A/V#17.06 2013 Autumn
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This paper examines the paradigm of the individual proposed by Spinoza, and considers the extent to which his theses address contemporary concerns and open novel trajectories in philosophy and politics. It explores Spinoza’s intricate vision of the human being centred on a conative desire of striving and persevering into life, which is constantly enriched by an endless production of affects, ideas and bodily movements. This study of Spinoza’s thought of the individual is situated within the general tendency inaugurated by contemporary continental thought, which has posed the urgency of re-constructing our knowledge of human subjectivity. Contemporary continental philosophy has claimed that the reality of human being follows a non-linear path, which unfolds a variety of heterogeneous elements such as desires, affects and forces (Deleuze, Simondon, Negri, Agamben, among others). Building upon the continental approach, here, the central questions are: What theory of the individual might we draw from continental portrait of humankind as a mixture of various forces? And also, assuming the continental account of the individual, what can we really know of an individual? What is at stake here is the establishment of really new categories of thought, which allow us to emphasise internal dynamics, and to understand what confluence of forces lie underneath and between the individual. These categories of thought should offer the opportunity of analysing the anatomy of the individual by looking at its development and at the experience of its becoming. A consideration of these questions involves a more extensive account of the meaning of life, the re-definition of the notion of otherness; and also the understanding of the multiple ways in which the external world impacts upon the individual and vice versa. An enquiry into these themes is imperative for developing a novel paradigm of the individual of the present, around which contemporary theories of community, mass movements and society might be predicated. Spinoza addresses these issues.
The discussion draws attention to Spinoza’s theory of the affects, conatus and desire and the ways in which these operate within the constitution of the individual. The arguments, I advance through this paper, are that Spinoza’s model of the individual unveils a complex process of collective and psychic individuation. Affectivity grounds psychic life and is also the cornerstone of relationality. Affects, relating individuals to one another, impress changes upon them, which in turn give rise to a really new individual. It is in this context, I claim, that the novelty of Spinoza’s philosophy lies. He forwards the idea of an ontology of and for affectivity. The affective process does not describe the interior life of an individual being, and nor are affects subordinate elements of a more general cognitive system internal to the structure of the mind. Rather, affective movements are intensities, which lie on the interstices between individuals. These function as a collective ground, in which individuals participate and further produce shared conceptions of time, otherness and actions. As a consequence, in Spinoza’s process of psychic individuation the individual is not the principle of individuation, but rather a constitutive element of a more general process of individuation. The peculiarity of a human being is characterised by a relational power (conatus), and his or her life is driven by a form of tendency towards the others (desire). This tendency determines human desire for constructing psychic, social and political communities. The importance of returning to Spinoza’s ontology, I argue, is the re-formulation of a grammar for the individual alternative to theories of lack and conflict; the affirmation of the autonomy of the affects and also a re-consideration of the interconnection between different forms of life. Our awareness of these might open unexplored avenues for materialist conceptions of community, ethics and politics.
Ljuba Castelli is completing a PhD at the School of Politics and International Relations, Queen Mary, University of London.
Негізгі бет Ljuba Castelli - Re-theorising the Individual in a Spinozist way
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