Spinoza in Twenty-First-Century American and French Philosophy

Ariel Suhamy

I must make a confession. After reading her piece, I first wondered why Hasana Sharp worked to respond so precisely and cleverly to Daniel Garber’s reading, which, for my part, I would have rejected off-hand as sophistic. First, I took it for granted that Spinoza does not identify adequate causality with causal independence or self-sufficiency—only substance enjoys this identification. Second, if we can effectively attribute the universal cause of society (or, to be precise, of the return to society, see TP, ch. vi, §1) to the provision of basic needs and the fear of loneliness, this does not imply that all sociability is reduced to the fulfillment of needs and the conquering of fear. Spinoza, in fact, provides two other motivations: on the one hand, the affects of the multitude (three of them are cited: fear, revenge for an evil suffered in common, and hope); on the other hand, reason itself, which disposes the free man to follow collective commands rather than elect for a state of loneliness wherein he only obeys himself. Of course, for Spinoza, this last motive is not universal (no more than are the affects of the multitude, in fact)—in other words, society itself cannot be entirely explained by it. It is only valid for the rare few led by reason. But this does not prevent it from playing a vital role in a given society, as illustrated, for example, in chapter 20 of the Theological-Political Treatise. And if the Political Treatise, like the Theological-Political Treatise, claims that freedom is the aim of political life, this does not mean that political life terminates with freedom, which would be like its horizon and limit point (although I think that one can do justice to this Marxist interpretation). Rather, the point is that freedom can be pursued only from within society, even if society is invariably penetrated, to a greater or lesser degree, by passions or irrationality [E4p71]—and it is precisely such passages from lesser to greater that are indexed to generosity by Spinoza. Perhaps, moreover, one could say that generosity facilitates the passage from fear or revenge to hope as the affective glue of political life, but this would, I think, take me too far afield.

Maybe my initial reaction is typical of the difference between what may be called the French school and the American school. Faced with such Garber’s provocative reading, I might find myself hiding behind the logic of the system, establishing myself as its guardian—at the risk, even, of adopting the unpleasant role of the censor. Such an attitude would not be very generous in the Spinozist sense of the term (perhaps it would be in the Cartesian sense?), even if it respects the letter of the text, in virtue of the fact that it would divide us rather than uniting us. To borrow a military metaphor used by Sharp, the adversary might be defeated, but not by an excess of strength, and therefore not in a manner that is eligible to instill good will: while grumbling, he might reluctantly acknowledge his mistake, but not without rancor, and he would likely still continue to think that Spinoza is contradicting himself.

Following this logic, Sharp does not directly oppose Garber’s argument, but rather proceeds to develop and deepen the idea of a reasonable sociability, and of what reason can bring to society through analysis of the affect (because it is above all an affect) of generosity. It is an argument that is not purely theoretical, that does not merely indulge in the play of concepts, which one can make say many things (so long as practical and ethical implications are ignored); rather it places itself on the terrain of the practical and ethical—a terrain that is the basis of Spinoza’s work. In other words, this approach is itself generous: it is less concerned with righting wrongs by pointing out inadequacies of reasoning or of references, as it with elucidating an image of generosity that responds to Garber more effectively than any myopic or capricious disciplinary discussion could. And, ultimately, this seems to me more genuinely Spinozist, and decidedly less pedantic, than the approach I would’ve initially adopted.

Sharp’s approach is a study in contrasts. The contrast between Spinozist generosity and the Cartesian generosity of the Passions of the Soul is particularly illuminating here. For with this confrontation, the figure of Sharp/Garber comes to mirror that of Spinoza/Descartes, which, in turn, evokes by virtue of its subject (the birth of friendship) the confrontation between Epicureans and Stoics in the ninth letter of Seneca concerning the problems of necessity, need, and giving. What strikes me here is the question of equality. Cartesian generosity appears as a principle of fundamental equality: we recognize and admire this free faculty with which every man is endowed, whether or not they make use of it. All men are born free, and therefore, they are equal in that they are entitled to the recognition of the same level of dignity. One could say that Cartesian generosity is a bit like “common sense,” which is seemingly the most widely shared thing in the world, because everyone thinks they are sufficiently well-equipped with it so as to be happy with themselves. As is well known, although this appears ironic, it also describes something genuine; besides, the principle of individual preference for one’s own opinions plays an important role in social contract philosophies such as that of Hobbes, of which Descartes, for instance, approved with regard to political theory. Is Spinozism a philosophy of the individual or of the community? Whatever one’s view, it is hard to deny that the thoughts of Descartes and Hobbes certainly fall more on the side of individuality. Cartesian generosity is founded on the consciousness of a faculty that we possess from the outset, and that distinguishes us from all other living beings. It suggests that every person is an equal, conscious of their dignity; but it concerns others only secondarily.

Faced with this schema, Sharp shows that the Spinozist conception of generosity blurs the hitherto mentioned categories to completely reverse the situation. First, generosity appears—contrary to the Cartesian approach—as grounded in a principle of inequality, of asymmetry. Spinoza’s “generous man” makes an effort to win others over to their position, to transform them. Spinoza says of generosity what Descartes says of love, namely that it is an essentially communicative affect. To the Cartesian value of individuals, bestowed equally upon all—free will, which makes us God’s equals—is substituted ars et ingenium, which are unequally distributed. What for Hobbes is a principle of war, in Spinoza is still a principle of war, but here war can give way to a victory for all. And this seems to me to be especially noteworthy, because we tend to think of Spinoza as favoring equality, and of arguing that democracy is the best regime because it is the closest to the equality that men enjoy in a state of nature. Nevertheless, Spinoza observes at E4p70s that only “passionate men” demand equality in exchange for what they give, what Spinoza sees as mere commerce or exchange, a sort of quid pro quo relationship. There is, in fact, equality in the ground and in the object of generosity (“the common good which everyone can equally enjoy,” as per E4p36), but not in the action of the generous man himself, who makes an effort to convert another to something which is not inwardly given—and is not a right, nor a duty: that is, the development of reason and freedom. The freedom that Spinoza claims is the freedom to think and teach: to convert others to the thought of the common good, thereby abandoning the idea of a pure liberalism wherein all ideas could coexist due to the appeasement of conflicts engendered by the protection of some Leviathan. On the contrary, Spinozist society demands violent debates. Such debates can be beheld in his correspondence. Spinoza rehashes the martial metaphor of combat, and he certainly does not favor a pacifist irenicism of the type that Descartes channeled in the rules he proposed for the Swedish Academy.

Sharp thus puts forth a very suggestive idea, one that will likely be doubly provocative for readers of Deleuze, as he borrowed similar notions from Alquié: that one does not become active due to “good encounters” or in virtue of the art of organizing “good encounters” (e.g., with like-minded fellows, or at least with those with whom we have something in common, such as other Spinozists, etc.), an art we master in an effort to augment our strength or constitute stronger totalities. Rather, one becomes active by cultivating “the capacity to think and to act according to one’s own abilities” to the point of modifying the very concept of fortuna and the encounter. In contradistinction with the Cartesian injunction, itself inspired by Stoicism, that commands the modification of our desires rather than the re-ordering of the world, Spinoza favors a novel approach. For Spinoza, everything is ultimately about interpreting events and encounters. It is not a matter of finding a niche, an underground community, which represents an escape from the common social order, but, rather, of using and making fortuna ours—and thus, in the end, changing the order of the world through the sole power of rational desire. An encounter not only increases the power to act, it also increases the capacity to be affected. Power is not defined by self-sufficiency, but by openness to all that can affect it and can nourish reason.

I would now like to conclude with several questions. First of all, Spinozist generosity certainly relies on the idea of necessity, in opposition to Descartes: the necessity of desire itself, the necessity according to which the free man must take advantage of society, and, finally, the necessity of passions that will console inevitable failures. What Spinoza’s generous man “acknowledges” in another person is also the possibility to amend that person, independently of any absolute will, since such a possibility will depend on many kinds of supplementary circumstances. From this, we see, derives the notion of possibility, due to our ignorance of necessary order of things. To this extent, is there not something in common with Descartes, which explains why Spinoza takes up his term? Despite their differences, both recognize a principle of uncertainty, whether in the use made of free will or in reaction to the advances of generosity. Must we not think, faced with necessity, a principle of contingency relative to our ignorance, and that generosity must also take into account? Is it not this that remains of free will, or, in other words, of the principle of Cartesian uncertainty? Certainly, whereas Descartes speaks of a human faculty which is not bound by necessity, Spinoza speaks only of our ignorance of necessity. Nevertheless, it would probably be good to ask why Spinoza takes up the term “generosity,” and inquire after what he does hold in common with Descartes.

Moreover, the diversity of causes in the political order favors something like a plurality of hypotheses: every act can be explained in many ways [E4p59s]. Is not this also where generosity stakes its claim, in the generous interpretation of the acts of others, in the effort to pretend that reason was already in control? Recall the importance of “as if” in the Political Treatise: the good institution behaves or functions “as if” men were already rational to prepare them for the possible advent of reason. But this brings up a final issue. Generosity, for Spinoza, is defined by the effort to establish bonds of friendship. But is friendship immediately political? Indeed, what is the relationship between the formation of groups of friends and political life?

Translated by Conrad Bongard Hamilton, PhD candidate in Philosophy at the Université Paris 8 Vincennes Saint-Denis