Affirmation and Resistance in Spinoza

Laurent Bove is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Université de Picardie Jules-Verne. He is a member of l'Institut d'Histoire des Représentations et des Idées dans les Modernités à l’École Normale Supérieure de Lyon and President of l’association des ami.e.s de Spinoza. He is the author of La Strategie du conatus (Vrin, 1996; 2nd edition 2012) which was translated into Italian in 2002 and in Spanish in 2009. His other books include Albert Camus. De l’absurde à l’amour (1995), Albert Camus: de la transfiguration (2014), Vauvenargues ou le Séditieux (2015). He is the editor of a French translation of Spinoza’s Political Treatise (2002). He is the general editor of The Complete Works of Vauvenargues. Hasana Sharp is Associate Professor of Philosophy at McGill University. She is author of Spinoza and the Politics of Renaturalization, among other works. Émilie Filion-Donato is a McGill Philosophy graduate, Translator, Programmer, and Spinoza enthusiast. Émilie Filion-Donato is a McGill Philosophy graduate, Translator, Programmer, and Spinoza enthusiast.

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.

• AcknowledgementsAbbreviationsIntroduction: Infinity and StrategyChapter 1: The Strategic Logic of the Spinozist Conatus: The Stages of World ConstructionHabit as the Constituting Activity of Actual existenceConatus as Joy PrincipleConatus as MemoryChapter 2: The Constitution of the Strategic Subject2.1. The Object and its Recognition 2.2. Recognition, Useful Inadequate Knowledge2.3. 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 Domination3.2. Love of Self and Strategies of Self-Love3.3. Ostentation or Dissimulation? A Strategy of AppearanceChapter 4: Hilaritas and Acquiescentia in se ipso: A Dynamic of Joy4.1. The Infant’s Joyful Passion4.2. Acquiescentia Animi and Adequate Knowledge4.3. Dynamic Equilibrium: Return and ProductivityChapter 5: Ethical Subjectivity and the Absolute Affirmation of Singular Existence: An Ethics of Resistance5.1. The Spiritual Automaton and the Practical Subject5.2. From the Practical Subject of Love to Ethical Subjectivity 5.3. An Ethics of Resistance and LoveChapter 6: The Innocence of Reality and the Recursive Cycle6.1. Causa Sui as the Real Movement of the Production of Reality6.2. Infinite Modes and Circular Necessity6.3. 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 Desire7.2. Sed Obtemperantia Subditum Facit…7.3. The Theocratic Solution: From the Order of Signs to the Political Order, a Rational Strategy for a Barbarian NationChapter 8: The Hebrew State: Elements for a Second Theory of the Imaginary Constitution of the Political Body8.1. From Habit (the Productive Activity of the ‘nation’’s actual existence) to the Self-Organization of the ‘multitudinis ingenium’ as the Practical Political Subject8.2. The Covenant: From the Joy Principle to the Establishment of a Temporality and Space for the ‘Nation’8.3. The Institution of FreedomChapter 9: The Strategy of the Multitudinis Potentia: The Political Conatus9.1. The Political Project of Autonomy as Absolute Sovereignty and/or the Collective Body’s ‘absolutely absolute’ Affirmation9.2. Resistance Makes the Citizen9.3. Resistance as a Sovereign and Eternal right9.3.1. The Ephors’ Right of Resistance: from the Monarchomachs to the Political Treatise9.3.2. The Right of War and the Collective Body’s Active Resistance Strategy9.3.3. Benevolence and Indignation: the ‘Affects’ of Resistance9.3.4. From the Resistance of the Best to the Indignation of All: Machiavelli, La Boétie, SpinozaConclusion: Strategy and Infinity