)

that: “the mob is terrifying, if unafraid (terret vulgus, nisi metuat)” (P54S).259 Spinoza makes an

almost identical remark in chapter VII of the TP, where he writes (this time directly quoting

Tacitus): “there is no moderation in the mob; they terrorise unless they are frightened (in vulgo

nihil modicum, terrere, ni paveant)” (§27).260 Spinoza, it will have been noted, alludes to the remedy in his very statement of the problem: the mob only ceases to be fearful – to be a tumultuous, disorderly, and conflict-ridden collection of individuals – to the degree that it is made to share in the fear of one and the same object. This common object of fear must be the

Sovereign’s ‘sword’: i.e., the State’s repressive apparatus, by means of which the Sovereign’s commands are enforced. In other words, the masses only come to act as if they were genuinely rational, and thus as if they were really ‘of one mind’, by being compelled, out of fear of punishment, to obey the laws of the State (and, hence, to live in accordance with the dictates of reason).

But more is needed than brute force to ‘tame’ the masses and lend their actions a façade of rationality through their external obedience (this obedience not being motivated by reason). In the scholium to proposition 54 of Ethics part IV, in which he is often supposed to have given voice to a deep-seated ‘fear of the multitude’, Spinoza insinuates that the Biblical prophets were aware of this, and that it is with an eye to their social utility261 that they sought to “commend

humility, repentance, and reverence so greatly”, for “those who are subject to these affects can be

259 For the passage in Tacitus, see: Annales, I, 29.3 (E. Curley supplies this reference in his edition of the Ethics). 260 S. Barbone and L. Rice provide the reference to Tacitus in their edition of the TP, as does C. Ramond in his. 261 Or as Spinoza puts it: “the common advantage”. 292

guided far more easily than others” (Italics mine). Spinoza certainly appears to agree with the

prophets on this score, as he states in the same scholium that the affects of humility and

repentance “bring more advantage than disadvantage”, such that “since men must sin, they ought

rather to sin in that direction”. Spinoza defines humility as “a sadness born of the fact that a man

considers his own lack of power, or weakness”. It is the opposite of acquiescentia in se ipso (E

III Def. of Affs. XXVI Exp.), which, if (and only if) it arises from reason, is “really (revera) the

highest thing (summum) we can hope for” (E IVP52S). Repentance, on the other hand, he

defines “as a sadness accompanied by the idea of some deed we believe ourselves to have done

from a free decision of the mind”. Like humility, repentance cannot arise from reason, and

cannot be considered a virtue, since it is not an expression of our power; one who is repentant

simply has the added distinction of being “twice wretched” (E IVP54). It is because these affects

are species of sadness that Spinoza is, on the whole, adamant that they ought never to be

promoted or sought out. And yet, despite this, Spinoza certainly appears to suggest in the

scholium to Ethics IVP54 that these affects ought to be fostered in the masses as a kind of

second-best – an ersatz substitute for reason (and the affects produced by, and/or truly in

accordance with, reason) in the masses, which, it would seem, are somehow constitutively

incapable of reason. Through such affects, the masses are rendered pliable to the will of the

Sovereign, and no longer trouble the stability and tranquillity of the State.

Even more surprisingly, Spinoza at times appears to regard superstition in a similarly

positive light, as a necessary supplement to brute force in the ‘taming’ of the masses. And while

this would contradict my portrayal of Spinoza in chapter 4 as a crusader for mass-enlightenment,

it would at least be consistent with his contention that superstition depends upon the proliferation

of sad affects, such that to approve of the proliferation of sad affects like humility and repentance

– as it would seem Spinoza sometimes does with respect to the masses – is to approve of the 293

pervasiveness of superstition (again, at least with respect to the masses).262 Thus, by way of

example, in the preface to the TTP, Spinoza appears to approve, albeit in an extremely equivocal

and qualified manner, of Curtius’ saying that: “there is no more effective means of governing the

masses than superstition” (§6).263 Spinoza’s apparent approval is guarded and equivocal, for he

cautions that while superstition can be an effective political device for maintaining power over

the masses, it is also very volatile – a strategy prone to ‘blowback’. Nevertheless, after

acknowledging the instability associated with superstition as a political tool, he cites the

examples of the “Turks” (the 17th century term for Muslims), who have learned to successfully

“counteract this tendency” towards instability by “[investing] religion (…) with such pomp and

ceremony that it can sustain any shock and constantly evoke the deepest reverence in all its

worshippers”. So great is the “success” of the Turks in this regard, according to Spinoza, that

they have “[gained] such a thorough hold on the individual’s judgement that they leave no room

in the mind for the exercise of reason, or even the capacity to doubt” (Ibid.).

Stronger and more explicit confirmation of Spinoza’s seemingly positive view of

superstition in relation to the masses is to be found in his analysis of the founding and early

history of the Hebrew State in chapters V and XVII of the TTP. In chapter XVII, Spinoza

affirms that: “the government’s power is not strictly confined to its power of coercion by fear,

but rests on all the possible means by which it can induce men to obey its commands”. In the

ruler’s arsenal of “means that contribute to men’s willingness to obey” (§2), the most prized are

those “means of inducing the great majority to believe, love, hate, etc., whatever he wills”. For,

as Spinoza observes, “he who reigns over his subjects’ minds holds the most powerful dominion”

(Ibid.). While it is difficult to control subjects’ tongues, and harder still to “exercise command

262 I will discuss the connection between sad affects and superstition in detail in the next chapter. 263 The passage may be found in Bk. IV, Ch. 10 of Curtius’ Historiae Alexandri Magni (Spinoza himself provides the reference). 294

over [their] minds”, Spinoza maintains that “experience abundantly testifies to the fact” that it is

possible, through careful “guidance” or clever manipulation on the ruler’s part, to produce

subjects “whose beliefs, love, hatred, contempt and every single emotion is under the sole

control of the governing power” (Italics mine).

How is such near-absolute power achieved, especially where “sovereignty is invested in a

few men or in one alone”? Spinoza’s answer is to be found in his discussion of Moses’ accession

to, and maintenance of, power over the Hebrew people. Moses recognized that he needed to

“convince the masses” that he was “endowed with some extraordinary quality”, or “surpassed all

others in divine power”.264 Having “convinced the people” of this through “many proofs”,

Moses then “introduced a state religion” – i.e., a State-sanctioned superstition – so as to “make

the people do their duty from devotion rather than fear” (TTP V.11). In this way, “the patriotism of the Hebrews was not simply patriotism, but piety” (TTP XVII.23), such that one of the major bulwarks of Moses’ power over his people was the fact that he was able to make them believe that rebelling against him was tantamount to rebelling against God. But the power Moses thus gained over his people’s ‘faculties of judgement’ (cf. TP II.11) was intimately tied to yet another means for ‘taming’ the otherwise insubordinate masses: viz., the disciplining of the body (and thus also the mind) involved in the “daily rituals” (TTP XVII.23), the “ceremonial practices”

(XVII.25), that Moses had the good sense to institute ‘at God’s behest’.265 Spinoza describes

how the fact that Moses’ state religion imposed a panoply of laws regulating every facet of his

subjects’ existence in minute detail, meant that their lives were “one long schooling” or “training

264 Spinoza points out that, while clever, such a ploy is not peculiar to Moses: because the State is always “in greater danger from its citizens than from the external enemy”, “Kings who in ancient times seized power” secured their power by “[persuading] men that they were descended from the immortal gods, thinking that if only their subjects and all men should regard them not as their equals but should believe them to be gods, they would willingly suffer their rule and would readily submit” (TTP XVII.6). Spinoza cites the examples of Augustus and Alexander. 265 Technically, Moses did not rule as sovereign. The Hebrews had alienated their rights to God, and appointed Moses to act as God’s mouthpiece, such that what Moses would command, they would receive as God’s will. 295

in strict obedience” (Ibid.), such that eventually their obedience no longer appeared to them “as bondage, but [as] freedom”. What these ceremonies achieved was to transform a rebellious and disorderly people, one that did not suffer being led by force alone (TTP V.10), into a society so

highly unified (TTP V.13) that “nobody desired what was forbidden and all desired what was commanded” (TTP XVII.25). In his concluding assessment of Moses’ efforts to ‘tame’ his people by setting up a State religion over which he himself would preside as God’s instrument,

Spinoza writes: “no more effective means can be devised to influence men’s minds, for nothing can so captivate the mind as joy springing from devotion, that is, love mingled with awe” (Ibid.).

Thus, in his treatment of the question of the ‘taming’ of the “terrifying” multitude, Spinoza

comes to sound like a full-fledged theorist of Raison d’État, for whom all serviceable methods

become fair game in the securing of State-power and the ‘subduing’ of the masses’ natural

unruliness – i.e., for whom the ends justify the means.266

Of potentially equal or greater concern for my argument that Spinoza regarded the effort to promote widespread enlightenment (through resistance in the form of philosophical critique) as an ethico-rational imperative are the few passages in which Spinoza appears to suggest or state outright that the free person must ‘adapt’ her teachings in view of, or ‘conform’ to, the beliefs and temperament of the masses. The first article of the provisional morality Spinoza presents in

§17 of the TIE declares it good: “to speak according to the power of understanding of ordinary people (ad captum vulgi), and do whatever does not interfere with our attaining our purpose [i.e., the knowledge of God]. For the advantage to be gained from ordinary people is not slight, if we concede as much as we can to their way of understanding”. Likewise, Spinoza explains in the scholium to proposition 70 of Ethics part IV that the rational person sometimes finds himself in

266 For a more detailed exploration of the extent to which Spinoza may be considered a theorist of Raison d’État, see: Van der Wal (1985). 296 circumstances in which he is obliged to compromise his strict rational principles and alter his behaviour and speech to cater to the expectations of the vulgar (e.g., by “returning thanks” in ways the vulgar find satisfying, even if the rational person should find these intrinsically dishonourable). A good example of such adaptation is Spinoza’s response when asked by his landlady, a Lutheran, whether he thought “qu’elle pût être sauvée dans la Religion don’t elle faisoit profession”. Colerus reports that Spinoza assured her she could be saved by adhering to it, “pourvû qu’en vous attachant à la piété, vous meniez en même tems une vie paisible & tranquille” (569). Given Spinoza’s conception of salvation as outlined in the last part of the

Ethics and chapter IV (inter alia) of the TTP (cf. chapter 2 of this dissertation), Spinoza’s response is, at best, a half-truth or equivocation: Mrs. Van der Spyck presumably wanted to know whether she could be saved from damnation in the afterlife, not whether she could, through her faith, enjoy tranquillity of mind in this life (cf. Cook 1999). Though well-intentioned, this response thus lends credibility to the claim that Spinoza distinguished between two forms of salvation: a higher form of salvation through the true knowledge of God for the philosophically- gifted few who could achieve it, and, for the ignorant many, a lesser form of salvation through faith and the practice of piety (i.e., of loving kindness and justice; the love of God through the love of one’s neighbour and obedience to religious and, especially, secular authorities) in a peaceful and well-ordered State.

In the preceding paragraphs, I have presented an all-too-common portrait of Spinoza’s views regarding the masses. If this view were indeed Spinoza’s, it would seriously call into question either my claim that resistance in the form of philosophical critique is an ethico-rational imperative, or the consistency of Spinoza’s political philosophy. It is not that this portrait is totally unfounded; we have seen how it has a textual basis. However, as I will now show, it is a portrait that is grounded in a one-sided and insufficiently attentive reading of the available 297

textual evidence. Or, put another way: it is a caricature. This will become clear, both from a

reconsideration of many of the passages I have already cited, and from the introduction of one or

two other passages. Let us start our reconsideration of the evidence with the scholium to

proposition 54 of Ethics IV, in which Spinoza famously proclaims “the mob” to be “terrifying if

unafraid”. It is true that Spinoza there positively re-evaluates the intrinsically sad affects of

humility and repentance with respect to their social function (since all hell would break loose “if

weak-minded men were all equally proud, ashamed of nothing, and afraid of nothing”). But

what must not be overlooked (as it was deliberately above) is that if Spinoza ‘recommends’ these

sad affects as socially useful, this isn’t only insofar as they enable the masses to be “guided far

more easily”, but rather insofar they enable the masses to be governed with ease, “so that in the

end they may live from the guidance of reason, that is, may be free and enjoy the life of the

blessed”. In other words, he regards them as socially useful in a provisional and conditional

sense. Though evil in the short term (and considered independently), they may enable the masses

to eventually develop their rational capacities, provided that wise rulers harness the docility and

malleability induced by these affects to this end. As such, and only as such, they are in fact good.

In this passage, at least, Spinoza does not say that they are good merely insofar as they lead the

masses to obey, hence solving the ‘problem’ of the recalcitrance of the masses to being governed

tout court. They are good if and only if they ultimately lead to the rational enlightenment of the masses, i.e., if and only if they help bring it about that “many others (…) understand as I [= a rational person] understand, so that their intellect and desire agree entirely with my intellect and desire” (TIE §13). To rephrase this crucial point: they are good if and only if they contribute to the emergence of a multitudo libera or “free people”.

The point I am trying to make is that it is inaccurate to say that Spinoza thought of ‘the masses’ as a static and monolithic entity, invariably condemned to irrationality – i.e., such that its 298 irrationality would be essential or constitutive. If it is true that “nature creates individuals, not nations” (TTP XVII.26), and if it is also true that one is not born, but rather becomes a citizen, surely it is also true that nature does not create such a thing as the multitude, whose properties would be the same at all times and in all places. In chapter 5 of the TP, Spinoza clearly distinguishes between a subjugated or slavish multitude (multitudo subacta) and a free multitude

(multitudo libera). The former is “led more by fear than by hope”, and seeks “only to avoid death” by serving its ruler(s) (§6), while the latter is “led more by hope than by fear”, and seeks not only “to engage in living”, but “to live for itself” (Ibid.). Moreover, as Spinoza explains just before introducing this distinction, ‘life’ in this context must be understood as “human life”, which, he emphasizes, “is characterized not just by the circulation of the blood and other features common to all animals, but especially by reason, the true virtue [i.e., power] and life of the mind” (TP V.5). Nothing in these sections of the TP would suggest that Spinoza doesn’t think a libera multitudo – a multitude that has been freed (at least to a very significant degree) from the thralls of superstition and is capable of rational self-determination – is eminently possible.

If, in light of this distinction, one revisits the passages in which Spinoza appears to endorse the cultivation, not only of certain sad affects, but also of superstition and the most stringent regimentation of everyday life in order to ‘tame’ the masses, one notices that Spinoza does not recommend these means for the taming of the multitude tout court, but for the taming of a certain type of multitude. If Spinoza appears to approve of their use by Moses upon the

Hebrews, it is because this was a people or ‘multitude’ that had become so habituated to, and was so “exhausted by the wretched conditions of” slavery that “the task of establishing a wise system of laws and of keeping the government in the hands of the whole community was quite beyond

[it]” (TTP V.10). This, according to Spinoza, was a people that would not have been receptive to the teachings of reason. Conversely, Spinoza states plainly that it is “only utter barbarians” that 299

will “allow themselves to be so blatantly deceived” as to take their rulers for gods (or their

earthly representatives), and thus “become slaves instead of subjects” (TTP XVII.6).

Further confirmation of the fact that the slavish/irrational multitude is formed by certain

socio-political conditions – i.e., that it is not ‘natural’ in the sense of some eternal given – is to be

found in chapter VII of the TP. Section 27 can easily be taken, as I knowingly did above, as yet

another instance in which Spinoza expresses his wariness of, and contempt for, the masses. If

taken out of context, certain passages can no doubt give this impression: “there is no moderation

in the mob; they terrorise unless they are frightened”; “the common people is either a humble

servant or an arrogant master, there is no truth or judgement in it”. But what must not be

overlooked is the fact that, at least on this occasion, Spinoza is taking others to task for

subscribing to these views in an unqualified manner. This is why he explicitly presents the

excerpts I have just cited as views expressed by others.267 Spinoza, by contrast, alleges that “all

men share in one and the same nature”, and that, as such, if the masses or common people

“terrorise” because they are devoid of reason, this is not because they are born that way, but

because socio-political conditions make them such. Reiterating (in abstract terms) what we have

seen Spinoza say about the particular case of the Hebrew people in the time of Moses, Spinoza

writes that if the people are unruly, and seem constitutively unable to govern themselves with

moderation, it is only because “freedom and slavery [i.e., their present condition] do not go well

together”. Even more importantly, given what I have argued in chapter 4, Spinoza maintains that

if the common people seem incapable of rational discernment, it is not because they are irrational

267 And as S. Barbone and L. Rice prove in their notes to the TP, Spinoza has indeed lifted these passages from other authors: the first is from Tacitus (Annals I, xxix, 3), the second from Livy (XXIV, xxv, 8) and Tacitus (Histories I, xxxii, 1). While Spinoza is most emphatic in this particular section of the TP about the fact that these views have been voiced by others, and, hence, most eager to dissociate himself from them, it is curious that almost all of Spinoza’s bleakest statements concerning the irrationality and unruliness of the masses are actually closely paraphrased from classical sources (something his contemporary readers – generally much better versed than today’s average reader in the literature of Greek and Latin antiquity – would have recognized). Cf. Balibar (1985: 382 fn. 12). 300

by nature – on the contrary, we have seen in chapter 2 that Spinoza regarded all humans as at

least potentially rational by definition or nature – but rather due to the fact that, for example: “the important affairs of state are conducted without their knowledge, and from the little that cannot be concealed they can only make conjecture”, such that they are virtually guaranteed “to misjudge things and to put the wrong interpretation on everything”.

In sum, it isn’t fair to say that Spinoza took the masses or ‘common people’ to be completely unreceptive to enlightenment, and hence impervious to efforts to rid them of their prejudices and illusions.268 Spinoza’s supposedly pessimistic view of the masses cannot,

therefore, be used as an objection to my claim – the argument for which I have outlined in the

previous chapter – that Spinoza regarded resistance in the form of rational critique as an ethico-

rational imperative. Though I have shown that Spinoza considered a free – i.e., rationally

enlightened – multitude to be a possibility, it is true that Spinoza regarded it as an established

fact that “most men” are led more by their passions than by reason, and that those who are guided

primarily by reason are a rarity. But this does not mean that one needn’t try to change this state

of affairs to the extent that one can; Spinoza would not have written his ethics had he thought

otherwise. What’s more, even if it is granted that the majority of human beings can never be

made to live by the guidance of reason alone (Yovel 1985: 306), all I have claimed is that it is a

precept of reason that we strive to bring it about that as many as possible share in the supreme

good: i.e., in the life of reason; in the intellectual love of God. Spinoza believes it is in one’s

interest (to try) to make enlightenment as widespread as possible. If it proves impossible to

enlighten the multitude as a whole, so be it. After all, it is Spinoza’s conviction that “in a free

man, a timely flight [or more broadly: resignation to what cannot be otherwise] is considered to

show as much tenacity [and, one presumes, nobility] as fighting; [in other words] a free man

268 For more on the issue of Spinoza’s ambivalence towards the ‘masses’, cf.: Balibar (1985: esp. 358, 377-378). 301

chooses flight with the same tenacity [and, again one can assume, nobility], or presence of mind,

as he chooses a contest” (E IVP69C). If my interpolations are sound,269 then, applied to the

question that has been occupying us, this proposition entails that we are under an ethico-rational

imperative only to do what we can to advance the cause of enlightenment. If the prejudices of

the masses prove too deeply entrenched and/or too well reinforced by socio-political factors

beyond our control, but “we are conscious that we have done our duty” (E IV Ch. XXXII) to

tenaciously and nobly encourage as “many others” (TIE §14) as possible to share in the good life,

the life of reason, then “the better part of us [that is, the part of us defined by understanding] will

be entirely satisfied with this, and will strive to persevere in that satisfaction” (Ibid.).

5.4. Sub specie durationis: The Uncertainty of Action

Thus far in this chapter I have considered two major potential objections to, or problems

posed by, my claim that Spinoza’s ethico-rational analysis of politics validates political

resistance under certain conditions. To the ‘objection from the ethico-rational imperative of

faithfulness’ that rests on proposition 72 of Ethics part IV, I presented two possible responses in

considerable detail. The first was based on the contractualist and constitutionalist elements of

Spinoza’s political thought, while the second relied on a certain asymmetry between the good

and the rational or virtuous in Spinoza’s ethics and, hence, ethico-rational analysis of politics. I

have just finished dealing with a second major objection: viz., that my interpretation of Spinoza’s

political theory (and, especially, of his stance vis-à-vis the validity of political resistance) is at

odds with his pessimistic view of the masses. My response to this charge was twofold. It mainly

consisted in exposing the superficiality and one-sidedness of this all-too-common (mis)construal

of Spinoza’s writings. But it also consisted in simply reminding the reader that what reason

269 See footnote 7 of chapter 4. 302 commands, according to Spinoza, is that we strive to bring it about that as many of our fellow human beings as possible should come to partake in the supreme good (i.e., in the rational comprehension of the necessary order of Nature). And, as we have seen, one form this striving commanded by reason can take is the rational critique of the prejudices that prevent the attainment of this good. Reason does not, however, require us to perform the impossible. Where the efforts of the rational person do not meet with success, the rational person accepts this failure with equanimity. And where the rational person foresees no prospects for success in emancipating the masses – or, for that matter, any particular individual or group – from their prejudices, her prudent renunciation of such a futile struggle will also be testimony to her tenacity and nobility.

This brings up a final issue: viz., that of the ineradicable uncertainty of ethical and political action. As we saw in chapter 2, Spinoza repeatedly underscores the narrow limits of our knowledge. In the TTP, he asserts on several occasions that we have little – sometimes he even says “no” – knowledge of the “co-ordination and interconnection of things (rerum coordinationem et concatenationem)” (IV.1). Spinoza’s verdict, this time specifically pertaining to the possibility of moral knowledge, is even gloomier in the Ethics. In the scholium to proposition 62 of part IV, he explains that “we can have only a quite inadequate knowledge of the duration of things” since the latter relies almost entirely on the imagination. This entails that

“the true knowledge we have of good and evil is only abstract, or universal, and the judgement we make concerning the order of things and the connection of causes, so that we may be able to determine what in the present is good and evil for us, is [more] imaginary than real” (Italics 303

mine).270 As I showed in chapter 2, Spinoza thinks it is possible to achieve true and certain

moral knowledge by means of reason. However, such knowledge takes the form of very general

principles regarding the maximization of our potentia existendi. This is not to say that it is

devoid of content, only that these rational precepts are universal/abstract, whereas ethical and

political action is always concrete, is always concerned with a set of particular circumstances and

singular individuals. At times, Spinoza gestures towards, and even seems to make use of, a kind

of ‘test of universalization’ to rationally determine whether a particular ‘maxim of action’ is in

conformity with the dictates of reason (cf. section 2.6 of chapter 3). While this might help close

the gap between reason’s universality and the particularity of ethico-political action, it cannot

solve the problem entirely, for the maxim to be appraised must itself be of a certain generality to

be admissible for the test, and something other than reason is required to determine this level of

generality, and select the ‘ethically salient’ features to include in it. The bottom line is that, as

we have seen Spinoza concede in the scholium to Ethics IVP62, there is no universal, rational

formula that could enable us to determine what to do – what is good (i.e., in one’s interest) and

evil (i.e., disempowering) – in any given situation. Such a universal formula would itself require

a universal formula for its application, thus embarking us on an infinite regress. Reason, which

deals with common notions, cannot tell us when the opportune moment for a particular action has

arisen or will arise, nor can it tell us exactly how to seize it.

As became apparent in chapter 2 of this dissertation, Spinoza’s writings say woefully little

about the epistemological status or nature of practical judgements – i.e., judgements regarding

“what in the present (in praesenti: at this moment; here and now) is good and evil” (E IVP62S).

He never specifies what kind of knowledge such judgements can be categorized as, nor what

270 E. Curley’s translation omits the ‘more’, which can be seen in the original Latin: sit potius imaginarium, quam reale. Spinoza is not saying that our knowledge of what is good and evil in the present is exclusively imaginary, as Curley’s translation would lead one to believe, but only that it owes more to the imagination than to reason. 304

kind of interaction between the various forms of knowledge might give rise to them. The most

he ever says is that they are “more imaginary than rational” (Ibid.). This is a tantalizing but

(unfortunately) undeveloped indication that such judgements might be the product of some sort

of interaction between reason and the imagination.271 I have offered some (highly speculative)

suggestions as to what this might mean, and what such an interaction might look like, in chapter

2. My point at this juncture is simply that while Spinoza may not have formally introduced and

theoretically explicated it, his ethical writings clearly posited, and described the operation of,

some sort of Spinozan equivalent (mutatis mutandis) to the Aristotelian faculty of phronesis,272

with this crucial difference: Spinoza’s version admits of a much greater degree of uncertainty (cf.

Sévérac 362-363, 387). While Spinoza, like Aristotle, suggests that some people are prudent in

their judgements concerning everyday affairs whereas others are not (cf. TTP III.5), and believes

that such judgements cannot be (fully) accounted for by reason alone (narrowly or broadly

conceived), he does not believe that we can ever be certain of the rectitude of the majority of our

particular decisions regarding ethico-political action in the here and now. We can achieve certain

knowledge of our universal ethical principles, but only rarely of the way we choose to apply

them in concreto. However, as the following passage from chapter XV of the TTP illustrates,

this uncertainty does not trouble Spinoza: “Could we live our lives wisely (sapienter: Spinoza

might just as well have written ‘prudently’) if we were to accept as true nothing that could

271 The undeveloped character of this indication also makes it ambiguous, as it leaves undetermined whether ‘rational’ should be taken in the narrow sense, as referring to only the second of Spinoza’s three types of knowledge (as presented in the second scholium to E IIP40), or in the wider sense Spinoza sometimes lends it, such that it includes both the second and third forms of knowledge (i.e., both reason and intuition). 272 To Aristotle, demonstrative or deductive reason (epistêmê), the power to construct syllogisms on the basis of first principles grasped immediately through intuitive reason (nous), can tell us nothing about the opportune moment (kairos) for action, nor about how general ethical principles get cashed out hic et nunc. Aristotle calls the ability to ‘know’ the how and when of morally virtuous actions phronesis (practical wisdom or prudence). Though Aristotle offers some reflections on the role of habituation and education in the development of phronesis, no complete theoretical explanation of our ability to apprehend the kairos, or what it is good to do in any concrete situation, is possible: ultimately, the phronemos (the practically-wise or prudent man) simply ‘sees’ it. 305 conceivably be called into doubt on any principle of scepticism? Are not most of our actions in any case fraught with uncertainty and hazard (non admodum incertae sint et alea plenae)?” (§7;

Italics mine).

The goal of ethical and political action is always to preserve and, whenever possible, enhance our potentia existendi. In extremely abstract terms, this is to say that we ought to seek out joyful encounters, which are joyful precisely because they promote our conatus essendi, and shun all encounters that provoke sadness. The former are good, the latter are evil. In slightly less abstract terms, it can be rationally demonstrated (Spinoza does so in part IV of the Ethics) that whatever leads to an increase in our power to understand is good. Once we are in possession of such a general principle, certain other rational precepts can be derived from it fairly straightforwardly (either immediately or mediately, through the addition of a few other premises

– which must either be postulated, or gathered from empirical observation). For example, if it can be assumed, or established either a priori or a posteriori, that the free exchange of ideas with other human beings is either a conditio sine qua non for, or even just a very effective means to, the flourishing of our powers of understanding, then any attempt on the part of the Sovereign (or any faction within the State) to prohibit or in any way impede such an exchange can, with complete certainty, be deemed evil – perhaps even the summum malum, since what it would prevent is the summum bonum. Likewise, if understanding is our highest good, then any attempt on the part of the Sovereign (or any faction within the State) to impose belief in an absurdity – something that defies reason – is also evil. It follows that resisting such an evil can also be deemed good (or justified) with certainty, at least in abstract or general terms. The question becomes murkier, and our judgements correspondingly less certain, when we descend from this level of abstraction, and consider how these general principles apply ‘on the ground’. For such abstract knowledge may assist us in recognizing tyranny, and validate resistance to tyranny in 306

general, but it does not tell us exactly what constitutes tyranny in any particular socio-historical

context, or exactly what the most effective, most suitable, or most timely course of action might

be in order to successfully bring about a more empowering regime. In Spinoza’s view, ethical

and political action involves a very large part of trial and error, of experimentation. And his

insistence on the need for worldly experience in order to hold office strongly suggests that if the

knowledge of what is good and evil hic et nunc is “more imaginary than rational” it is because such knowledge – and I take it Spinoza regards the knowledge of what is beneficial in the moment as synonymous with ‘prudence’ – is based, in largest part, on one’s memory (the memory being a function of the imagination) of what has proven beneficial or harmful in similar, though never identical, situations in the past.

It might be objected that, since the ethico-rational justification of any act hinges on its actually serving to empower its agent(s), Spinoza’s apparent acknowledgement that the precise repercussions of our actions can never, or almost never, be foreseen with certainty entails that no particular act of political resistance can ever be ethico-rationally justified ante factum. This objection works by focusing on what I have called (cf. chapter 4, section 3) the ‘consequentialist’ criterion for the ethico-rational justification of an act of political resistance, according to which it is a necessary condition for the ethico-rational justification of any act of resistance that it actually serve to empower not only its agent(s) but, ideally, its target(s) as well. For if the consequences of any act of resistance cannot all be known in advance, no particular act of resistance can ever be ethico-rationally justified – at least not before the deed has been done and the dust has settled.

Besides the fact that the very same objection could be returned against those who would argue, on the basis of Spinoza’s specific brand of ethical scepticism, that only strict political obedience could be ethico-rationally validated, there are a few things that must be considered in response to this potential objection. The first is that Spinoza does not say that the ethical value of 307 all of our actions is subject to doubt; he says that “most of our actions [are] fraught with uncertainty and hazard”. It is possible that Spinoza would have regarded (e.g.) the tyranny of some regimes as so flagrant, its abuses so massive, that the legitimacy of revolt against it – in any form, and at any moment – would be indubitable. The second point is the fact that, as we have seen, Spinoza thinks it would be folly to require absolute certainty about the positive (i.e., empowering/joyful) consequences of any undertaking in order to commit to it. I have shown that at least one strand of Spinoza’s ethico-rational analysis of politics – which begins with certain common notions and proceeds to draw further general principles from these – can be said to justify political resistance under certain circumstances, provided the act of political resistance also meets certain ‘intentionalist’ and ‘consequentialist’ conditions. I have thus fulfilled the purpose of this chapter and the last, which was to derive conditions for the ethico-rational justification of political resistance from Spinoza’s ethical theory and ethico-rational analysis of politics. Such a general theoretical account of the conditions under which political resistance is ethico-rationally justified cannot be, and is not intended to act as, a substitute for the practical wisdom or prudence of the particular individuals who must apply these abstract lessons to particular cases. But nor does it have to be, for it was never the central ambition of this chapter or the last to determine whether and, if so, how, it is possible to know with certainty (especially ante factum, but even post factum) that a particular act of resistance, considered and/or carried out in a particular historical and socio-political context, meets the general conditions that can be determined a priori for ethico-rationally justified political resistance.

Strictly speaking, the ‘intentionalist’ component to the Spinozist theory of ethico- rationally justified political resistance excludes the possibility of justifying particular acts of resistance ante factum. For if part of what makes a particular act of resistance consistent with the dictates of reason is the appropriate intentional and affective disposition(s) of its agent(s), and 308

these cannot be known to be such in advance, then neither can it be known in advance of its

being performed whether a particular act of resistance is ethico-rationally justified. And we have

just seen how, at minimum, the ‘consequentialist’ criterion casts doubt on the possibility of the

ethico-rational justification of a particular act of political resistance ante factum. However, to

make a point that I have made several times by now (but that it is nevertheless worth repeating),

for the purposes of my argument in this dissertation, it is only of secondary importance whether

or not such ante factum justification is possible. For if it the determination of the justification of

a particular act of political resistance in terms of the three types of ethico-rational conditions I

have identified in this dissertation (i.e., intentionalist, consequentialist, and contextual) can only

ever take place post factum, this does not mean the evaluation thereby ceases to be ethico-

rational – i.e., that it must necessarily become de facto (the only possible form of ‘justification’ within the realist/immanentist analysis of politics). And if the post factum evaluation of the justification of a given act of political resistance can remain ethico-rational, then it remains within the purview (and does not undermine the validity) of a study of the ethico-rational conditions of justified political resistance. What’s more, this dissertation will have achieved its aim, even if it is demonstrated that the evaluation of the ethico-rational legitimacy of a given act of resistance is, according to Spinoza, impossible both ante factum and post factum. For the question of our ability to know whether and how a particular act of resistance meets the general requirements of ethico-rationally justified resistance is different from the question of those general requirements. And this study has, first and foremost, been concerned with the latter: i.e., with the identification of these general requirements. It must ultimately be left to the phronemos

– to the individual of practical wisdom – to determine what particular deeds, hic et nunc, fulfil these general ethico-rational conditions. 309

Chapter 6

Knowledge is Resistance: On the Political Role of Adequate Ideas in Spinoza’s Philosophy

6.1. Introduction

In this dissertation, I have sought to ascertain the status of political resistance within

Spinoza’s ethico-political analysis of politics. In chapter 3, I provided a comprehensive overview of the various arguments that are either explicitly deployed by Spinoza, or that can be gleaned from a reading of his works, in support of the claim that strict obedience to the commands of the

Sovereign is imperative from an ethico-rational standpoint. However, I then went on to demonstrate in chapters 4 and 5 that it is nevertheless possible to discern in Spinoza’s writings at least the broad contours of an ethico-rational justification for political resistance – or more precisely, of an ethico-rational validation of certain forms of political resistance under normal circumstances, and of any and all means of resistance (even physical violence) under exceptional circumstances and upon certain conditions. Thus, I argued that, to Spinoza, the ethico-rationally justified form of political resistance par excellence under normal circumstances – i.e., as part of the normal functioning of the State’s institutional mechanisms – is the rational critique of prejudices or, in Spinozist parlance, the development of adequate ideas. Furthermore, I argued that it is only when the Sovereign seeks to prevent this normal (and, in principle, unending) form of resistance-cum-critique and impose uniformity of thought and speech upon his/her subjects that all means of active political resistance become legitimate in order to safeguard or re-establish this normal, institutionalized form of political resistance. Yet, in the two preceding chapters, the fact that the rational critique of prejudices – i.e., the development of adequate ideas – can constitute a form of political resistance was, for the most part, merely asserted to be the case. It 310 thus remains for me, in this 6th and final chapter, to demonstrate that and how this is the case, according to Spinoza.

That Spinoza’s theory of knowledge is of “ethical significance” (Mark 5) is patent even upon the most casual of readings, and thus universally acknowledged by commentators. Less obvious perhaps are the political ramifications of Spinoza’s theory of knowledge.273 It will be recalled from our treatment of his ethical teachings in chapter 2 that, to Spinoza, true happiness, freedom, or self-contentment (acquiescentia in se ipso) all consist in our understanding of, and, hence, alignment with, the necessary order of Nature. Now, as we saw in section 5 of chapter 3, this doctrine of salvation through the intellectual love of god is often construed as a solitary and a-political affair. To substantiate this view, scholars cite passages such as the one from chapter

XVI, annotation 33, of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (TTP), in which Spinoza declares that

“a man can be free in any kind of state, for a man is free (…) to the extent that he is guided by reason”. On the basis of such textual evidence, if they do not go so far as to contend that Spinoza completely dissociates the conduct of politics from what they allege to be, in principle, the solitary, contemplative activity of the philosopher, they are willing to grant only a minimal relation of dependence between philosophy and politics, insofar as the philosopher is said to require of any political regime only the modicum of peace and stability needed to enjoy the highest good: the rational comprehension of the natural order. Hence, to the extent that this interpretation does not altogether overlook the political implications of Spinoza’s metaphysics and epistemology, the latter are made out to engender, or at least go hand-in-hand with, a politics of rationally justified obedience. In terms of charting the connections between the basic tenets of

Spinoza’s metaphysics and epistemology on the one hand, and his political theory on the other,

273 It is telling that neither of the two major studies of Spinoza’s epistemology in English – viz., G.H.R. Parkinson’s Spinoza’s Theory of Knowledge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954) and T.C. Mark’s Spinoza’s Theory of Truth (New York: Columbia UP, 1972) – devotes any space to this issue. 311 readers of this persuasion commonly take the further step of depicting the acquiescentia that is said to accompany the attainment of true knowledge as a state of quietude and resignation, in which one comes to discern the ineluctability of all events in Nature and, hence, the futility of the desire to change what cannot be otherwise. Thus, as we also saw in section 5 of chapter 3, this reading lends itself well to a conservative interpretation of Spinoza’s politics that highlights those passages in which Spinoza seems to promote the acceptance of the status quo, and proscribe any endeavour to subvert the given political order or resist its figures of authority.

This being said, a number of studies dedicated to Spinoza’s political philosophy have, of late, re-examined the question of its relation to the other tiers of his philosophical edifice.

Authors like A. Matheron (1969), E. Balibar (1985), and W. Montag (1999) have sought to combat the individualistic and (largely) apolitical interpretation I have just sketched, arguing that salvation through enlightenment is an unavoidably collective enterprise, and pointing out the role that active political involvement and organization play both in Spinoza’s account of the development of reason (even at the level of the individual) and in his account of its deployment as genuine social and individual freedom. The most daring of these studies have argued that

Spinoza’s philosophical project should in fact be regarded as culminating in a theory of ontologically constitutive, political praxis.274 But even these studies have not exhaustively explored the question of the relation between Spinoza’s epistemological and political theory. If we take the Deleuzian reading (especially as explicated by M. Hardt) as emblematic, the little that is said regarding this relation tends to emphasize the intimate connection between Spinoza’s account of the genesis of rational and intuitive knowledge and the process whereby an anarchic

274 This reading has been put forward by: A. Negri (1991, 2004); A. Tosel (1984); and G. Deleuze (1968, 1981) – at least as the latter is read by M. Hardt (1991, 1993). 312 multiplicity of individuals freely constitutes itself into a cohesive political body.275 In other words, the tendency among these scholars has been to focus on the parallels between the mechanism that gives rise to adequate ideas and the compositional mechanism that yields an organized political assemblage.

It is not my intention to examine the validity of either this general school of interpretation or its Deleuzian variant (as reconstructed by Hardt) in this chapter. Rather, what I wish to show is that even if its validity is granted, it should only be regarded as telling half the story. The purpose of this chapter is thus, in part, to amend the one-sidedness of this interpretation by demonstrating how the formation of adequate ideas can also play a role in effective political resistance – i.e., in the de-composition of disempowering forms of rule. My goal is to show that the formation of what Spinoza labels adequate ideas can serve to undermine the authority of particular institutions, classes, or persons by uncovering and thus neutralizing the often dubious and surreptitious physical, economic, and psychological-ideological means through which their power is exercised.276 I will do so by looking to Spinoza’s own writings for an example of such a politically subversive use of adequate ideas. Specifically, I will argue that such an example is to be found in two pivotal sections in the Ethics (viz., the Appendix to part I and the Preface to part

IV), read in conjunction with the Preface to Spinoza’s TTP. In these texts, Spinoza uncovers the causes lying behind, and, hence, enables his readers to arrive at an adequate understanding of, the

“supreme mystery of despotism” – i.e., how rulers can induce ostensibly voluntary slavery through the cultivation of sad affects and (hence) the disempowering of their subjects. My point

275 See M. Hardt (1993: 103). 276 In other words, my objective is to validate P. Macherey’s claim that the goal that guided Foucault’s efforts in his monumental History of Sexuality – viz., “to find out to what extent the task of thinking about one’s own history can liberate thought from that which it thinks silently and make it possible for it to think differently” (1990: 9) – is a suitable description of one of the ways adequate ideas can operate in a political setting (1989: 213; cf. Préposiet 373- 375). 313 is that if, as Spinoza explicitly asserts, the causes of willing subjugation must remain secret to be effective, then Spinoza’s effort to disclose them is, by his own account, a subversive act with respect to the political regimes or forces whose success is predicated upon their being kept out of sight.

6.2. On the Nature of Ideas: Review

6.2.1. The Modal Status of Ideas

What is an idea? To Spinoza, an idea is a mode of the attribute of thought. The modal status of individual ideas is of utmost significance with respect to the dichotomy between adequate and inadequate ideas that is central to Spinoza’s epistemology. To see how this is the case, we must begin with a look at the nature of God’s causality with respect to his modes.

Proposition 16 of part I reads: “From the necessity of the divine nature there must follow infinitely many things in infinitely many modes (i.e., everything which can fall under an infinite intellect)”. This being granted, it follows almost trivially that: “In nature there is nothing contingent, but all things have been determined from the necessity of the divine nature to exist and produce an effect in a certain way”.277 If the significance of the modal status of ideas is to be grasped, I must also elucidate Spinoza’s doctrine of the ‘parallelism’ of modes within each attribute. The fact that each attribute is conceived through itself (E IIIP2Dem), or that “the modes of each attribute have God for their cause only insofar as he is considered under the attribute of which they are modes” (E IIP6), coupled with the fact that “the knowledge of an effect depends on, and involves, the knowledge of its cause” (E IA4), excludes the possibility of causal interaction between modes of different attributes: e.g., between the body as mode of

277 This also implies that even in God will and intellect are indistinguishable. God’s power is not that of an eminently powerful sovereign, bringing into being by an unconditioned fiat whatever should strike his fancy (E IIP3S). 314 extension, and the mind as mode of thought. Because there is but one substance comprehended under various attributes, it is also the case that “a mode of extension and the idea of that mode are one and the same thing, but expressed in two ways” (E IIP7S).

The nature of God’s causality, in conjunction with Spinoza’s proof for the parallelism of modes within each attribute, entails that: “Ideas, both of God’s attributes and of singular things, admit not the objects themselves, or the things perceived, as their efficient cause, but God himself, insofar as he is a thinking thing” (E IIP5). The representational content of our ideas is not the result of, but only accompanied by, the impinging of bodies on our physical body. The mind is a “spiritual automaton” (TIE §85), and all of its ideas – whether adequate or inadequate –

“follow with the same [logical/causal] necessity” (E IIP36Dem.). As we will see, it is this last point that allows for the possibility that some adequate ideas may function as a politically efficacious critique by uncovering the origins of the very inadequate ideas that buttress certain political regimes.

6.2.2. Inadequate Ideas

In part II of the Ethics, Spinoza offers an intricate metaphysical account of the nature of inadequate ideas. Summarizing to the extreme, one could say that, to Spinoza, our knowledge is inadequate when we do not comprehend the entire nexus of ideas related to – indeed, underlying or generating – the idea(s) which we have. This is bound to seem a little abstract, if not altogether perplexing. A richer and more concrete explanation of the nature of inadequate ideas can be gleaned from an examination of the kind of cognition to which they are linked: viz., knowledge stemming from the imagination. For most people, it will be true to say that the majority of the ideas they have are ideas of the affections of their bodies. These ideas are

“images of things (rerum imagines)”, and represent the traces (vestigia) of the affecting body (or 315 bodies) on their bodies. Now the manner in which a body is affected depends just as much on the body affected as on the body affecting. From this, we can infer: first, that the human mind does not have immediate access to its own body, but perceives it through the mediation of “a great many bodies” which it perceives “together with the nature of its own body” (E IIP16C1); and second, that we perceive the nature of external bodies in a derivative manner, based on the way they affect us (E IIP16).278 In other words, the ideas I have of my body, as well as of the objects that surround me, when I think on the basis of images, are not clear and distinct, but confused.

An example will illustrate how the experience of the world we obtain through the senses is both confused and mutilated. At E IIP35S, and again in the scholium to IVP1, Spinoza remarks: “when we look at the sun, we imagine it as about two hundred feet away from us”.

Spinoza is quick to point out that this error does not consist in the imagining per se, which our mind has no power to prevent, since, as a “part of Nature”, our imagination is determined to produce the images it happens to produce on the basis of the relations our body happens to enter into with other bodies. Considered solely as a power, the imagination cannot err. It is the sole source of error, but only insofar as it is deprived of the ideas that would allow it to interpret the data it is presented correctly, and insofar as it is ignorant of “the cause of this imagining”. In the case of our perception of the sun, error lies solely in the judgement through which we conflate our image of the sun with the sun as it exists independently of its appearing to us. As Y. Yovel puts it, the image I have of the sun “purports to be the idea of the sun when, indeed, it is the idea of the interplay” between the sun and my sensory apparatus (105-106).

In what manner is my sense-idea of the sun also mutilated? To Spinoza, inadequate ideas are fragmentary because they “are like conclusions without premises (consequentiae absque

278 The same can be said both for the mind’s self-perception, for it knows itself only “insofar as it perceives the ideas of the affections of the body” (E IIP23), and for its perception of the parts of which it is composed. 316 praemissis)” (E IIP28Dem). Ideas of the affections of the body (which, to Spinoza, are what first constitutes the human mind) are representations of effects without their causes. They passively register the fact of the body’s being modified in a certain way. Moreover, they are acquired according to whatever chance encounters we happen to make, as we are externally determined by the “common order of Nature” (E IIP29S). Knowledge based on the imagination is thus the fruit of purely “random experience (experientia vaga)” (E IIP40S2); it reflects only the accidents and idiosyncrasies of one’s biography, as organized by the laws of psychological association or habit

(memory).279

Now, as Spinoza makes plain, the ideas of the modifications of the body always imply a certain agreement or disagreement with the objects encountered; they always involve a lived passage from one degree of power to another.280 The ideas of these modifications are fragmentary, and therefore inadequate, insofar as they involve only the brute awareness of this agreement or disagreement, without the knowledge of why the foreign body affecting ours does or does not concord with it, so as to increase or decrease our power of acting. To the extent that our ideas are mutilated or inadequate, we are thus subject to passions. In short, inadequate ideas are mutilated because they are severed from the logical/causal system in which they are

279 The nature of inadequate ideas may also be explained as a discrepancy between the idea(s) that we are and the idea(s) that we have (Matheron 1988: 64). An example from the scholium to proposition 17 will help drive home this distinction between an idea that explicates the nature of an individual (i.e., the idea which is the mind of this individual) and the inadequate idea that is had of this individual (even by the individual in question). Hence, according to Spinoza’s schema, the idea of Peter “which constitutes the essence of Peter’s mind (…) directly explains the essence of Peter’s body, and does not involve existence, except so long as Peter exists” (i.e., so long as “a great many parts” continue to instantiate his constitutive ratio of motion and rest). By contrast, the idea of Peter which is in another person (e.g., Paul), or which is in Peter insofar as he perceives himself by means of an idea of the affections of his body (its intermingling with other bodies), “indicates the constitution of Paul’s body [or Peter’s being affected by other bodies] more than Peter’s nature”. And as for Paul: “while that condition of Paul’s body lasts, Paul will still regard Peter as present to him, even though Peter does not exist”. This, according to Spinoza, is the power of the imagination: to represent external bodies as present to the mind through the ideas of the body’s affections. 280 I.e., an affectus of joy if the passage implied in the idea of the modification is lived as an increase in our capacity to act; an affect of sadness if the lived passage implied in the idea of the modification marks a decrease in our capacity to act. 317 embedded, and of which they are the expressions, which God comprehends “not only insofar as he constitutes the nature of the human mind, but insofar as he also has the idea of another thing together with the human mind” (E IIP11C).

6.2.3. Adequate Ideas

Spinoza first defines an adequate idea as: “an idea which, insofar as it is considered in itself, without relation to an object, has all the properties, or intrinsic denominations of a true idea” (E IID4). Truth, according to this formulation, is its own standard: true ideas are “not something mute, like [pictures] on a tablet”, but rather themselves affirmative or negative judgements of the highest certainty (E IIP49S; E IIIP2S). There is no tension between this intrinsic definition, and the extrinsic definition of truth as convenientia given in part I (axiom 6): since the order and connection of ideas is identical to the order and connection of things, the intrinsic and extrinsic denominations are in effect two ways of describing the same thing (E

IIP7). Adequate ideas are true ideas: there is no dissonance between how they are in us, and how they are in the mind of God (which, by E IIP32 contains only true ideas).

The intrinsic denominations are important because they indicate a connection between the adequacy of our knowledge and the degree of our power. Thus, in the scholium to proposition 29 of Ethics II, Spinoza states that the mind can be said to have adequate knowledge “so long as it is determined internally, from the fact that it regards a number of things at once, to understand their agreements, differences, and oppositions (convenientias, differentias, & oppugnantias)” (E

IIP29S). For the mind to have adequate knowledge is for it to have within itself all the resources necessary to achieve knowledge of its object: i.e., an adequate idea includes within itself all of the ideas from which it is derived, the complete system of ideas that supports and entails it. In other words (in more dynamic/causal terms), the mind has adequate knowledge when, by its own 318 internal striving or power, it can express the network of causes out of which the object-idea of its knowledge emerged; it can supply a genealogy of its object-idea’s production (Hardt 1993: 91).

Thus, if adequate knowledge is an effect, it is one that may be understood through the mind’s own essence or power. Now, in general, we can be said to act when we are the adequate cause of something which happens either in us or outside us – i.e., “when something in us or outside us follows from our nature which can be clearly and distinctly understood through it alone” (E

IIID2). Hence, it follows that we can be said to act whenever we have adequate knowledge. And insofar as we are in control of our power to act, we are not acted upon; we do not suffer any passions, as our capacity to be affected is filled by active affects.

There is a point in the above-quoted passage from IIP29S that is worth emphasizing and clarifying: adequate knowledge is knowledge of causes. This can take various forms, not all of which entail a critique or displacement of inadequate ideas through the understanding of their production-process. For instance, the adequate knowledge of a geometric figure might consist in the ability to supply its genetic definition. In this way, a circle might be defined as the figure produced when a given segment is rotated with one point remaining stationary (i.e., serving as the axis of the movement). While the development of such an adequate idea marks an increase in our power (because this concept is built-up from conceptual elements already in the mind’s possession: point, segment, motion, etc.), it cannot really be said to dissolve an illusion. Our idea

(‘circle’) may have been inadequate, but it wasn’t wrong. Take, for example, someone who uses the Pythagorean theorem to calculate the length of a hypotenuse simply because this is how she has been taught to do so by an external authority, whom she trusts to be competent. To the extent that the truth of her calculations ceases to be accidental and ‘external’ to her essence – i.e., to the extent that she ceases to rely upon an authority, and is able to deduce the veracity of this principle from the internal resources and capacities of her own mind – her power will be increased. For, as 319

Spinoza declares in E IIIP37S1: “lack of power consists only in this, that a man allows himself to be guided by things outside him, and to be determined by them to do what the common constitution of external things demands, not what his own nature, considered in itself, demands”.

With Spinoza’s sun example, we get another kind of adequate idea: an adequate idea that has a critical force, insofar as it displaces or decomposes an inadequate idea that is incorrect.

Thus, the adequate idea of my sense-idea ‘sun’ (the sun as image or as an idea of the way it affects my body) would comprise knowledge both of the physical properties of the sun and my sense-apparatus, and of the ways in which the interplay of these properties necessarily results in the appearance I often uncritically refer to as ‘the sun’ tout court. Of course, even after I have attained adequate knowledge of the sun and of my body, I still perceive the former as just a few hundred feet away. It is impossible for the finite beings that we are to ever do without or

‘escape’ the power of the imagination: our immediate, everyday life-world – the world of discrete, meaningful objects – is one that is woven, coloured, if not altogether created, by the imagination (and, hence, by our projects and desires, insofar as the latter are rooted in passive affects). However, the imaginary idea no longer has the same sway over me, since it is now immediately associated with the idea of the causes of its appearing the way it does. The previous, uncritical thought-assemblage ‘The sun is yellow, hot, and two hundred feet from me’, has been dismembered by the critical labour of thought upon itself, and replaced with a new thought- assemblage: ‘The sun is a very remote object, whose physical properties produce the sensations

‘yellow’, ‘hot’, and ‘two hundred feet away’ when they interact with the physical properties of my senses’.

Finally, adequate knowledge of a particular body or idea expresses the reasons why this body/idea does or does not accord with my constitutive proportion of motion and rest. Hence, adequate knowledge is knowledge of the ratios or laws that govern the composition and de- 320 composition, accord or dis-accord, of bodies and ideas; it involves knowledge of the ways in which bodies and ideas do not agree or are not compatible (i.e., in which one body/idea can be said to destroy or disable another). Thus, my knowledge of the sun is adequate when I know its physical properties, and know how these properties are liable to react with the properties of my own body, both for the better and for the worse – i.e., such as to increase my power of acting in the event that they should agree, and to decrease my power of acting should they disagree.

6.3. Adequate Knowledge as Means of Political Resistance: An Example

In the preceding sections, I recapitulated the most salient aspects of Spinoza’s distinction between adequate and inadequate ideas. This was a necessary propaedeutic to my main objective in this chapter, which is to prove that the formation of adequate ideas can, under certain circumstances, serve to counter and subvert a disempowering political regime by revealing the often ignoble, suspicious, and all-too-human origins of the illusions – inadequate ideas – which ground its power. My attempt to corroborate this thesis will take the form of an exegesis of the

Appendix to part I of the Ethics (supplemented by elements of the Preface to part IV, as well as the Preface to the TTP), in which it will be established: (1) that these sections represent an effort on Spinoza’s part to develop an adequate idea of both the teleological world-view and the theological-political complex it supports; and (2) that the formation of such an adequate idea can be regarded as an act of political resistance.

If Spinoza’s famous Appendix to part I of the Ethics is to be properly understood, we

must first gain a sense of that against which it is ultimately aimed. In the equally famous preface

to his TTP, Spinoza writes:

(…) the supreme secret (arcanum) of despotism, its prop and stay, is to keep men in a state of deception, and with the specious title of religion to cloak the fear by which they must be held in check, so that they will fight for their servitude as if for their 321

salvation, and count it no shame, but the highest honour, to spend their blood and their lives for the glorification of one man (Preface, §7).

It is at this “deception” and “cloak”, which is the necessarily hidden cause (“prop and stay”) of

ostensibly voluntary servitude, that the Appendix to part I is ultimately aimed. As I will show,

its task is to uncover these causes, and thus come to conceive the ‘supreme mystery of

despotism’ adequately: i.e., to understand how the despotic regime must necessarily instil and

cultivate sad affects (decrease its subjects’ ability to act), and how it succeeds in passing these

sad affects off as their exact opposite (i.e., as tokens of an exercise of, or increase in, power).

Now if the causes of willing subjugation (i.e., of ‘fighting for one’s servitude as if for one’s

salvation’) must remain secret to be operative, then any attempt to unveil them is ipso facto a

subversive act with respect to the political regimes or forces that benefit from this voluntary

servitude.281 Hence, according to Spinoza’s metaphysical and epistemological principles, if I can

demonstrate that Spinoza develops, in the Appendix to part I of the Ethics and elsewhere, an

adequate idea of the inadequate ideas (illusions) that ground certain forms of political power, I

will thereby have demonstrated that the formation of adequate ideas can function as an

instrument of political resistance.

Spinoza’s first order of business in the Appendix is to give a genetico-causal account of

our susceptibility to the illusion of teleology – to uncover the system of causes behind this error

(Macherey 1997: 271). As he puts it: “I shall begin by considering this one prejudice, asking

first why most people are satisfied (acquiescant) that it is true, and why all are so inclined by nature to embrace it”. The aim of the Appendix is the “destruction (destruere)” of the ideological/imaginary “construction (fabrica)” of teleology because, in Spinoza’s estimation, all

281 This is especially so given Spinoza’s fundamental belief in what W. Montag describes as: the “materiality of speech and writing, the verita effetuale of language, its capacity not to move minds alone (…) but to affect bodies as well. (…) Words may ‘move’ men to acts of piety or impiety, obedience or rebellion” (1999: 23). 322

of the prejudices that support the theological-political complex can be retraced to this single,

common root: viz., the belief that “all (…) things [even God] act, as men do, on account of some

end”.

Spinoza begins by making two bold declarations: (1) that all humans are “born ignorant of

the causes of things”; and (2) that “all want [and are conscious of wanting] to seek their own

advantage (utile)”.282 From these données it follows, “first, that men think (opinentur)

themselves free”. This is because, while they are conscious of their “volitions and strivings” –

i.e., of their seeking the better for themselves – they are totally unaware of the “causes by which

they are disposed to wanting and willing”. Their desires, and hence, actions are like conclusions

without premises: they are “ignorant of the causes by which they are determined” (E IIP35S).

The belief in their capacity for unconditioned self-determination as an imperium in imperio,

disrupting the order of nature (E III Pref.; P2S), is thus the fruit of ignorance. Their only

knowledge of freedom consists in not knowing the causes of their actions. Secondly, it follows

that “men act always on account of an end ”: viz., their utile. “Hence”, concludes Spinoza, “they

seek to know only the final causes of what has been done, and when they have heard (audiverint)

them, they are satisfied (quiescant), because they have no reason to doubt further”.

This passage brings up (at least) two interesting points. First, it reveals one of the ways in

which the teleological world-view is self-contradictory. For, on the one hand, this world-view

posits a will that is unconditioned, that is totally self-legislating. In so doing, it also enthrones

the human will as the ultimate source of value. On the other hand, it posits a natural order of

values and goals, preceding and directing the will as its objective standard and good. Thus,

according to this same world-view, the will is not the ultimate source value, since it must abide

282 At this point in the Ethics, Spinoza can only rely on the data of experience to justify these statements. He will go on to deduce them more geometrico. 323

by and respect an order that transcends it (Matheron 1988: 104-105). The teleological world-

view is thus simultaneously narcissistic, as it reduces everything to a reflection of the ego, and

profoundly alienating, as it detaches the power of the will from the external good it is passively

determined to seek (Macherey 1998: 219).

Second, Spinoza’s allegation is that our natural inclination is to rest content or acquiesce –

i.e., to give assent – when a teleological explanation is given, because it rids us of our doubt.

This is only intelligible if we keep in mind the fact that, for Spinoza, doubt is an affect that

afflicts the heart (animus) as a kind of anxious wavering (fluctuatio) from one side of an issue to another (Vinciguerra 29-30). Doubt is not the source of ataraxia for Spinoza, as some sort of blissful neutrality or suspension between possibilities. Rather, we might consider it a kind of existential despair. It is in itself a source of suffering, which we are eager to eliminate as expeditiously as possible. As a result, when someone comes along telling us the purpose of things – their true meaning; what they were meant for – we are disposed to heed his/her message, because it tranquilizes us (by E IIIP13 & P28; cf. Sévérac 2005: 277).283 Spinoza goes on to say

that in the event that they cannot hear from the agents of an action themselves what the purpose

283 In this way, though he never formally introduces it, Spinoza nonetheless appears to want to maintain a distinction between two types of acquiescentia (AI & AII). The first type (AI) consists in one’s ‘coming to rest’ or acquiescing in oneself – i.e., in self-esteem or self-satisfaction. As we saw in chapter 2, such acquiescentia in se ipso can itself take two forms (AI.1 & AI.2). The first of these forms (viz.: AI.1) is “really the highest thing we can hope for”, and represents the pleasure we take in the rational contemplation of our own power. As we have seen, it is concomitant with, indeed in a certain sense identical to, the intellectual love of God. Because it is rooted in, or, better, an expression of, our rational understanding, this form of acquiescentia in se ipso (of ‘coming to rest contentedly in oneself’) is really an activity or action in Spinoza’s technical sense: it is at once a manifestation of, and a delighting in, our own power. As we have seen, the second form of the first type of acquiescentia (AI.2) is vainglory. This form is ambiguous and unstable, not to say altogether illusory, as it is the product of our passions and, thus, of our ignorance – i.e., of our lack of power (see E IVP58S). There is a sense in which the second general type of acquiescentia (AII) could be viewed as a sub-category of the second form of the acquiescentia in se ipso we have just cited (viz., AI.2). For it consists in a blind acquiescence to unfounded opinions – i.e., in an unthinking assimilation of, or identification with, the views propagated by external authorities. This ‘bad’ form of acquiescence (of which Spinoza speaks, e.g., in the scholium to Ethics IIIP49) can be motivated by a need to restore the self- confidence or self-satisfaction (acquiescentia in se ipso) that has been undermined by our doubt (which, as a form of sadness or source of suffering, is a lack of power). As opposed to the active and hence unequivocally good form of acquiescentia in se ipso (AI.1), this type of acquiescentia is thus – like the passive form of acquiescentia in se ipso (i.e., AI.2) – a function of the passions and, thus, of our ignorance. 324

of their action is, the unthinking teleologists rely on their own temperament to decipher it: they

project their temperament onto the actor. This subjective projection, which once again is but the

fruit of ignorance, is a core feature of the teleological world-view. For even when it comes to the

natural objects that they discover to be of some use, but which they know not to have been

produced by human labour, the ignorant instinctively regard this utility as the object’s intrinsic

essence.284

Spinoza’s analysis in section III of the Appendix,285 as well as the Preface to part IV, of

the genesis and usage of (the radically subjective or inadequate versions of) such morally evaluative notions as perfection and imperfection makes this clear.286 These types of morally

evaluative notions originate in human artifice (in more ways than one). When we create

something, we have a purpose in mind. We, as well as those to whom we have divulged our

intention, use this idea of our goal as a standard to guide our labours and assess their success.

Once we have formed universal ideas to help us classify these various artificial objects (the

genera: house, building, tower, etc.), our tendency is to use these as models (exemplaria), and to

deem perfect what conforms to the archetypes that we have formed. Of course, we don’t stop

there: as I explained in chapter 1, we also form universal ideas of natural things based on how

they affect our imagination, and we regard nature as ‘looking towards’ or being ‘oriented’ by

284 As A. Matheron puts it: “La cause finale (…) se transforme ainsi en cause formelle” (1968: 109). 285 I am referring, for the sake of clarity and convenience, to the section numbers provided by E. Curley in his edition of the Ethics. These divisions are not Spinoza’s, though they do correspond to breaks and transitions in the argument of the Appendix. 286 I wish to stress that what Spinoza analyses in these sections of the Ethics is the genesis and usage of only the radically subjective forms of such morally evaluative concepts as perfection and imperfection. What Spinoza should be taken to be criticizing in the bulk of the Appendix to Part I and Preface to part IV is thus merely the inadequate or imaginary conception of moral values as being rooted in a teleologically and hierarchically ordered cosmos in which humans, like all other things in Nature, have a predetermined, proper place or function which it is good for them (i.e., which they ought) to occupy or fulfil. For, as I demonstrated in chapter 2, Spinoza clearly believes in the possibility of adequate moral knowledge – i.e., in the possibility that some of our morally evaluative concepts (e.g., our concepts of perfection and imperfection) might have objective grounds and content (i.e., be universally valid, or not radically subjective). 325

them, when it ‘sets about’ creating something. What we have thereby instated is a whole

hierarchical and normative system of judgement that is grounded in nothing more than the

accidents and idiosyncrasies of our imagination. If nature’s ‘creations’ deviate from the

universal, imaginary models that we have classified them under, we deem them imperfect,

aberrations. We then regard nature as having failed to respect its own order.

But what we don’t realize is that this teleological system of judgement is nothing but a

massive exercise in narcissistic self-reflection. As we have seen, even the adequate versions of

such morally evaluative concepts as perfection and imperfection or good and evil are, in one

sense, anthropocentric or subjective. Nature as a whole has no final cause, no purpose that it

would seek to realize: it is the absolute plenitude of being. Perfection and imperfection or good

and evil thus do not apply to Nature in its infinity, and even the adequate versions of these

concepts are still perspectival, in the sense that they are related to the interests of human beings

alone – though they constitute an objective grasp of that which truly enhances the power (and is

thus truly in the interests) of all human beings. However, when these evaluative notions are the

product of the imagination rather than reason, they are merely anthropocentric “fictions

(figmenta)”. They are only “ways of thinking, that is, notions we are accustomed to forge”287,

and which in reality do nothing but mirror our idiosyncratic desires and dispositions (our

ingenia). Hence, the trouble with the teleological world-view is that when we believe that all is

made/meant for us, we have no qualms calling good tout court – i.e., in itself – that which is

conducive to our health, that which strengthens us, or in which we take pleasure, and evil

whatever is contrary to these things.288 Teleological thinking is a kind of a delusion, whereby the

287 In both senses of the term: fingere means to construct or fashion, but also to invent something fraudulent. 288 The same goes for many pseudo-objective qualities: order, confusion, warmth, coldness, beauty, ugliness, etc. They are entia imaginationis, ways in which we are affected, which we judge according to the “disposition of [our] brain”, and which we reify by using as substantive nouns. 326 object’s value or function for us is taken to be its inherent nature, its defining characteristic.

Final causes are nothing but human appetites – efficient causes – taken to be first causes (again:

“because men are commonly ignorant of the causes of their appetites”). The teleological world- view thus “turns nature completely upside down”: inverting cause and effect, prior and posterior.

The delusion is exacerbated when, from the fact that they find many things to be conveniently ready-to-hand in nature (“…plants and animals for food, the sun for light…”), and from the fact that while they did not arrange these things, they do not believe these things could have arranged themselves in such a favourable order by chance or the blind working of mechanistic causality, the teleologists infer the existence of a “ruler” of nature, “endowed with human freedom”, who has caringly pre-arranged all of these things for their benefit. The ontological ‘order of nature’, which, as we have seen, is but a large-scale projection of their own spontaneous (i.e., imaginary/inadequate) interpretative categories, thus receives divine sanction.

What is worse, these human categories and self-conceptions – which, as we have seen, are themselves fundamentally misguided (a systematic misapprehension) – are now projected onto

God. The absurd result is that God is said to want to “bind” humans to him so as to be “held in the highest honour”. God, the absolute, immutable, eternal, self-sufficient, and supremely perfect being, is said to have a purpose outside of himself, which he would lack, and which he would long to bring about in time. This is yet another way in which the teleological world-view is self-contradictory, and in which it makes nature stand on its head: in this case, turning the perfect into the imperfect.

The teleologists are driven to win this divine ruler over such that he should love them and confer benefits upon them “above all the rest” by “blind desire and insatiable greed” – i.e., by the hope that things the outcome of which is uncertain might turn out favourably, and, hence, by the fear that they might not (E III Def. Affs. XIII Exp.). But since they do not know how this ruler 327

might be propitiated, they yet again look towards their own temperament for ways he might be

worshipped (which, as a result, really amount to self-adulation). Fuelled by a dangerous mix of

desire, hope/fear, ignorance, and a concomitant powerlessness to direct nature so as to cater to

their seemingly boundless needs, the prejudice of final causality now turns into an institutionally

organized “superstition”. It crystallizes into a rigid system of beliefs and rituals (Macherey 1997:

229); a theological-political apparatus of power takes shape, based on this very potent ideology

of final causes, and the equally powerful emotions of “hope, hatred, anger, and deceit” (TTP

Pref. §5).

This last point warrants restating: “It is fear (…) that engenders, preserves and fosters

superstition” (Ibid.). As Spinoza explains in part III of the Ethics, fear is “an inconstant sadness,

born of the idea of a future or past thing whose outcome we to some extent doubt”. In the

opening pages of the TTP, Spinoza points to a number of historical individuals whose

biographies “[illustrate] quite clearly the fact that only while fear persists do men fall prey to

superstition”, and, hence, “that all the objects of spurious religious reverence have been no more

than phantoms, the delusions springing from despondency and timidity” (Ibid.). The doctrinaires

– the theologians and metaphysicians; the figures of religious and political authority (i.e., the sophisticated cultural manifestations of the naïve world-view I have been describing) – know that

“If men were able to exercise complete control over all their circumstances, or if continuous good fortune were always their lot, they would never be prey to superstition” (TTP Pref. §1). In other words, they know that their power is predicated upon their ability to keep the masses over which they rule in a constant state of fear (for which they claim to be the exclusive remedy) and ignorance. They thrive only on the powerlessness and, hence, sadness, of their subjects. 328

What do I mean by this? Spinoza demonstrates in section II of the Appendix that the

theocrats289 have no way of defending the teleological dogma except by hounding their

opponents with questions about the causes of things, forcing them to retrace the sequence of

events, until they are unable to continue, and must “take refuge in the will of God, that is, the

sanctuary of ignorance”. This sanctuary, and the ideology constructed upon it, is the seat of their

power. It is their magic trump card. For instance, the theocrats often teach that the apparent evil

in the world (the pain, misery, and poverty of their subjects/disciples) has a hidden, morally

redeeming purpose – indeed, that their plight ought to be embraced, since it is the paradoxical

sign and source of their power (albeit in God’s heavenly kingdom: a convenient doctrine for any

political regime). Refuting this kind of theodicy is no easy task. For an appeal to the

inscrutability of God’s decrees, or to the invisibility and otherworldly nature of the promised

reward, can override the daily testimony of experience that belies the notion that the dutifully

obedient prosper, and the rebellious or ‘wicked’ do not.

Furthermore, it is an appeal to God’s will, revealed only to an elite few (the priestly caste,

prophets, and/or king), and hidden from the masses, which serves to prop up the power of the

earthly ruler(s), and to underwrite the social order (class divisions, disparities in wealth and

education, etc.) of societies built upon this theological-political complex. This, accordingly, is

the theocrats’ call to obedience: ‘Your station in life is God’s (inscrutable) will’; ‘The tithe you

pay us is God’s (unfathomable) will’; ‘The war you are waging is fought on God’s behalf’.

Finally, the theocrats perpetuate the naïve belief in free will because it serves their interests: it

justifies the punishment of those who transgress their ‘holy’ law (Montag 1999: 37), and helps

289 I am using the term to refer to priests and kings. By ‘theocratic rule’, I thus mean the rule of kings, priests, or, what is more common, their alliance. For as should be clear by now, their existence is symbiotic: it chafes and upsets the masses to see someone they consider more or less their equal claim exclusive authority over the state (TTP XVII.4). Kings therefore need priests to exalt them above the common lot of mankind, to anoint them as God’s representatives on earth, or even as gods themselves (TTP XVII.6). 329

shore-up the established order, since through it the subservience maintained by strict bodily

discipline can be presented as the result of the subjects’ free consent – the rigorous physical

discipline having worked to condition the subjects to think in only the desired ways (Montag

1999: 48-49; cf. chapter 5, section 3, of this dissertation).

The shrewdest of authorities working within this theological-political complex thus know

that their power is contingent upon their ability to keep the dominated masses in a state of stupid

wonder, of stupor or stupefaction (Sévérac 2005: 276, 281).290 Spinoza defines wonder

(admiratio) as “an imagination of a thing in which the mind remains fixed because this singular

imagination has no connection with the others” (E III Def. IV). It denotes a kind of paralysis, a

fixation upon one idea, without being able to situate it within its context, to perceive its causes,

etc. In short, it is the affective equivalent or expression of an inadequate idea. Clever rulers

know that s/he who is eager to look for the natural causes of things, and “not to wonder at them,

like a fool” is a threat to their power, and must be “denounced” as an “impious heretic”: “For

they know that if ignorance is taken away (sublata), then foolish wonder, the only means they

have of arguing and maintaining their authority, is also taken away (tollitur)” (E I App.; Italics

mine).

6.4. Preliminary Conclusion

What does Spinoza accomplish in the sections of the Ethics and TTP I have just

presented? I hope to have shown that Spinoza discloses the causes behind, and hence allows his

readers to achieve an adequate understanding of, the “supreme secret of despotism” – i.e., how

rulers can bring about ostensibly voluntary slavery through the cultivation of sad affects and

290 I am trying to draw out the connections between: stultus (a stupid person), stupor (senselessness; astonishment), stupescere (to become amazed, astounded), and stupere (to be stunned, struck senseless, benumbed, immobilized). 330

(hence) the disempowering of their subjects. Spinoza demonstrates that such voluntary slavery is

upheld and made possible by a set of inadequate ideas, which are ultimately grounded in one

central misconception: viz., the belief in a divinely ordained, teleological ordering of nature.

Moreover, he reveals the origins of this inadequate idea to lie in affects of hope and fear.

Spinoza believed that the causes of willing subjugation must remain concealed to be effective. If

this is the case, then on Spinoza’s own admission, any attempt to bring them into the light of day

is a subversive act with respect to the political regimes or forces that depend upon them.

This is especially the case if, as Spinoza insists, the body and the mind are in fact numerically or

ontologically identical. According to Spinoza’s basic metaphysical and epistemological

teachings, the act of rational critique doesn’t only take place in the realm of ideas, but has a

tangible counterpart in the realm of bodies. Thus, as W. Montag points out, “forceful arguments

against a law” – or, I might add, the imaginary/ideological construct(s) upon which it rests –

“will tend (…) to produce”, as their presumed corporeal counterparts, “if not disobedience, then

resistance, non-compliance, etc.” (1999: 59; Italics mine).291 In other words, the knowledge of

the workings of power is simultaneously an active expression of the political power of

knowledge. The formation of an adequate idea concerning the belief in final causes, as well as

the whole ideological and political system it entails, thus contributes to the undermining of this

apparatus of power. It is clear from the opening of the second section of the Appendix that

Spinoza believes he has formed such an adequate idea – and that he has thus refuted the belief in

final causes – precisely by providing a genetico-causal (Macherey) account of the mechanisms

that give rise to this belief. He has shed light on the all-too-human origins of this ideological

construct (fabrica), and hence contributed to the de-construction of the political practices it

supports.

291 See footnotes 59 and 60 of chapter 4. 331

6.5. Two Possible Objections

I have shown that and how, in Spinoza’s view, the development of adequate ideas can constitute a form of political resistance. The rational critique of prejudices that operates by retracing their genesis can serve to undermine the disempowering regimes or forms of rule that rely upon them (a regime or form of rule being disempowering in large part precisely because it relies upon the perpetuation of prejudices, which themselves almost inevitably entail the perpetuation of sad affects – i.e., affects of disempowerment – and certainly prevent the development of active affects: i.e., of true happiness, freedom, or virtue). I needed to demonstrate this much in this chapter, for in chapters 4 and 5 I had more or less simply asserted that the rational critique of prejudices could at times (according to Spinoza himself) constitute a form of political resistance, before arguing that resistance-cum-critique ought, in Spinoza’s view, to be regarded as the ethico-rationally justified form of political resistance par excellence (i.e., the form that any State ought to make allowances for, within the normal functioning of its institutions). However, I would like to bring this chapter to a close by clarifying a few aspects of my argument in it, as well as dealing, as quickly as I can, with certain objections it may have inspired.

For starters, it might be objected that, with the preceding, I have turned Spinoza into a typically naïve, Enlightenment-style critic of superstitions, prejudices, or ‘ideologies’, according to whom simply exposing a belief to be ungrounded or untrue would be sufficient to emancipate us from it, whereas Spinoza, it might with good reason be maintained, was a much more acute student of human psychology: he knew full well that prejudices could hold us in their thrall long after we have come to recognize them as such, precisely because their force – their power to 332 move us, to determine our actions – is not a function of their truth-value per se. To nip such an objection in the bud, I need to make a few points of clarification.

Spinoza is adamant about the fact that “nothing positive which a false idea has is removed by the presence of the true insofar as it is true” (E IVP1). This is because “falsity consists only in the privation of knowledge which inadequate ideas involve (by IIP35)”. There is, in other words,

“nothing positive” – i.e., real or of ontological substance – “on account of which” such ideas “are called false (by IIP33)”. To say that every idea, regardless of its truth-value, has a quid positivum is to say that an idea is not “something mute, like a picture on a tablet” (E IIP43S; P49S); every idea inherently carries an affirmative or negative force, such that we need not have recourse to anything beyond the mind’s ideas to explain the mind’s ‘stance’ with respect to them – i.e., its affirming or denying them (e.g., through an act of will separate from the act of intellection through which the mind apprehends the objective content of its ideas). Thus, to use Spinoza’s example, if a child forms the idea of a “winged horse”, the child will affirm its actual existence so long as s/he forms no other ideas that would exclude its existence (E IIP49S). To perceive something is (ceteris paribus) to affirm its existence.

Now, as Spinoza explains in the scholium to the first proposition of Ethics part IV, and as

I explained earlier in this chapter, the preceding entails that, for example, our imagining the sun to be only a relatively short distance away is not inherently false. As an image, it is entirely positive: it is the result of the way the sun’s rays interact with or modify our bodies according to necessary laws. However, the judgement we might form on the basis of such an image (“the sun is 200 feet away”) would be false, as it would involve the privation of the knowledge that the image in question is actually the product of the interaction of the sun’s properties with the properties of our bodies (as well as the medium through which its rays are carried, etc.). But once we know that this is the case, the image ceases to have the same sway over us; its inherent 333 affirmative force is counteracted, such that it no longer immediately impels us to affirm that what it represents accurately reflects the way things actually are. It now forms part of another thought- assemblage, one in which certain ideas exclude the reality of what it represents as an image.

Similarly, one might say that Spinoza’s genetico-causal critique of the illusion of teleology (and of the various other prejudices it sustains) does not eliminate this most natural and spontaneous of the imagination’s fictions, but neutralizes it by inserting it within a different configuration of thought – viz., Spinoza’s analysis of its genesis or causes, which explains how it is the (to some extent) inevitable product of our finitude.

But such a reply, while not totally wide of the mark, does not meet the full force of the objection, which is best supported by proposition 14 of Ethics part IV, according to which: “No affect can be restrained by the true knowledge of good and evil insofar as it is true, but only insofar as it is considered as an affect”. To come to see a prejudice for what it is (i.e., an expression of our ignorance or lack of power, and hence an evil), or to come to understand how

(e.g.,) a prejudice underpins a disempowering form of rule – in short, to come to understand how a certain belief is not only ill-founded but disabling (both cause and symptom of one’s lack of power) – is not per se sufficient to ward off its harmful effects or to liberate oneself from it. As

H. Sharp has done much to remind us, at the level of finite modes, ideas, no less than their corporeal counterparts, form an infinitely complex “ecosystem” or “energetic field” (2007: 745), in which each finite idea stands in innumerable relations of dominance and subordination, conflict and mutual support, with other ideas. Singular ideas, in other words, are encouraged, gain ascendancy, and become hegemonic, or are “starved”, marginalized, and suppressed (or even altogether eradicated), according to the relations of force in which they stand. To put the matter most bluntly: the “force of ideas” is what matters for their survival or proliferation, not their truth-value – at least not their truth-value as such (Ibid.). And the “force” of any given idea 334 is determined not by its truth or falsity, but by the relative strength of the affective charge it carries. Thus, while I may, for instance, know with certainty that a habit of mine is not to my advantage (i.e., is ultimately disempowering for me), this knowledge, as such, may prove totally ineffectual: it may very well not translate into a corresponding change in my behaviour. I may, to quote Spinoza (who himself is quoting Ovid), “see and approve the better, but follow the worse”

(E IVP17S; cf. Metamorphoses VII, 20-21). For external factors may reinforce the joyful

(though, again, ultimately disempowering) passive affects associated with this bad habit to such an extent that they completely overpower the affects associated with and, in a sense, constituting my “true knowledge of good and evil”.

In other words, according to Spinoza’s own realist/immanentist analysis of the “force of ideas”, it is certainly accurate to say that an individual’s achieving adequate knowledge regarding the true origins and status of the prejudices to which s/he is or has been prey is no guarantee that s/he will thereupon cease to be prey to them, or no longer suffer their debilitating effects.292 This, however, is not a knockdown objection against my claim that the rational critique of prejudices can sometimes constitute a form of political resistance. For, as I have explained on several occasions by now, the development of adequate knowledge represents an increase in our potentia agendi. And whatever so increases our power to act is itself a source of joy. Hence, the development of adequate knowledge regarding our prejudices will be accompanied by an affect of joy – an affect that is active, since we are its cause. The very fact that we are its cause means that its power is liable to be no match to that of many passive affects. For whereas active affects are defined by our power alone, which is extremely limited and necessarily surpassed by the

292 Indeed, it is Spinoza’s recognition of this fact that makes his analysis/critique of superstition more sophisticated than the ones we find in the writings of other early-Enlightenment thinkers (most notably: Fontenelle and Bayle). For Fontenelle, see his Histoire des oracles (Verviers: Gérard & Co., 1973) and De l’origine des fables (Paris: F. Alcan, 1932). For Bayle, see his Pensées diverses sur la comète (Paris: Droz, 1939). 335 power of an infinite number of other modes (E A1), the power of passive affects “is defined by the power of external causes” as compared to our own (E IVP15Dem). But this doesn’t mean that it is impossible for the desires arising out of our adequate understanding to triumph over the desires rooted in, or associated with, our inadequate ideas (i.e., our passive affects). And if the triumph of active affects over passive affects is possible – and its likelihood can be increased by means of a variety of techniques, by the banding together and mutual support of like-minded (i.e., rational) individuals – then it is equally possible that the critique of prejudices instrumental to the perpetuation of certain disempowering forms of rule should serve to undermine such forms of rule by loosening the hold which the prejudices it depends upon have on its subjects and thus allowing its subjects to (in Foucault’s words) “think otherwise”: i.e., to envision other possible political arrangements; to see that the present, disempowering order of things does not have to be

(or, more precisely, remain) as it is, as it does not rest on immutable truths, or reflect the will of a divine legislator, but is, rather, the ‘chance’ result of the law-governed play of human and natural forces in history. The efficacity of the rational critique of prejudices depends upon the differential between the power of the affects associated with the adequate ideas produced in the process of critique on the one hand, and the power of the affects associated with the inadequate ideas subject to rational critique on the other – where nothing a priori excludes the possibility that, in some circumstances, and however unlikely, the scales should tip in favour of the former.

A second concern might be that portraying the formation of adequate knowledge (in the form of the rational critique of prejudices) as an act of intellectual political resistance is tantamount to lumping Spinoza in with the “satirists”, “theologians”, and “melancholics” – i.e., precisely those figures of negativity and ressentiment Spinoza deemed least worthy of emulation 336

(E IVP35S; App. XIII).293 If this worry is to be put to rest, it must be recalled that: “no action, considered in itself, is good or evil” (E IVP59 Alt. Dem.). Like any ‘objectively’ ambivalent act, the act of critique is good if it is associated with an idea of the good to be achieved by means of this critique, and evil if it is only associated with an idea of the object “qui ne peut pas supporter cette action sans perdre son rapport constitutif” (Deleuze 2003: 75). In other words, it is evil if what is kept in sight is only that which is to be destroyed by the work of critique, rather than the good this work might accomplish. As a function of our power of understanding, rational critique cannot be motivated by a desire to debase, deprive, or destroy the target of criticism; it cannot be the manifestation of envy, jealousy, ressentiment, or other such sad affects. The form of critique performed by “satirists” and “theologians” is bad, in large part because in it they only seek to

“laugh (…) at human affairs” (E IVP35S), to “deride, bewail, berate (…) [or] execrate them”, without striving to “improve them” (E IVP57S); satirists and theologians only “know how to find fault with men, to castigate vices, rather than teach virtues, and to break men’s minds rather than strengthen them”, and are thus “harmful (molesti sunt)” not only to others, but to themselves (E

IV App. XIII). The bad critique of the satirists and theologians is, in Spinoza’s view, a manifestation of the impotence that compels the “weak minded” to satisfy their lust for power only by hampering, undoing, or denouncing the successes of others, rather than seeking to better themselves and others (E IVP57S).294 Spinoza rebukes those who engage in this improper form of critique when he writes:

293 In a sense, this objection is a more specific version of the general question that I addressed in section 3 of chapter 4: viz., how can resistance – an apparently destructive act – be good? My reply will thus closely follow the reply I there provided to the more general question just mentioned. 294 The satirists and theologians may claim to “mock” or “curse” humans in an attempt to reform them. But the very unattainableness of the human ideal on the basis of which they deride or condemn human affairs is proof that what they are interested in is not really moral progress: the satirists take a morbid pleasure in their mockery, and the Tartuffes of this world ironically flatter their pride – and profit materially – by excoriating humanity for its faults (including excess of pride) more vociferously than anyone else. Those few who, through a “misplaced zeal for religion”, labour sincerely to make all humans conform to an unattainable moral/religious ideal inevitably come to 337

So it is certain that they most desire esteem who cry out most against its misuse, and the emptiness of the world. Nor is it peculiar to the ambitious – it is common to everyone whose luck is bad and whose mind is weak. For the poor man, when he is also greedy, will not stop talking about the misuse of money, and the vices of the rich (E VP10S).

By contrast, Spinoza’s “free man” knows that while it is a rational duty to critically analyze and

deconstruct inadequate ideas so as to liberate oneself and others from their deleterious effects,

not only “[must we] always (by IVP63C and IIIP59) attend to those things which are good in

each thing so that in this way we are always determined to acting from an affect of joy” (Ibid.),295

but we must always be motivated, in carrying out our rational criticism, by active affects of

tenacity and nobility, and thus always also directly keep in sight (E IVP63C) the aim of our

critical enterprise: viz., the attainment of the highest human good, both for ourselves and for as

many of our fellow humans as possible. In a text dedicated to Deleuze & Guattari’s Anti-

Oedipus, Foucault writes: “N’imaginez pas qu’il faille être triste pour être militant, même si la

chose qu’on combat est abominable” (1977: 135). Spinoza would surely have agreed. For the

smile of the militant intellectual is the sign of true strength of character (fortitudinem), and true

self-contentment (acquiescentia in se ipso).

6.6. Conclusion: Spinoza as Intellectual Militant Joyeux despair in that ideal’s very unattainableness, and thus become “melancholics”: i.e., “disdain men” and flee all community with them, preferring instead “to live among the lower animals” (E IV App. XIII). It is, incidentally, no inconsistency on Spinoza’s part to have, on the one hand, admonished the satirists, theologians, and melancholics for their adherence to an unattainable moral ideal and their uncharitable condemnation of the human inability to live up to this impossible standard, and to have, on the other hand, himself put forward an unattainable ethical ideal in the form of the exemplar humanae naturae. For, as should be clear on the basis of what was said in chapter 2 of this dissertation, the difference between Spinoza’s ideal and the ideal of the satirists (& co.) is that the former paradoxically contains within it the forgiveness or acceptance of all failures to live up to it. Hence, to realize it as a flesh-and-blood human being is precisely (and paradoxically) to come to see that it cannot be (fully) realized. In other words, it is a self-transcending or self-cancelling regulative principle. 295 Thus, e.g., while in the Appendix to part I of the Ethics Spinoza is unsparing in his criticism of the theological- political complex and the teleological world-view (nexus of inadequate ideas) that supports it, in the TTP he draws attention to those aspects of religious (especially: Christian) doxa/practice that are good – especially for those who are, for whatever reason, incapable of the higher form of salvation obtained through philosophical reasoning – and thus worth salvaging. 338

In this chapter, I have shown that, by Spinoza’s own account, the formation of adequate knowledge can sometimes constitute a form of political resistance. I have done so by, first, drawing attention to Spinoza’s assertion that the causes of willing subjugation to ultimately disempowering political regimes must remain hidden to be effective. I then showed how Spinoza himself labours to disclose these hidden causes in his account of the genesis of the illusory, teleological world-view, and of its role in the establishment and perpetuation of disempowering forms of rule. Thus, according to Spinoza’s own above-mentioned criterion, he himself should, in his attempt to develop adequate knowledge of the causes of ‘voluntary slavery’ to disempowering forms of rule – i.e., in his attempt to expose the mechanisms of, and the prejudices that underlie, the “theological-political complex” – be considered an intellectual militant joyeux of the sort whose traits were delineated, and whose activities were vindicated from the standpoint of Spinoza’s ethics (or ethico-rational analysis of politics), in chapter 3 of this dissertation.

Now, while such a conclusion strongly suggests that Spinoza in fact regarded himself as such an intellectual militant, it does not prove, in any definitive sense, that he did. My claim was merely that it follows from Spinoza’s own guidelines or principles that his analysis of the theological-political complex, as well as his rational critique of the prejudices that underlie it, constituted an intellectual act of political resistance. And this does not necessarily imply (though, again, it strongly suggests) that Spinoza himself drew this inference – i.e., that he recognized the full, subversive, political significance of his philosophical project of demystification. What I wish to do now is point to a few key elements of Spinoza’s life and personality, as related by his earliest biographers, to show how plausible it is to suggest that Spinoza understood his own 339 philosophical enterprise of demystification as an (indirect) act of (political) resistance – or at least to show that the data of Spinoza’s biography do not clash with such a suggestion.296

Johannes Colerus, one of Spinoza’s two earliest biographers,297 reports in his La Vie de B. de Spinoza that after mastering the art of lens grinding, Spinoza taught himself to draw (565).

Colerus assures us that he has in his possession a sketchbook of portraits made by Spinoza, though he only bothers to describe one of these. It just so happens, however, that the portrait that grabs his attention is of utmost relevance to our study of the question of political resistance in

Spinoza’s thought:

Parmi ces portraits je trouve à la quatrième feuille un Pêcheur dessiné en chemise, avec un filet sur l’épaule droite, tout à fait semblable pour l’attitude au fameux Chef des Rebelles de Naples Massanielle, (…). À l’occasion de ce dessein je ne dois pas omettre, que le Sr. Vander Spyck chez qui Spinosa logeoit lors qu’il est mort, m’a assuré que ce crayon, ou portrait, ressembloit parfaitement bien à Spinosa, & que c’étoit assurément d’après lui-même qu’il l’avoit tiré (Ibid.; Italics added).

As L. Feuer explains, Masaniello was:

(…) a young fisherman of Naples, illiterate, ignorant, but full of energy and eloquence, who in 1647 led an insurrection against the hated Spanish ruler [viz., the Spanish Viceroy in Naples: Rodrigo Ponce de Leon, Duke of Arcos]. Before he was murdered by the Viceroy’s agents, Masaniello won notable victories for the poorest classes, principally the abrogation of onerous taxes and the promise of constitutional reforms. All this took place within six days, which, in their fashion, shook Europe (38-39).

296 My purpose in this chapter and chapter 4 has been to establish that Spinoza regarded some forms of resistance as sanctioned by the dictates of reason. It has also been to show that insofar as Spinoza’s philosophical writings contain a rational critique of the prejudices that restrain or diminish people’s power to exist by (1) preventing a proper understanding of nature/God, and (2) quietly buttressing oppressive/disempowering political regimes, Spinoza’s writings themselves represent an (indirect) act of (political) resistance. But my suggestion that Spinoza understood himself to be engaged in such a (indirect) project of (political) resistance must to some extent remain conjectural. This is why all I can, in good conscience, argue for is the claim that it is “likely”– though not certain – that Spinoza regarded himself in this way. For while such a suggestion is a reasonable inference from that which can be textually verified, it is still partly based on the speculative interpretation of pertinent aspects of Spinoza’s biography. A portion of obscurity must, I think, almost always remain when the issue is that of an author’s intentions and/or self- understanding. 297 The other was Jean-Maximilian Lucas, a doctor and Huguenot living in exile in the Netherlands. Of the two, only Lucas knew Spinoza personally. Colerus was a Lutheran pastor who lived in The Hague (the city in which Spinoza spent his final years) at the end of the seventeenth century. As S. Nadler notes, “Colerus – like most of his contemporaries – was hostile to his subject [i.e., Spinoza], although that did not keep him from trying to produce as complete and accurate a biography as possible” (2005: 42). 340

But the details of the insurgency led by Masaniello need not overly concern us here. It suffices to note that Spinoza would have regarded him as a symbol or hero-figure of the political struggle for freedom, for republican government, and for the welfare of the downtrodden. So what – if

Colerus’ testimony is to be believed – is the significance of the fact that Spinoza identified himself with the notorious Neapolitan agitator? In Spinoza and the Rise of Liberalism, L. Feuer portrays Spinoza as having harboured “strong feelings of revolutionary extremism which, though they later receded, never vanished” (Ibid.). He claims that while the youthful Spinoza sympathized with radical democratic, even Utopian-communistic fringe groups, the “cataclysmic events of 1672” – a year which saw the murder of the Republic’s leader J. De Witt by an angry mob, the invasion of the Netherlands by the army of Louis XIV, the declaration of war against the Dutch by the English, and the accession to power of William III of Orange as Stadtholder

(40)298 – had a sobering and disillusioning effect on Spinoza. Henceforth, says Feuer, Spinoza would be much more guarded in his advocacy of tolerance, republican government, and the right to free speech;299 instead, he would seek merely to understand the causes behind both the disaster of ’72, and, more generally, the likely failure of any and all truly emancipatory political movements. Feuer thus interprets Spinoza’s enigmatic self-portrait as a flight into, and ersatz satisfaction in, “fantasy”. As he puts it:

A man’s deepest feelings are often those unspoken. A hostile society will send words into hiding until they finally issue only as reverberations from the unconscious. In a work of art, however, (…) repressed feelings find a direct medium and spring to life, revived by the breath of communication. (…) In Masaniello’s guise, Spinoza identified himself with the aspirations of democratic revolution, perhaps also, with their ultimate defeat (38-39).

298 De Witt’s comparatively liberal rule of the Dutch Republic as Grand Pensionary had been made possible by the vacancy of the position of Stadtholder after the death of William II, Prince of Orange, in 1650, whose son (William III) was too young to take up the office. 299 As we have seen, he had done so quite boldly in the TTP, which had been published anonymously only two years prior to the downfall of De Witt’s republican government (i.e., in 1670). 341

Whatever the value of Feuer’s account of the evolution of Spinoza’s thought and personality, I wish to propose an alternative to Feuer’s interpretation of Spinoza’s self-portrait as a form of escapism through make-believe, or as an “unconscious” and repressed desire allowed to re-surface only through an artistic distraction. In light of what I have argued in chapter 4 about the general status of resistance in Spinoza’s account of the wise person, and what I have demonstrated in this chapter regarding the politically subversive nature – by Spinoza’s own account – of his analysis of the genesis of the prejudices that give rise to and buttress certain disempowering forms of rule, Spinoza’s self-portrait can acquire a more positive meaning than

Feuer is ready to grant it: it becomes possible to regard it as the self-conscious affirmation on

Spinoza’s part of the defiant nature of his emancipatory philosophical project. If I may be allowed to speculate on the basis of Colerus’ uncorroborated description of Spinoza’s self- portrait (which I am assuming to be reliable),300 it seems to me that in depicting himself in the garb and “attitude” of a well-known freedom-fighter, Spinoza is casting himself as the intellectual equivalent: someone whose mission it is, as Spinoza declares unambiguously in one of his letters to Oldenburg (Ep 30; see section 3 of chapter 4), and with a touch more reserve in the Ethics and TTP, to slay the prejudices that keep people in mental, and thus also in varying degrees of physical, bondage.301

Now, in the secondary literature on Spinoza, one very often finds descriptions of

Spinoza’s character like the following, from S. Nadler’s Spinoza: A Life: “Spinoza was, by nature, a very cautious individual – his signet ring was inscribed with the motto Caute,

“Caution!” – and he was hesitant about revealing the more profound and potentially troublesome

300 Mind you, even if Spinoza’s self-portrait were extant, the message it was meant to convey would still need to be decoded. 301 These prejudices limit people’s power both directly, by impeding a true comprehension of the order of nature, and, as I have shown above, indirectly, by supporting political regimes that are themselves disempowering and oppressive. 342 aspects of his doctrines and their theological implications to people outside of the immediate circle of friends who had been reading the manuscript drafts [of the Ethics] all along [i.e., in the long course of its gestation]” (244).302 There is no denying that Spinoza was, in important respects, wary of too wide a dissemination of his philosophical views. Thus, he never authorized the Ethics to be published in his lifetime (making arrangements only for its posthumous publication). What’s more, when Spinoza learned that a translation of the TTP from the original

Latin into Dutch had been carried out and was being prepared for publication – thereby possibly allowing for a much broader readership, at least in the Netherlands – he urged his friend Jarig

Jelles “to look into this and, if possible, to stop the printing” (Ep 44). Indeed, it is evident from other items in his correspondence that he was suspicious of the motives many people might have for wanting to see the manuscript of his Ethics. For example, he never granted a request made by

Gottfried Leibniz via Walter Tschirnhaus (whose request was, in turn, relayed to Spinoza via

Schuller: see Ep 70) for access to a copy of his manuscript (Ep 72). In this dissertation, I have argued that ‘fearless speech’ is one of the ways in which, to Spinoza, the virtue of nobility

(generositas) manifests itself. I have also argued that resistance – qua rational critique of prejudices – is, in Spinoza’s view, in accordance with the dictates of reason, and perhaps even itself a dictate of reason. Finally, I have just now suggested that Spinoza regarded his own philosophical enterprise as an (indirect) act of (political) resistance. But if I were correct about any or all of these things, then – it might be objected – surely Spinoza should have consented to, if not actively sought, as wide a circulation for his philosophical works as possible. The fact that he did not might be taken as evidence weighing against my claims.

However, this objection loses sight of the nature of the dictates of reason in general, and thus of the nature of the ethico-rational imperative to resist that I have uncovered in Spinoza’s

302 S.B. Smith likewise speaks of Spinoza’s “passion for secrecy and concealment” (1997: 52). 343 works. It must be remembered that the dictates of reason are prudential counsels regarding how best to act in order to maximize one’s advantage or power to exist. The Sage does not engage in resistance indiscriminately or recklessly. If the foreseeable negative (i.e., disempowering, harmful, disadvantageous) consequences of an act of resistance outweigh its foreseeable advantages in terms of the Sage’s power to exist, then the Sage will not choose this course of action.303 If wise persons judge that the time is not ripe for resistance – i.e., that particular individuals, a segment of the population, or even the whole lot of their fellow human beings are, for whatever reason, so firmly attached to their prejudices that they are completely impervious to rational critique – then wise persons will cautiously bide their time, keeping their critique to themselves, or sharing it only with whomever they deem may be trusted and may stand to benefit from such confidences.304 If wise persons feel that a number of potential readers are ‘ready for enlightenment’, but that the critique of the prejudices that stand in the way of such enlightenment will only be allowed unfettered circulation, or will only be entertained and/or assimilated by its very targets, if cloaked under an apparently orthodox surface message (i.e., ‘hidden between the lines’) then this is what they will do. And if, finally, they should consider it prudent to launch an open assault on these prejudices, then they will lay out their critique in the most forthright and uncompromising manner. In other words, there are various possible strategies of (intellectual)

303 This, after all, is the reason why Spinoza thinks the wise person, in at least the majority of cases, “should act (…) solely in accordance with the Sovereign’s decree” (TTP Pref. § 13): it is the lesser of two evils (i.e., it is the course of action that can be foreseen to yield the most benefit). 304 It is noteworthy, in this respect, that Spinoza justifies his desire to see the printing of a translation of the TTP prevented by explaining that this desire is not the expression of his own personal misgivings or fears, but rather the “request (…) of many of [his] good friends who would not wish to see the book banned, as will undoubtedly happen if it is published in Dutch”(Ep 44). In other words, in taking measures to ensure that the Dutch translation of the TTP never makes it to the printing press, Spinoza is actually moved by a desire to see the arguments of the TTP disseminated as widely as possible. His ‘cease and desist’ request is thus a prudent calculation and compromise: the publication of a Dutch edition would, in Spinoza’s eyes, guarantee its prohibition (a full stop to its circulation), whereas in its Latin form it could still reach a certain, albeit limited, number of readers. Of course, even this prudential calculus only succeeded in postponing its eventual prohibition, which, after the Synod of Dordrecht condemned the work in 1673, was officially decreed in 1674 by “the secular authorities of the province of Holland” (Nadler 2005: 322). 344 resistance to be employed as circumstances dictate: some rather clandestine, others out in the open.305 And of course sometimes the best strategy may be judged to be not to resist at all. Thus, to ‘speak the truth fearlessly’ does not amount to speaking out at every conceivable occasion.

Wise persons pick their battles carefully, and are willing to accommodate themselves to, or make concessions regarding, the beliefs, practices, and conditions of the vulgus to the degree that this is both prudent (cautus) and “permitted by reason” (TTP IV.6).306

I have spoken of the wise person’s prudence, caution, or carefulness in striking only when the time is right, in seizing the opportune moment for resistance. This brings me to the issue – alluded to in the passage quoted above from Nadler’s biography on Spinoza – of the significance of the motto inscribed on Spinoza’s signet ring: Caute. Caute is an adverb, and is ordinarily translated as ‘cautiously’, ‘prudently’, ‘carefully’, or ‘guardedly’. But used alone as a motto, it has the force of an imperative. Hence, Spinoza scholars typically take Spinoza’s injunction to mean: “Be Careful” or “Act Cautiously”. In French, it is often translated as: “Méfie-toi” (see

Dejardin 24 fn. 5). However, as C. Jaquet points out (2004: 9), these translations will only do if we exclude from them any connotations of fear, as might, e.g., be implied if Caute is taken (as it

305 Spinoza’s writings themselves contain multiple examples of both of these types of resistance-strategies. As I have shown earlier in this chapter, the Appendix to part I of the Ethics, read alongside the Preface to part IV and the Preface to the TTP, constitutes perhaps the strongest example in Spinoza’s corpus of the second pole on the spectrum of possible resistance strategies: i.e., a ruthless, overt, and direct critique of disempowering illusions. In “How to Study Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise”, L. Strauss famously argues that Spinoza’s TTP is written in a coded or stratified manner. It has a surface meaning that while not altogether orthodox, is still likely to be palatable to a fairly mainstream Christian reader. This surface meaning is inconsistent, or full of half-truths, which will prompt the astute reader to look for a deeper, esoteric, and more radical reading that is consistent, and from the perspective of which the inconsistencies of the surface level are meant at once to: (1) cater to the sensibilities of the mainstream reader who is not prepared to entertain radical, heterodox ideas about the nature of God, scripture, human beings, etc.; and (2) act as subtle cues for those who are prepared to entertain such ideas to look for a deeper meaning, and rethink the coherence of their own views. Strauss’ reading thus has the merit of demonstrating the ways in which the TTP offers examples of the first pole on the spectrum of resistance strategies: i.e., those which are more clandestine; which require some amount of cautious disguise, indirection, or double-meaning. Cf. Yovel 1985: 320-325. 306 This is in keeping with the fact that, as I explained in footnote 7 of chapter 4, Spinoza thinks that sometimes “the virtue of a free man is seen to be as great in avoiding dangers as in overcoming them” (E IVP69), and that a “timely flight” from those things that threaten our conatus essendi sometimes shows just as much strength of character as an open and direct confrontation with them (E IVP69S). 345 ought, in a sense, to be taken) as an admonishment to be distrustful or suspicious. To Spinoza,

“fear (metus) is an inconstant sadness, born of the idea of a future or past thing whose outcome we to some extent doubt” (E III Def. Affs. XIII). While fear is thus a species of sadness,

Spinoza’s rational person strives to cultivate joyful affects. It would therefore be odd if

Spinoza’s personal motto should encourage the cultivation of a sad affect. Jaquet concludes that we would be better advised to translate Caute as: “Be Prudent” or “Be Vigilant”. For similar reasons, Dejardin has recently proposed to render it into French as: “Soi Défiant” (“Be defiant”: i.e., challenge yourself and others; be brave; question authority and opinions presented as authoritative, etc.) (Idem.).307 Taking a different track, C. Gebhardt reminds us that the inscription on Spinoza’s signet ring is accompanied by a representation of a rose with exaggeratedly large thorns – no doubt a play on Spinoza’s name, which derives from the

Portuguese word espinhosa or ‘thorny’ (Nadler 2005: 27). He argues that the motto ought therefore to be interpreted as a warning to others to beware of him (i.e., Spinoza): that he should be ‘approached’ and ‘handled’ with care.308 The point I want to make in examining the various possible translations of Spinoza’s motto is that it can be read both as an enjoinder to cautious reticence and self-restraint, and as a spur to, and declaration of, open defiance and combativeness. This range of meanings corresponds exactly to the spectrum of different possible strategies of resistance available to the Sage.309 Hence, it will not do to use Spinoza’s personal

307 Actually, to be precise, Dejardin translates Caute as “Défie-toi” (24, fn. 5). But I think “Soi défiant” is much more consistent with his own argument for his translation, which builds on the work of Jaquet in similarly emphasizing the need to guard the translation of Spinoza’s motto from connotations of timidity, cowardice, and fearful distrust or furtiveness. In this chapter, we have seen that there is a kind of distrust or suspicion – at work in Spinoza’s own writings – that is not fearful and, hence, sad: viz., the rational suspicion or critique of prejudices, of superstitions, of unfounded opinions. Caute can thus be taken as an imperative to become – to use the wonderful phrase coined by P. Ricoeur to characterize the philosophical projects of Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud – “a master of suspicion”. For Ricoeur’s use of the phrase, see De l’interprétation: essai sur Freud (Paris: Seuil, 2001), pp. 42-46. 308 In this respect, P. Macherey’s translation is perhaps best: “Prends garde!” (1997: 397). 309 As we have seen, many of these can still be quite surreptitious. And in cases where a very real threat of persecution is coupled with dim prospects for success, the Sage may very well choose to do nothing – biding his/her 346 motto as an objection against the possibility that Spinoza’s self-understanding (in Freudian terms: his ego-ideal) may have been that of an intellectual militant, fighting joyfully, courageously, and prudently for the advancement of knowledge and freedom – the connection between the two being, as we have seen, very close in Spinoza’s mind. For as W. Eckstein puts it: “The real meaning of the seal would not indicate any timidity on Spinoza’s part but rather testify to his courage and his willingness to fight for his convictions” (155).

I wish to make one last point about Spinoza’s biography, in order to bolster my claim that

Spinoza may be said to have regarded himself as a militant intellectual of the kind I have described in general terms both in this chapter and (especially) in chapter 4 on the basis of a reading of Spinoza’s Ethics. While biographical facts like the ones related a few paragraphs ago regarding Spinoza’s apprehensiveness about the spread of his ideas may encourage the perception of Spinoza as a cautious conservative both in terms of his explicit political teachings, and in terms of his general personality and outlook, quite a few other biographical details give us a very different picture: one of a man unafraid to speak his mind and unwilling to betray his beliefs by paying lip service to orthodox opinion, no matter what the consequences. The best and most famous example of this facet of Spinoza’s character is undoubtedly his behaviour when faced with the threat of excommunication (Cherem) from Judaism. It is not known what exactly provoked the ma’amad (governing board or senior council) of the Sephardic community in time, and keeping his/her thoughts altogether private. As I have just mentioned, in addition to carrying Spinoza’s motto, his signet ring was adorned with what Spinoza’s Latin-speaking correspondents would have called a rosa spinosa (thorny rose). The rose was a traditional symbol of secrecy, and the phrase sub rosa (“under the rose”) a traditional expression of secrecy and confidentiality. Many scholars have thus interpreted the thorny rose on Spinoza’s signet ring in the same way they have interpreted his motto: viz., as a conservative reminder to both himself and his correspondents (recall that such a signet ring would have been used by Spinoza to create seals authenticating his letters as his own) that – for the sake of both one’s own security, and the peace of one’s nation – it is best to keep to oneself truths to which the majority of one’s fellow citizens are hostile, or which the Sovereign deems unsuitable or dangerous. It has thus been read as another call for the Sage to seek otium by eschewing political involvement and retreating, like a good Stoic, into his/her for intérieur. But it seems to me that the fact that the rosa in question is rather conspicuously spinosa means that, as a symbol, it can also refer to those strategies of resistance described above whose very efficacity – i.e., capacity to ‘sting’ – requires a certain amount of secrecy, indirection, or esotericism (as L. Strauss and his followers would have it). 347

Amsterdam to make such a threat,310 though in the final written statement of their “ban”, they cited, among other objectionable things, Spinoza’s “evil opinions” and “abominable heresies”

(Nadler 2005: 120). As was common in such cases, Spinoza would have been given the opportunity to abjure his offending beliefs in a public ceremony of repentance and reconciliation.

Had he accepted to do so, he would not have been forced to sever all ties with the Jewish community. The leaders of the Jewish community in Amsterdam must have been particularly anxious to keep Spinoza within the fold, as both P. Bayle and Colerus report that they offered him an annual pension, on condition that he never cease “de se faire voir de tems en tems dans leurs Synagogues (sic)” (553) and, most importantly, that he keep his heterodox beliefs to himself.311 But as everyone knows, Spinoza chose to defy the commands of the secular and religious leaders of the Jewish community312 and suffer the consequences, rather than consign himself to a life of hypocrisy.313

Three other lesser-known examples from Spinoza’s life also come to mind. The first comes from Leibniz who, after having visited Spinoza in 1676, recalled that the latter had told

310 For a lucid and well-informed discussion, with references to further secondary sources on this controversial topic, see Ch. 6 of S. Nadler’s Spinoza: A Life (Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 2005). 311 Pierre Bayle was another of Spinoza’s earliest biographers. While his writings were critical of Spinoza (though often ambiguously so), their immense popularity – especially the best-selling Dictionnaire historique et critique, first published in 1697 – ironically made them one of the leading causes of the spread of Spinoza’s ideas in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Some, however, would say that this was no coincidence or paradox, but rather a deliberate strategy on Bayle’s part. See J. Israel (2001: Ch. 18; 2006: Chs. 2 & 3); G. Friedmann (1962: 209). Bayle’s account of the attempt to buy Spinoza’s outward conformity to Judaism as well as his silence is to be found in his article on Spinoza in the Dictionnaire, and runs as follows: “On dit que les juifs lui offrirent de le tolérer, pourvu qu’il voulût accommoder son extérieur à leur cérémonial, et qu’ils lui promirent même une pension annuelle” (22). 312 The Jewish community in 17th century Amsterdam was, in many ways, an imperium in imperio; its leaders had jurisdiction over many aspects of life that the city’s magistrates would have had over the rest of Amsterdam’s population. Moreover, the Jewish community enjoyed the independence, privileges, and protections it did from Amsterdam’s civil authorities on the condition that, inter alia, it should maintain doctrinal and ritual uniformity within its ranks (Nadler 2005: 148). It is perhaps in part because of the political importance of religious uniformity for the Sephardim that the responsibility for the punishment and, if need be, excommunication of its members for deviations from what was judged to be Jewish orthodoxy was the exclusive and absolute responsibility of their lay leaders. There is thus some justification to considering Spinoza’s resistance to the orders of the ma’amad as an act of political resistance: directly vis-à-vis the ma’amad, indirectly vis-à-vis the city’s magistrates. 313 In Bayle’s words: “Il [= Spinoza] ne put se résoudre à une telle hypocrisie” (22). 348 him that upon receiving news that the De Witt brothers had been savagely torn to pieces by a frenzied mob, he had prepared a placard to denounce those who had taken part in this affair as

“the worst of barbarians (ultimi barbarorum)”. He was prevented from displaying this placard in public – and thus, very likely, from meeting the same fate as the De Witt brothers – by his landlord who locked him inside his home.314 The second example comes from Spinoza’s correspondence. In it, we discover that the scholar of religion J.L. Fabritius had written to

Spinoza on behalf of the Elector Palatine to offer him a prestigious Professorship of Philosophy at the University of Heidelberg, on the condition that he not “misuse” the “extensive freedom in philosophizing” that would be granted to him “to disturb the publicly established religion” (Ep

47). Such was Spinoza’s resolve to speak the truth as freely as possible, that he politely but firmly rejected the Elector’s offer, on the grounds that the condition stipulated in Fabritius’ letter left totally indeterminate the real scope of his “freedom to philosophize” – i.e., it could not really be guaranteed that his lectures would not be subject to censorship (Ep 48), since it cannot be predicted what will upset people’s religious sensibilities. The third example comes from

Spinoza’s earliest biographers. Though their accounts differ somewhat, both Bayle and Colerus tell the story of how sometime shortly before (or, in Colerus’ version, maybe shortly after)

Spinoza’s excommunication, he was attacked by a Jewish man brandishing a knife as he was leaving the Amsterdam municipal theatre. According to Colerus, this incident convinced Spinoza that he was no longer safe in Amsterdam, and thereafter “il ne songeoit qu’à se retirer en quelqu’autre lieu à la première occasion” (553-554). It is a tribute to Spinoza’s combativeness and courage in giving voice to unpopular truths that he chose to write at all after such an incident

314 Both Feuer (138) and W. Klever (1996: 40) quote Leibniz’s description of this episode in full. While Klever provides no citation, the reference given by Feuer is to page 201 of Freudenthal (1899). 349

– which frightened him enough to make him want to move as soon as possible.315 The point I want to make in raising these examples is that Spinoza’s biography itself exhibits the whole of spectrum of behaviour (and, specifically, of strategies of resistance) that itself corresponds to the range of meanings that I have shown to be associable with his motto, Caute, and personal symbol, the thorny rose: he chose prudent secrecy and silence when this was necessary, but was also fiercely protective of his freedom to think and speak as he saw fit, and could assert his beliefs courageously when he thought it necessary or appropriate. Hence, it is, at the very least, not possible to refute my suggestion regarding Spinoza’s self-understanding by an appeal to the data of Spinoza’s biography.

315 According to Colerus, Spinoza was not injured, the would-be assassin having managed only to slash Spinoza’s coat. Spinoza is said to have insisted on never repairing the coat, as a kind of life-long reminder of this incident (Colerus 553: “en mémoire de cet événement”). Some might argue that, like Spinoza’s signet ring, the purpose of this memento was to remind him of the ever-present danger of persecution, and thus of the paramount need for caution and secrecy (as opposed to, e.g., the outspoken critique of prejudices), as well as peace and security (even if this should require the sacrifice of a great deal of personal freedom). I don’t dispute the partial validity of such an interpretation. But why shouldn’t the torn threads of Spinoza’s coat not also have reminded him of the urgency of the struggle to persuade as many as could be persuaded by means of philosophical critique of the error of persecution and intolerance? Taking into consideration what I have argued in this dissertation regarding the relation in Spinoza’s thought between resistance and the rational person, why shouldn’t Spinoza have wanted to keep this coat as a life- long goad to resist or combat such hatred and intolerance, or to change however many minds could be changed through rational critique (a form of resistance and combat in and through which, as we have seen, the conquered “yield joyfully”)? 350

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