Spinoza and the Politics of Renaturalization

by Hasana Sharp

There have been many Spinozas over the atheist, romantic pantheist, great thinker of the multitude, advocate of the liberated individual, and rigorous rationalist. The common thread connecting all of these clashing perspectives is Spinoza’s naturalism, the idea that humanity is part of nature, not above it.

 

In this sophisticated new interpretation of Spinoza’s iconoclastic philosophy, Hasana Sharp draws on his uncompromising naturalism to rethink human agency, ethics, and political practice. Sharp uses Spinoza to outline a practical wisdom of “renaturalization,” showing how ideas, actions, and institutions are never merely products of human intention or design, but outcomes of the complex relationships among natural forces beyond our control. This lack of a metaphysical or moral division between humanity and the rest of nature, Sharp contends, can provide the basis for an ethical and political practice free from the tendency to view ourselves as either gods or beasts.

 

Sharp’s groundbreaking argument critically engages with important contemporary thinkers—including deep ecologists, feminists, and race and critical theorists—making Spinoza and the Politics of Renaturalization vital for a wide range of scholars.

Genres: Philosophy, Ecology

242 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2011

Reviews

[Glen · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author attempts to find a middle ground between a humanism that inflates the transcendent capabilities of human beings only to then humiliate them by their failure to achieve that potential, on the one hand, and an inhumanism that revels in the feral and bestial while downplaying or gainsaying the extent to which humans can contribute to the augmentation of their powers and joys in living through community and common endeavors, on the other. Her philosophical champion to the end of finding this middle ground is Spinoza, "the prince of immanence" as Deleuze and Guattari dub him, the philosopher for whom nature is all and all is God. Her case for her interpretation of Spinoza is thoughtful and replete with interesting incorporations of and critical engagements with the work of notable feminists such as Judith Butler and Elizabeth Grosz, as well as with Spinoza's admirers in the environmentalist camp, most notably Arne Naess and the Deep Ecology school(s) of thought. In the end though I was left wondering why the metaphysics of Spinoza are better suited to the pragmatics of solidarity and engagement she calls for than, say, the metaphysics of Whitehead, for example. I also felt that the real ethological call in these pages has less to do with an affirmation of the continuity between the human and the nonhuman than it does with finding a suitable foundation for creating a more effective and powerful praxis. This is not to say that the latter is not a laudable goal, but it seemed to me more an article of faith than an established point that this praxis will look more like Woodstock than Nuremberg. I think supplemental argument is needed for that, but without it Spinoza starts to sound a lot like Nietzsche (and maybe there's nothing wrong with that). Best line in the book (p. 208): "To dream that we are either God or beast is to forget that it is all about Eve."