| While Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and others try to bring into relief our current political situation by depicting an original, "natural" condition that preceded the "conventional" state of politics, Spinoza brings that natural state forward and shows how we never truly leave it. What concerns Spinoza are not quasi-historical accounts of the state's founding in the service of legitimizing (or de-legitimizing) the present but rather conceptualizations of the logic by which the affects deploy themselves in ways that continually determine and reshape the dynamic social collectivity. Hence while Hobbes is primarily concerned with the political mechanism of the sovereign, Spinoza's greater concern is the psychological mechanism whereby vacillating affects of love and fear, knowledge and passion, etc. can be stabilized and obedient citizens produced. The challenge of the statesman must be to determine how an analogue of reasonable action can be produced despite the pervasiveness of the passions. Spinoza's theory of the affects, presented with (mostly) scientific detachment in the Ethics, comes to the fore in his political writings in the service of political technology.;If men act peaceably and put down their arms in mutual trust, it is not because at some point in the hazy past---or worse yet, metaphorically---they have agreed to a social contract that legitimates the sovereign, which now it would be unreasonable or immoral to breach. The affects are always in motion, such that what is immediate and pressing will continually work against previous normative commitments. In reality, political unity results from persistent affective identification, durably manifested. The political problem consists in stabilizing those affects and directing them toward mutual love. This dissertation explores how this is effected, and why Spinoza feels that a certain kind of democracy accomplishes this task best. |
