Ο Σπινόζα και η Πολιτική

by Étienne Balibar, Άρης Στυλιανού (Translator)

Ο Σπινόζα και η πολιτική: Πόσο μοιάζει παράδοξη, εκ πρώτης όψεως, η απλή αυτή διατύπωση! Αν η πολιτική ανήκει στη σφαίρα της ιστορίας, να ένας φιλόσοφος, ολόκληρο το σύστημα του οποίου παρουσιάζεται ως η ανάπτυξη της ιδέας ότι η γνώση είναι γνώση του Θεού και ότι "ο Θεός είναι η Φύση" η ίδια. Αν η πολιτική ανήκει στη σφαίρα του πάθους, να ένας φιλόσοφος που προτίθεται να γνωρίσει (intelligere) τις επιθυμίες και τις πράξεις των ανθρώπων «όπως γνωρίζουν οι γεωμέτρες [...] σαν να επρόκειτο για καμπύλες, για επιφάνειες και για όγκους». Αν η πολιτική είναι το να παίρνει κανείς θέση σ’ ότι αφορά την επικαιρότητα, να ένας φιλόσοφος για τον οποίο η σοφία και το υπέρτατο αγαθό συνίστανται στο να συλλάβουμε όλα τα επιμέρους πράγματα «από τη σκοπιά της αιωνιότητας» (sub aeternitatis specie). [...]

Genres: Philosophy, Politics, Nonfiction, Theory, France, Collections, 20th Century

154 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Étienne Balibar is emeritus professor of philosophy at Paris X Nanterre and emeritus professor of comparative literature at the University of California, Irvine. He is also professor of modern European philosophy at Kingston University, London, and professor of French and comparative literature at Columbia University. His books include Violence and Civility: On the Limits of Political Philosophy (Columbia, 2015).

Reviews

[Gary Bruff · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have never read Spinoza but I’ve read a lot about him, enough to recognize his genius as a forerunner of existentialist and materialist philosophies. Etienne Balibar, being a prolific Marxist philosopher, seems very much in his element in Spinoza’s system. In Spinoza and Politics, Balibar explores the thought of Spinoza with a zeal and alacrity that brings home many of Spinoza’s timeless ideas in political philosophy, even for those who have never read Spinoza himself.

Legend has it that these words from the first sentence of the Declaration of Independence:

Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God

were derived from the a-theology of Spinoza. I will in this review lightly follow Balibar’s dark and uneven track through Spinoza’s ideas of Nature, of Human Nature, and of the dynamic role that words play in a free and democratic republic. Spinoza saw this republican form of government as blossoming in accord with Man’s natural political condition: freedom to speak our minds and obligation to obey the law.

Like a good pagan or pantheist, Spinoza posited that God is known to us as Nature, and so the laws of God are identical to the laws of Nature. A first principle of the Laws of Nature is that they yield of no exceptions. Theologically, this means that there are no miracles. In the absence of the miraculous, God’s love shines forth in how regular and precise the world is. And so to understand God’s revelation to us you need only to contemplate the logic and consistency of the natural world.

The natural world as given to us is perfect; the human world, less so. People fail to live up to nature’s standard of perfection, and as such human institutions can only be understood in terms of their history. History, in turn, provides the basis for human laws in all their particularity and complexity. In his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, Spinoza gives the example of the Jews of the Exodus who had emancipated themselves from the laws of Egypt but had not yet settled under their new law in the promised land of Israel. God’s commandments were only then given to the people as the start of the new law. But what is taken by many to be a miracle (the story of the burning bush) appears to reason to be but a function of historical necessity.

For Spinoza, the most complex aspect of Nature is human nature. Spinoza differs from other enlightenment philosophers in the way he evaluates mankind’s moral tenor. For example, Spinoza’s account of human nature is at odds with the corresponding ideas found in Hobbes and Rousseau. Hobbes saw human nature as evil and saw societies as needing stiff laws to restrain people from destroying each other. Rousseau saw human nature as good, being the state of natural sociability before our Fall. Spinoza understood that there are both evil and good aspects to humans. We need both to obey the sovereign as Hobbes advises and also to strive to recapture our lost drives toward social cooperation and solidarity, in line with Rousseau's General Will.

Since in practical life, all this good and evil must be sorted out somehow, people make use of language to communicate. Language allows people to get along effectively, possibly through negotiation and debate, or in accord with the letter of the law. It comes then as no surprise that the political side of Spinozan human nature is essentially linguistic, realized by our communicative potential (manifest in a natural ‘democracy’) and by a discursive channeling of interests and responsibilities (manifest in the ‘word of law’).

In the rarefied atmosphere of freedom found in Spinoza’s Amsterdam, the right to discourse openly was taken for granted. Spinoza himself believed that people should be held accountable for and, if need be, punished for their actions, but speech must be free: “...mere words never being punishable.” Sedition, libel, defamation, and slander are in Spinoza’s system reduced to errors that must be corrected through open dialog and debate among free citizens. They are not crimes to be punished. This presumably follows from miscomprending words as being ultimately harmless. However, 20th century work in philosophy and linguistics has shown that the line between speech and action is never easily identified. We know, for example, that we can “do things with words” as Austin said. We can command, inquire, suggest (and not just assert what we take to be fact) when we use language to communicate with others or to reason alone.

For Spinoza, free speech is therefore essential to any healthy political system. Consider how each person is unique, being made up of his or her own experiences and desires. We cannot form and shape a single world view or ideology that provides sufficient room to maneuver for these different people with diverse perspectives and talents. In this context of pluralism, which entails multiple ideologies and world views being tolerated, free speech and freedom of opinion maximize a state’s chances of reaching rational decisions. For Spinoza, free speech and free opinion are basic in the sense that they precede the state. They are the bedrock of humankind’s social and political nature. In contributing to the web of sociality, the expression of our free political will publicly circulates information through a wider orbit of ideology and opinion, allowing more people to take advantage of their natural powers of reason to resolve conflicts and to find common ground. This public circulation of discourse moreover reduces people’s fears of one another, for such fears are really just the fear of the unknown.

If public discourse is a kind of free-for-all that promotes the common good by making issues publicly debatable and open to collective reasoning, the law is another matter. Laws, once enacted by the sovereign, must be followed categorically. We might speak out against an unfair or bad law, but we must follow it if the social contract between state and citizens is to be maintained. Since God is nature, and nature follows laws which we might not understand, the laws of man are also binding, even for those who see a law as incongruous and bad.

One way to circumvent a bad law is through revolution. For Spinoza, revolutions, being lawless, are illegitimate... until they succeed in capturing the state, at which point they are owed the same obedience as had been demanded by the former regime. On the one hand, the worst case scenario for a revolution would be the overthrow of one social order with no just and popular institutions filling the void. The overthrowing of the sovereign can lead to a worse situation, as took place during the Cromwell regime and during the French Terror. Rulers become terrified of the masses who are themselves terrified of what they perceive as a tyrannical regime. On the other hand, the best case scenario for a revolution would be the establishment of a reasonable state, one which rules over the hearts of the people. In a peaceful and reasonable state, as opposed to a violent and arbitrary state, the people feel an inner loyalty to the public order. If the sovereign government should monopolize violence but use it with restraint, then popular loyalty and public order will follow. Therefore, coming to terms with violence is the true object of politics, since even an unreasonable despotism might provide the benefits of peace, while a revolution, howsoever just it's foundation may be, might lead blindly into chaos and fear.

Balibar’s Spinoza and Politics is one of the best secondary sources of philosophy I have ever read. His insights on Spinoza’s precocious grasp of ideology and communicative practice are truly stunning. I would need to read Spinoza myself before I can judge whether Balibar is projecting a fully modern sensibility on these late renaissance texts. In any event, this work delves into the depths of a political world, reformation age Amsterdam, which provides a neat backdrop and context to Spinoza’s ‘liberal’ understanding of people and their limitless potential, once given their political freedoms and informed of their civic duties. There are many ideas here which could generate an interesting conversation for a rebirth of democratic republicanism. It makes you believe that our own noble republic still has a chance to fulfill its promise, provided we strive to speak freely and individually, and do not subsume our voice as part of a violent and lawless mob. The choice ultimately is ours.

[Spoust1 · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had only read bits of Spinoza's Ethics when I read this book, and the bits I had read did little for me - I ended up putting it down. But I knew that Spinoza was important for Althusser and Deleuze, both of whom use Spinoza as a sort of alternative to Hegel; I turned to this book to see what the big deal was.

I had been suspicious of Spinoza: he is hailed as "one of the great thinkers of democracy," which I took to mean that he was a (silly ol') liberal; and as one of the first pantheist thinkers, at least in the Western tradition. I thought that, as a liberal and as someone who mentions "God" ten times a page in his Ethics, he would not fit within my theoretical paradigm, which is (more or less) Marxist and therefore has a materialistic (i.e. atheistic) moment.

Balibar argues that all of Spinoza's texts - from the Theologico-Political Treatise to The Ethics - must be read as interventions into political debates from his time. Spinoza is a liberal, therefore, only inasmuch as liberal democracy seemed the best answer to the religious demagogy and abuse of power by the elites that Spinoza witnessed all around him. Spinoza's arguments, however, are very interesting: it is almost as if he were applying the ideas of thinkers that succeed him - Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Lacan, Foucault, Habermas - to his particular situation. And Spinoza's famous refusal of the mind/body dualism allows him to approach in a fresh way some of the classic antinomies we come across when we think society.

This is a short, inexpensive book - part of Verso's "Radical Thinkers" series: 124 pages, $12.95. It is worth taking a look at - a brief, exciting introduction to a classic thinker, and some new approaches to arguments we (sadly) still encounter today. Also, Balibar quotes extensively from Spinoza's texts, and his choice of passages is always superb.

Some choice quotes:

"The fundamental dogma of true religion is... that love of God and love of one's neighbor are really one and the same."

"Spinoza does not identify the 'eternal will of God' with grace, in opposition to human nature; in a striking and decisive move, he identifies it with nature itself, in its totality and its necessity."

"[T:]he most despotic master is the one who believes he has received a sacred mission to save those whom he dominates, and who sees himself as the humble servant of another Master, whose will cannot conceivably be resisted.... Every sacred figure of power is an expression of men's inability to see themselves as fully responsible for their own collective salvation."

"Spinoza... [does not:] justifty the notion of right, but... form[s:] an adequate idea of its determinations, of the way in which it works. In this sense, his formula can be glossed as meaning that the individual's right includes all that he is effectively able to do and to think in a given set of conditions."

"[E:]xistence is considered not only as a form of natural production but as a process of reproduction for the elements of the individual and the power that binds them together, which enables them to stand up to the action of external forces."

"[R:]ulers and ruled, sovereign and citizens, all belong to the multitude."

"Democracy is an inherently problematic concept, since it corresponds to the mode of existence of a multitude that has already found its own internal balance, that is already substantially 'unanimous'.... [However:] [t:]he balance that is required is not a stasis... the soul of the body politic is not a representation but a praxis."

"An idea... is not a picture... it is an action of the part of a thinking individual.... There is therefore no reason... to add a special act of will or a special effect produced by an emotion in order for this idea to pass from the sphere of thought to the sphere of praxis. Every idea is always already accompanied by an affect... Conversely, every affect is tied to a representation."

[Arno Noack · Rating 4 out of 5]

a good introduction to Spinoza and an interesting interpretation of his transition of thought between the writing of the TTP and TP, but lacking a strong critical evaluation of his work. Balibar brings up many interesting questions and arguments about Spinoza's thought contesting a lot of popular interpretations but comes up short in his ability to connect it to a modern materialist analysis which could place it in a context of usefulness in modern political discourse. Still, this is a great read as a summary of the evolution of Spinoza's politics and the conditions behind that evolution, and well worth reading for anyone interested in Spinoza, but not a stand alone text when considering Spinoza and his legacy for modern political discourse. All things considered it is a pretty impressive summary of Spinoza considering it is only 124 pages.

[Chloe · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book saved my PhD proposal.

[K · Rating 5 out of 5]

If no man ever thinks alone, then we might say that to know really is to think ever less by oneself.

Quite challenging at parts - I think I would benefit a lot from a reread of the first two chapters now that I’ve finished it and maybe more so after taking some further time to digest the rest of the book. Exceptional layout of the circumstances Spinoza wrote in and how his politics and philosophy were one and the same… there’s so many interesting ideas here about communication between bodies and freedom.

[Owen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Difficult and dense read

[Elisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Philosophy and politics imply each other. La filosofia come disciplina deve sempre porsi domandi sulle fondamenta/illusioni su cui si trova.
"The opinionof me held by the common people, who constantly accuse me of atheism. I am driven to avert this accusation, too, as far as I can".
The principal idea is the radical separation of the domains of philosophy and theology.
Every sacred figure of power is an expression of men's inability to see themselves as fully responsible for their own collective salvation.
La sovranità dello stato è assoluta e chi si rifuta di sottomettersi diviene nemico pubblico, ma allo stesso tempo lo stato, per garantire la sua stabilità, deve permettere agli individui di esprimersi.
The more violent the contraints that are placed upon individual freedom, the more violent and destructive will be the reaction against them.
Ingenium.
Obbedienza p. 31
The question "where can true freedom be found?" remained open. It is a question that has to be asked anew for everyhistorical regime.
Hobbes's absolutism is founded on what has been called a possessive individualism.
Spinoza rigetta le idee di di contratto socciale, rappresentazione e la differenza tra diritti naturali e civili.
No body politic can exist without being subject to the latent threat of civil war.
Futility of denouncing the "vices" of human nature since the fundamental cause of the citizens' vices (as of their virtues) always lies in the actions of institutions.
"Individual" and "State" are in fact abstractions, which only have meaning in relation to one another. Each of them serves merely to express one modality through which the power of the multitude can be realised as such.
The degeneration of the institutions of the State corrupts both the masters and their subjects.
Democracy is an inherently problematic concpet, since it corresponds to the mode of existence of a multitude that has already found its own internal balance, that is already substantially unanimous.
THE SOUL OF THE BODYPOLITIC IS NOT A REPRESENTATION BUT A PRAXIS.
Absolute monarchies are thus concealed aristocarcies.
Aristocracy -> when pursuing their own interest they must pursuit the general one too.
Monarchy, aristocracy and democracy will prove to be purely formal and abstract. The only difference left will be in the name.
Obedience is to move one's body according to an idea that the soul has formed in recognition of the will of the another, and which has made its own, wheter voluntarily or under constraint.
Reason, in itselft, does not command anything, but it does show that an ordered State, which is capable of ensuring its own preservation, is the condition of any effective progress towards utility.
Passion and reason are both modes of communication between bodies and between ideas of bodies. In the same way, political remiges should be thought of as orders of communication.
Obedience is not an immutable givenbut the fulcrum of a continual transition.
Words summarize the irreducible experience of each individual under a series of common nous which stand for abstract and general notions.
Life in a society is a communicative activity.
Knowledge is a praxis.
Spinoza's philosophy is one of modes of communication.
His metaphyisics is a philosophy of praxis and his politics is a philosophy.
Right is power.
Social relationships are both physical and ideological.
Desire is not based on lack, it is positive.
A major part of Spinoza's originality is to have proposed that the object of desire is neither predetermined nor already dfined, but is changeable and can be substituted. The one exception to this rule is the desire for rational knowledge whose object is any singular thing.
All polymorphous forms of desire are nothing other than a certain deggree of activity which is sufficient to overcome passivity, a positive differential between life and death.
Spinoza considers the human species to be an abstraction. Only individuals exist.
The strongest ideas are also the strongest affects.
The city that is rationally conceived and constructed throught the daily activity of its members is indeed a collective individuality, not founded on uniformity.
Our aim should be to change the content of faith by ectracting from Scripture a core of univeral dogma (love for one's neighbor, hope for salvation, divine Law, obedience).
In order to gurarantee that the civil pact will hold, it is necessary to double it up with a religious pact, which supposes in turn some commond bond of passion (patriotism-nationalism-universalism).
The individual is neither created by God nor is it raw material It is a construction

[Luke Echo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting summary of the Spinoza's politics as they develop through the 3 works Theological-Political Treatise, Political Treatise and The Ethics.