TY - JOUR
AU - Garrett, Aaron
AB - Spinoza on Learning to Live Together is a collection of nine of Susan James’ previously published papers alongside four more essays published for the first time in this volume. The oldest of the papers appeared in 2006 so the volume contains nearly fifteen years of thought. The resultant thirteen chapters are divided into three sections: (1) Learning to Live Together (Chapters 1-5); (2) The Politics of Living Together (Chapters 6–10); and (3) Philosophical Communities (Chapters 11–13). Despite the different origins of the chapters, the coherence of James’ thought and the consistency of her concerns make for a thematically unified book. An overarching theme uniting many of the chapters is the role of the imagination in Spinoza’s philosophy of social life. James has been the central figure in moving Anglo-American scholars towards a more nuanced understanding of the role of imagination and the emotions in early modern philosophy in general and Spinoza in particular. James draws on Anglo-American, French, and Dutch scholarship in an admirably non-sectarian but also critical way. Unlike the French scholarship, James qualifies the Althusser-influenced view that everything takes place in imagination. Unlike much of the Anglo-American scholarship, James sees imagination as much more than something to be dispensed with on the way to eternity. And unlike the more historicist Dutch scholarship, James often considers the present relevance of Spinoza’s philosophy (see particularly Chapters 4 and 11). In her work the different traditions of scholarship are taught, despite divergences and disagreements, to live together. Spinoza’s ‘official’ view is that the imagination is the lowest grade of cognition, the first kind of knowledge, and incapable of producing higher grades of cognition. Higher grades of cognition – reason, or knowledge of the second kind, and scientia intuitiva, or knowledge of the third kind – are the means to joy, power, and even blessedness. Imagination seems an active impediment to becoming joyous and powerful. Part IV of Spinoza’s Ethics is titled ‘Of Human Servitude or the Human Affects’ and in its opening few propositions it lays out ways in which all human beings are limited by external causes and, by extension, by those affects which are either correlative with or reinforced by imagination. It seems that imagination is just bad for Spinoza in the same way that body was bad for Plotinus. Better to be without. But most readers of Spinoza know that this is far too simplistic even as a way of expressing Spinoza’s official doctrine. The imagination is ineradicable from human life, so to be without would be not to be human. Perhaps it would be better not to be human, but that isn’t the option on offer. Our problem is: given that we are human, how do we best attain happiness, power, and even blessedness? The answer is not a cognitive analogue of bodily mortification. In Parts IV and V of the Ethics, Spinoza sets out techniques for using the imagination as a necessary means to attain joy. The techniques do not directly give rise to reason and scientia intuitiva, but instead counter the tendencies of the negative affects and external causes to drag down our best thoughts. We might think of these techniques as a regulator countering frictions impeding our bodily and mental machines and allowing us to run as freely as possible on the fuel of thinking about God and viewing things from the aspect of eternity. But this is again too simple. It is not just, or even primarily, individual imaginative regimens or techniques that make for happiness or blessedness. Spinoza makes clear that life with others, hopefully rational and like-minded others but often very different sorts of human beings, is preferable to life apart. As James notes in the first paper ‘Creating Rational Understanding’, ‘the transition from knowledge of the first to the second kind is in part a social one’. In the ‘Introduction’ James describes the essays in Part 1 as attempting to illuminate ‘Spinoza’s view that, in order to live as empoweringly and joyfully as we can, we have to learn how to harmonize our imaginative and rational insights’ (James 2020, p. 5). The volume’s title is well-chosen: learning is the operative problem when trying to live together. In many of the papers James focuses on the meeting place of imagination and social life. Just as individuals avoid friction through imaginative techniques which counter the detrimental effects of external causes, ‘communities must find ways of using imaginative resources to create conditions in which resistance to knowledge of the second kind is not so strong as to be crushing, and in which there is space to develop a philosophical form of existence aimed at truth’ (James 2020, p. 5). But unlike with individuals where much of the answer to friction is found through philosophy and so aimed at those who are already philosophical, communal life often involves the stubborn, the violent, the superstitious, and the actively anti-philosophical. A strategy for dealing with this is what Spinoza calls ‘true religion’, the tolerationist commitment to allowing others to form and hold their religious beliefs as they see fit when the beliefs allow for or underwrite social cooperation. Spinoza’s view is closer to the tolerationism of Samuel Pufendorf and Pierre Bayle than to that of John Locke insofar as the primary goal is not believers following their conscience (James 2020, p. 162), but rather the minimizing of impediments to philosophy and to social harmony arising from religious faction through fostering social virtues such as generosity, piety, sincerity, and openness to other believers and to reason. These virtues then offer the conditions under which philosophers can cooperate with one another. Religious toleration in a pious state is in a sense the school of social virtue and a means by which we learn to live together (James 2020, p. 165). Still, the religious beliefs of our fellow citizens are almost always false. Spinoza is as committed to the value of truth as any other philosopher, if not more so. Furthermore, since falsity for Spinoza is a lack of truth, it is unclear why one false belief might be superior to another since neither is true. In ‘When does Truth Matter?’ James sees the solution as opposed to the Calvinist assumption that human depravity necessitates salvation by faith alone. Spinoza instead embraces a Ciceronian distinction between those who have the virtues unified through the pursuit of moral goodness or honestum, and those who act in ways that conform to the virtues but lack the connection to the honestum which gives rise to the unity of the virtues. Narratives, exemplars, rituals, and other techniques are used to inculcate this second-order simulitudo of honestum. There are many puzzles connected with how exactly this is supposed to work given Spinoza’s official view. James is clearly right though that however one understands social life, narratives and rituals allow communities to exist and flourish. Two important means by which imagination extends into common life are the sovereign’s role in shaping the imagination for the citizenry and the members of a society’s imagining of the nature, extent, and power of their society. For Spinoza, following Hobbes, the people are sovereign in a democracy. In distinction from Hobbes, and reflecting the Dutch Republic in which Spinoza wrote, democracy is the best form of government. So the issue Spinoza focuses on is how the imagination can be cultivated by and for members of a democracy, not just by a monarch or a prophet king like Moses. James suggests that ‘the main arena in which sovereigns aim to marry imagination and understanding is precisely that of legislation’ (James 2020, p. 128). As she discusses in Chapter 7, one of the four new chapters, Spinoza has a very distinctive account of natural rights and natural law. For Spinoza natural right is the individual’s ‘right to do anything in its power’ (James 2020, p. 102) – its power to act. Spinoza is, of course, drawing on Hobbes’ conception of natural right on which we can do anything which we believe educes our self-preservation. But what was for Hobbes epistemic—that which we believe to be in our power—for Spinoza becomes ontological—that which is in our power. The worry is that if natural right allows us to do anything in our power, then there are no moral norms in any common sense. We ought to do what is in our power to do, but that is just what we do. Each of us does have subjective values of good and bad which allow us to act on and express our conatus. Unlike Hobbes though, Spinoza makes no strong distinction between artificial rights (or law) and natural rights (or law). States are parts of nature as well and insofar as they form more or less unified individuals, they are natural beings with their own natural laws. But if a natural right is just what is in something’s power it seems there is no normativity at all. We are like rocks falling downward due to gravity. Things just are what they become and become what they are. And even if there were some sense of normativity there is no moral normativity. If we add in Spinoza’s determinism and/or necessitarianism, this puzzle only gets worse. Hobbes, and the tradition more generally, draws a distinction between positive laws and natural laws in order that positive laws can be evaluated as good or bad to the degree they model natural laws, which on the model of Grotius (Hobbes is more equivocal) are understood as divine commands in accordance with our nature. So positive laws are morally best when they conform with and further natural laws which are in turn morally obliging as commands to be satisfied, the moral commands of God. Spinoza rejects the idea of divine commands even more than Hobbes does. For Hobbes divine commands are epistemically inaccessible to almost all of us and thus irrelevant to morals and politics (James 2020, p. 96). For Spinoza they are contradictory and thus non-existent. So where can we find moral normativity? I understand James’s solution to be that when we live with others, we extend our power with and through our connections with these others. The natural laws which structure the actions of us-with-others are the principles of a more powerful and joyous entity: we are more powerful with others than alone. When my actions qua individual striver are at odds with us-with-others, when I commit an action which harms others and by extension us-with-others, I ought not to undertake the action. What is morally normative here is not a command but the natural laws of the larger entities to which I am connected which are more joyous and powerful. One upshot of the view is that moral norms and laws are of greater importance in a democracy than in other forms of government. In a democracy the citizens give over the least amount of their natural right to an external sovereign (James 2020, p. 131). Consequently, they are the least coerced when they act in ways that empower the larger whole of which they are part. Civic laws can engender affects and virtues in citizens, in particular in a democracy, which then allow individuals to be more joyous and powerful through possessing them. For a command theorist this is at best quasi-normativity insofar as sub specie aeternitatis we always must have already been a part of that virtuous democracy. But Spinoza’s approach avoids many of the worries that the command theorist has to deal with. What is important for James’ larger argument is that this is a way in which the laws can embody norms distinct from, and often tempering, the rights of individuals. At the same time, and coherently, if an individual might be so unfortunate as to be apart from all other human beings, none of this would apply. In ‘Democracy and the Good Life’ (Chapter 8), which with the previous two chapters are the heart of the book, James considers the problem of who is excluded from the state. Feminist interpreters of Spinoza have seen in his work a ‘way to view sexual difference as a fundamental yet variable dimension of political life, affect, and imagination’ (James 2020, p. 87), but notoriously Spinoza excludes ‘women, servants, children, and wards’ from governance ‘on the grounds that they are not sui iuris or able to act on their own wills’ (James 2020, p. 122). One might explain this through Spinoza’s seventeenth-century context, but James does not. Instead, she takes it as an invitation to think through how imagination can limit communities as well as empower them. For James ‘freedom, as Spinoza conceives it, is therefore always dependent on the extent to which particular individuals and communities are able to imagine ways of life that embody the general truths revealed by reasoning, thereby bringing cooperation within reach’ (James 2020, p. 127). But as James points out it does not follow from this that only democratic and rational polities are free and empowering. Citizenry who do not make the laws can be empowered by laws made by others. For Spinoza, although women, servants, children, wards, criminals, aliens and others may be excluded from government, ‘as long as the law secures the common good and thus their own good, they remain free’ (James 2020, p. 134). This sets a lower boundary, above political slavery, for a tolerable if not best life with others – although one perhaps in conflict with Spinoza’s denial of individual freedom to those who act from coercion (James 2020, p. 144). As James notes this is fine and good but ‘when he comes to envisage a democracy—a society in which the whole body of the people make laws that answer to the common good—he excludes a large segment of the population. The body of the people, as he interprets it, just is a community of propertied men’ (James 2020, p. 136, emphasis in original). Spinoza’s assumption ‘embodies a grave imaginative failure’ since ‘successful democracies crucially depend on the imaginative abilities of their sovereigns and subjects, and that lack of imaginative power is among the chief factors that hold them back’ (ibid.). Is the ‘lack of imaginative power’ due to insufficiencies of the imaginers or the insufficiencies of imagination as such (and consequently in all imaginers)? James seems to lean towards the former and I fear I lean towards the latter. Chapter 9, ‘Freedom, Slavery, and the Passions’, considers Spinoza’s use of the language of political slavery. This language was a common coin of philosophical defences of republicanism and democracy from Cicero to the exponents of the American and French Revolutions. James argues, convincingly, that political liberty and liberty from the arbitrary dominion and slavery of the passions are reciprocal with the liberty of the understanding: ‘Political freedom then emerges as a special case of a more general kind of freedom, through which we can to some extent release ourselves from bondage’ (James 2020, p. 153). The problem is not imagination as such but its arbitrariness which stops individuals from acting sui iuris—it makes them slavish. Spinoza’s lifetime saw the rise of the Dutch Republic’s involvement in the Atlantic Slave Trade. The Dutch West India Company and Dutch merchants were deeply involved, first in Brazil and then in Surinam and the Caribbean. Notably, Spinoza was aware of Brazil. In a letter to Balling he described a dream where he was menaced by a ‘scabby’ Brazilian whom he had never seen before (Letter 17, to Pieter Balling 1664). Insofar as Spinoza identifies the Brazilian as an Ethiopian, it is likely that this was a dream of a slave imported to Pernambuco when it was under Dutch control before being ceded to Spain three years prior to the letter in 1661. Spinoza is imagining the Brazilian, so clearly it is within the limits of the imagination. But the Brazilian is not imagined as part of any political community. I’m not criticizing Spinoza for his dream. I’m suggesting that imagination is highly restrictive. When politics is focused on republics, those outside the republic who are coerced in ways that profit and benefit republics—the Dutch Golden Age certainly was gilded in part due to the slave trade—are beyond consideration. They are not even worth excluding and only encountered—if at all—in dreams. And they are not enslaved just by their affects. They are sold by masters. This exclusion is underwritten in the imagination by the Ciceronean language of political slavery: political slaves are servile and incapable of being sui iuris because they are slavish. Cicero was a slave-holder as were key figures in the American Revolution. The analogy itself weakens the horror of actual chattel slavery for the republican. After all it is one of many kinds of slavery and less important to philosophers like Cicero than the slavery under which Caesar and Antony might place the republic. This is not a problem with James’ reading but with the language that Spinoza uses, and which is used by countless others. I greatly appreciate her facing the issue head on. James points to the fact that freedom from chattel slavery is much more valuable than freedom from wage slavery (James 2020, p. 169). She also discusses the connected problem of community between the oppressed and oppressors as posing a problem for Spinoza in the concluding chapter (James 2020, pp. 211-12). But I am far less sanguine than James about our ability to use imagination to represent to ourselves those who we cannot or do not wish to see, except when they plague our dreams, and if we can see them to act on the imaginative representations. The analogies and figural language which we use to excite our political imaginations—‘Live Free or Die!’ —contribute to the exclusion of those who most need political consideration. In the last three essays James considers different philosophical communities. The first of the essays deals with an issue connected to the above problem of imaginative representation of those beyond the pale: concerns for environmental disaster. As James remarks, ‘even posing the question is liable to make people sigh, as images of living in yurts and growing vegetables swim before their eyes’ (James 2020, p. 169). The best response is to conceive of the positive things we can do as human communities to further our power, that is, not being forced to live as solitary individuals in yurts (if we find that a restriction of our freedoms) but rather ‘engaging with nature in a fashion that manifests our understanding and sustains our power to live freely’ (James 2020, p. 182) as communities. James of course does not pretend that she is offering a global solution to environmental disaster. The point as I understand it is that if we think of the environment as an extension of our rational community then it is empowering for us to be environmentalists. What does this mandate? This is less clear. If getting rid of all the species on earth allowed us to inhabit adamantine bubbles riding through the galaxy fuelled by thinking powerful thoughts, it seems that is what we ought to do. I imagine James would respond ‘Is that really the choice though?’ But even if that isn’t the choice it seems that Spinoza’s environmentalism is really an extension of the power of human beings and we can treat those parts of nature which differ from us as we choose as long as it makes us more powerful (Grey 2013). It also seems to me, although perhaps not to James, that one thing that limits our response to environmental disaster is conceiving of politics as Spinoza does as primarily involving the limits, structure, and actions of states. In the last two chapters James does part ways with Spinoza, as she did in her discussion of the place of women and servants in the republic. In ‘The Affective Cost of Philosophical Transformation’ James situates Spinoza within the Platonic tradition of the rational ascent. For Spinoza, as for Plato, the ascent involves shedding sadness and ridding ourselves of enervating human affects and replacing them with a wholly rational vision of the world. Drawing on two novels from J. M. Coetzee’s Jesus Trilogy, James considers the cost of the ascent. For James, following Coetzee, the cost is the estrangement from others and from oneself in becoming something different. The resultant pain of being unable to communicate what this new, wonderful different thing is to others who cannot see it seems real. For Spinoza in the Ethics the pain and sadness are inadequate and so to be shed in the ascent. For James the sadness is part of philosophical transformation: ‘His sadness may be slight in comparison with the joys he embraces, but it is integral to the project of understanding’ (James 2020, p. 196). The ‘affective losses secreted in the gulf between an ordinary and a philosophical existence’ (ibid.) are for her real losses. James hints that the importance of framing understanding ‘to enable as many people as possible to share it’ (James 2020, p. 196) in Spinoza’s politics unites philosophers with those who still experience the gamut of affects and in a sense acknowledges the need to communicate and feel beyond the ascent. But as a reader who takes the Ethics as the grounding for Spinoza’s politics I wonder if this is a case where what James finds valuable about the affects goes beyond what Spinoza does, and indeed is in conflict with it. As James points out in many places, a thin and functional account of the affects is often sufficient for Spinoza. Perhaps it is insufficient for us. In the final chapter James investigates the crucial Spinozist virtue of fortitude which she understands as the power to act on our understanding (James 2020, p. 200) and its relation to other virtues of animositas or the rational desire to preserve oneself and generositas or the rational desire to aid and join other human beings. In the conclusion of the essay James notes that Spinoza fails to sufficiently acknowledge the ways in which states can undermine animositas and get in the way of generositas. She also questions whether these virtues are appropriate to deal with relations between the oppressed and their oppressors. Perhaps they are. Think of the use of football as a cooperative means of promoting reconciliation in Rwanda. But James acknowledges there are circumstances where this might not be possible. This is perhaps another limit to Spinoza’s understanding of the imagination in line with the problems I mentioned concerning slavery. In conclusion this is an excellent and wise book. It is the product of a sustained engagement with Spinoza’s thought and does not offer easy answers. James presents Spinoza’s arguments in their best light, offers a powerful Spinozist vision of the ways in which communities learn and we learn through them, and helps us to see where Spinoza’s arguments are inadequate. References Grey John. 2013 . “‘Use Them at Our Pleasure’: Spinoza on Animal Ethics.” History of Philosophy Quarterly 30 ( 4 ): 367 – 88 . Google Scholar OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat James Susan. 2020 . Spinoza on Learning to Live Together . Oxford . Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS Google Preview WorldCat COPAC © Mind Association 2021 This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model)
TI - Spinoza on Learning to Live Together, by Susan James
JF - Mind
DO - 10.1093/mind/fzab081
DA - 2021-12-15
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/spinoza-on-learning-to-live-together-by-susan-james-JmgMweO4jx
SP - 288
EP - 295
VL - 132
IS - 525
DP - DeepDyve
ER -