Affirmation and Resistance in Spinoza
The Strategy of the Conatus
Laurent Bove
Translated by Émilie Filion-Donato
Edited by Hasana Sharp, Émilie Filion-Donato
- Provides a thorough overview of political theories, clarifying different philosophical traditions that are often obscured under the generic label of modernity
- Develops an original analysis of Spinoza’s philosophy, based on the concept of conatus, which has been largely neglected in Anglo-Saxon scholarship
- Broadens access to the wealth of un-translated literature on Spinoza
Spinozism must be understood as a dynamic ontology that necessarily unfolds on practical terrain. Laurent Bove analyses Spinoza’s theory of affects as rooted in Habit, generating the constituent power of human beings, commonwealths, nations and multitudes. By interpreting sovereignty as a power that emerges through the active resistance of the always singular body of the multitude, Bove discovers in Spinoza a radically new approach to the State, to citizenship and to history.
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction: Infinity and Strategy
Chapter 1: The Strategic Logic of the Spinozist Conatus: The Stages of World Construction
- Habit as the Constituting Activity of Actual existence
- Conatus as Joy Principle
- Conatus as Memory
Chapter 2: The Constitution of the Strategic Subject
2.1. The Object and its Recognition
2.2. Recognition, Useful Inadequate Knowledge
2.3. Theory of the Practical Subject
Chapter 3: The Conatus as Imitation and Strategy of Self-Approval (Amour-Propre)
3.1. Conatus as Imitation and the Ambition for Domination
3.2. Love of Self and Strategies of Self-Love
3.3. Ostentation or Dissimulation? A Strategy of Appearance
Chapter 4: Hilaritas and Acquiescentia in se ipso: A Dynamic of Joy
4.1. The Infant’s Joyful Passion
4.2. Acquiescentia Animi and Adequate Knowledge
4.3. Dynamic Equilibrium: Return and Productivity
Chapter 5: Ethical Subjectivity and the Absolute Affirmation of Singular Existence: An Ethics of Resistance
5.1. The Spiritual Automaton and the Practical Subject
5.2. From the Practical Subject of Love to Ethical Subjectivity
5.3. An Ethics of Resistance and Love
Chapter 6: The Innocence of Reality and the Recursive Cycle
6.1. Causa Sui as the Real Movement of the Production of Reality
6.2. Infinite Modes and Circular Necessity
6.3. From the Identification of the Synthetic and Analytic Links to the Absolute
Expression of the Univocity of Being (Singular Essence and Law of Production)
Chapter 7: Why Do People Fight for their Servitude as if it were Salvation?
7.1. Servitude as a Paradoxical Object of Desire
7.2. Sed Obtemperantia Subditum Facit…
7.3. The Theocratic Solution: From the Order of Signs to the Political Order, a
Rational Strategy for a Barbarian Nation
Chapter 8: The Hebrew State: Elements for a Second Theory of the Imaginary Constitution of the Political Body
8.1. From Habit (the Productive Activity of the ‘nation’’s actual existence) to the Self-
Organization of the ‘multitudinis ingenium’ as the Practical Political Subject
8.2. The Covenant: From the Joy Principle to the Establishment of a Temporality and
Space for the ‘Nation’
8.3. The Institution of Freedom
Chapter 9: The Strategy of the Multitudinis Potentia: The Political Conatus
9.1. The Political Project of Autonomy as Absolute Sovereignty and/or the Collective
Body’s ‘absolutely absolute’ Affirmation
9.2. Resistance Makes the Citizen
9.3. Resistance as a Sovereign and Eternal right
9.3.1. The Ephors’ Right of Resistance: from the Monarchomachs to the Political
Treatise
9.3.2. The Right of War and the Collective Body’s Active Resistance Strategy
9.3.3. Benevolence and Indignation: the ‘Affects’ of Resistance
9.3.4. From the Resistance of the Best to the Indignation of All: Machiavelli, La
Boétie, Spinoza
Conclusion: Strategy and Infinity
Affirmation and Resistance in Spinoza is a totally new perspective on the relation between ontology and politics in Spinoza. By identifying with clarity and breathtaking acuity the notion of strategy as the negotiation, always contested, between the causality that determines us and the striving for self-preservation, Bove does not only offer a radical new reading of Spinoza, but also a vision of a radical politics of resistance much needed today.
