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ABSTRACT
This article focuses on three of the affects discussed in Spinoza’s Ethics: pride, esteem, and scorn. At first, it focuses mainly on the delusional aspect Spinoza attributes to these passions as a matter of definition, emphasizing the monological and self-referential dimension in which they seem to imprison the subject. It then analyzes the reference to a notion of justice contained in their definitions, and how this triggers a struggle for recognition. In a third moment, it highlights the political efficacy of these affects in producing not only conflict but also social bonds. Finally, it concludes by considering how Spinoza’s treatment of these affects fits within the framework of the more general problem of the relationship between passion and reason.
Notes
1 I will only mention here Morfino, “Transindividual and/or Recognition”; Lazzeri, “Pascal et Spinoza”; Lazzeri, “Désir mimétique et reconnaissance”; Sharp, Politics of Renaturalization, 139–49; Tucker, “Spinoza, Religion, and Recognition”. Citations of Spinoza are taken from the English text of The Collected Works of Spinoza, translated and edited by Edwin Curley (1985 and 2016), but I will also take into consideration the Latin text provided in Œuvres, edited by Pierre-François Moreau. Quotations of the Ethics (Works, vol. I) follow the standard abbreviations: E for the Ethics, Arabic numerals for the five parts, P for Proposition, Pref for Preface, C for Corollary, S for Scholium, Appen for Appendix, E for Explication, Chap for the Chapters that appear at the end of E4, and DefAff for Definition of the Affects at the end of E3. To cite the Theological-political treatise and the Political Treatise (henceforth TTP and TP, in Works, vol. II), I refer to the Chapter with a Roman number and to the Paragraph with the Arabic number present in Œuvres.
2 I limit myself here to recalling the distinction between “motives of self-preservation” and “moral impulses”, which is clearly incompatible with Spinoza’s identification of the conatus as the principle of all human activity. On this point see Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, 5.
3 To my knowledge, there is only one text explicitly devoted to a topic close to the one I will deal with here: Alanen, Passions and Self-Knowledge. In this text, however, the author (1) understands “pride” in a broader sense than the technical one attributed by Spinoza in his definition of superbia, on which I will focus (Alanen, Passions and Self-Knowledge, 243); (2) considers pride only in relation to the problem of self-knowledge and not in its intersubjective and political meaning, thus separating it from existimatio and despectus, which instead are an integral part of my discourse; (3) opposes pride to acquiescentia in se ipso, considered only as a non-passive affect, whereas on my reading the latter represents a species of the former (Alanen, Passions and Self-Knowledge, 247); and (4) affirms an opposition between imagination and reason, or between passion and action, that I call in doubt in the conclusion of this article.
4 E3Praef.
5 E3Praef and E3P7.
6 E3Pref, E3P55c2, and E3P52S.
7 E4P45S and E1Appen.
8 Curley translates existimatio as “overestimation”. The translation is consistent with the meaning specified by the definition, but not with the term chosen by Spinoza, because it removes the reduction of estimation to overestimation.
9 See Wittich, Anti-Spinoza, 189.
10 See E3p39S.
11 See DefAff 21, 22, 28, with their Explications, and E3P30, DefAff25, and E3P55S1. On acquiescientia, see Rutherford, “Salvation as a State of Mind”, and Carlisle, “Spinoza’s Acquiescentia”, in which, however, the theme of pride is mentioned only in passing.
12 On the notion of delirium, see Bostrenghi, “Sragionare con la ragione”; while, on the hallucinatory potential of imagination, see Steinberg, “Knowledge in Spinoza’s Ethics”, 143.
13 E3P18.
14 On the relationship between primary and secondary modalities of satisfaction, see Toto, L’individualità dei corpi, 265–81.
15 See E2P17s, DefAff1, and E3P7.
16 TP, I, 4.
17 See Lazzeri, “Reconnaissance spinoziste et sociologie critique”, 379, and Matheron, Individu et communauté, 148–9, in which we read that the “self-mystification” of the proud constructs a “mythical universe” over which he can boast a “total mastery”, albeit an imaginary one. See also Bove, La stratégie du conatus, 91, in which the consideration of oneself as God is identified with the truth of self-love.
18 See E3P39S. The reduction of the good to joy made at this point in the Ethics, with the problems posed by the relationship between this reduction and the definition of the good introduced in E4D1, has been widely discussed. For example, see LeBuffe, From Bondage to Freedom, 144–59; Youpa, The Ethics of Joy. What is worth noting here is the way in which Spinoza embraces traditional moral terms, defining them in opposition to their current meaning, with the aim not to deny but to illuminate common moral experience.
19 See Shapiro, “Self-Consciousness and Consciousness of Self”. Shapiro has correctly observed both that the error implicit in pride derives from “striving to affirm” things that involve joy and “to deny” things that involve sadness, and that the difference between pride and “acquiescentia in se ipso” cannot reside in the simple fact that the former is erroneous and the latter is not. To this point, I would add, it is sufficient to remember that even “acquiescentia in se ipso” can be linked to an error, such as that of free will: one – an unconsciously Cartesian subject – can be satisfied with himself to the extent that he imagines himself to have freely chosen to do what he considers good, and this despite the fact that, in reality, there is nothing like an “liberum decretum mentis” (see the Explication of DefAff17). Shapiro makes two mistakes, however: first, she believes that pride is distinguished from self-satisfaction by the fact that the former concerns the way we are affected by others while the latter concerns the way we affect others similar to ourselves; second, she believes that the imitation of our fellow human beings, from which self-satisfaction would derive, is in itself sufficient to guarantee a partial correction of the distortions of perspective that pride imposes on self-esteem. One may wonder whether a self-satisfaction based on imaginative ideas could be good according to Spinoza, or whether it would be indistinguishable from pride. Regardless of the answer one gives to this question, it should be noted that the distinction between pride and self-satisfaction proposed by Shapiro has no ground in the texts because it confuses self-satisfaction and glory, leading to a number of further confusions. Self-satisfaction is certainly corroborated by glory, by the joy one feels in relation to the joy one imagines having provoked in others, by the praise one imagines having rightly aroused, but it is in itself independent of it. The pathological aspect of pride as an excessive form of self-satisfaction does not necessarily derive from intersubjective dynamics, such as the presence of “yes-men” always ready to praise the subject. Moreover, far from ensuring the correctness of self-esteem and that of others, imitation is overdetermined by the delusional logic of pride (see Toto, “Esemplarità e imitazione”). The pathological aspect of pride consists in the hyperactivation of natural “defense mechanisms” (first and foremost that of removal), and in the risk that the defeat of these mechanisms by external reality or experience will lead to the real laceration of the subject realized in that passion that Spinoza calls self-hatred, and that in my view is for Spinoza one of the possible causes of suicide (see Toto, “Acquiescentia in se ipso”; Toto, “L’humilité et la peniténce”).
20 E4P20-25 and E4P35C1-2.
21 See E4P53, in which it is clarified how the subject can transform the clash with his or her own limitations into an opportunity for deepening self-knowledge and empowerment. On this theme, see Soyarslan, “Spinoza’s Critique of Humility”.
22 TTP, IV, 2.
23 E4P37S2 and TTP XVI, 2 and 4. The identification between natural law and power is one of the most debated aspects of Spinoza’s political thought, both with regard to the legitimacy or illegitimacy of his arguments for this claim and with regard to the relationship of continuity or rupture with Hobbes, and more generally with the natural law tradition. See Matheron, “Le ‘droit du plus fort’”; Curley, “The State of Nature and its Law”; Malcolm “Hobbes and Spinoza”; Lazzeri, Droit, pouvoir, liberté, 132–8; Garrett, “Spinoza as Natural Lawyer”; Verbeek, “Spinoza on Natural Rights”.
24 TP II, 15, E1Appen.
25 E4P37S2, TTP, XVI, 14–15.
26 TP II, 23. On the notion of justice, see James, Spinoza on Philosophy, Religion and Politics, 241–7; Olsthoorn “Spinoza on Human and Divine Justice”.
27 Descartes, Passiones animi, §§ 152 and 138.
28 Descartes, Passiones animi, §§ 157 and 160.
29 E4P57D.
30 Hobbes, Leviathan, 234.
31 Hobbes, Leviathan, 496 and 112. On Hobbes’ theory of recognition, see Toto, “Hobbes e il riconoscimento”.
32 As is well known, for Spinoza, man believes he is free because he is aware of the appetites that drive him to act, but not of the causes that determine his appetites (see, e.g. E1Appen., E2P35S, E3P2S, E4Praef.). Now, to be free – in the rational sense in which one can speak for Spinoza of a homo liber – means to be virtuous, i.e. to do the things that follow from one’s own essence or nature alone, and Spinoza identifies man’s essence or nature with conatus, appetitus, or cupiditas. The man who mistakenly believes that his actions follow from his appetite alone and that he is free, therefore, employs the rational concept of freedom, even if he makes imaginary use of this concept because of his ignorance. The example of the man who deludes himself into believing he is free becomes even more significant as soon as we remember that pride is an excessive form of self-satisfaction, of a joy accompanied by the idea of one’s own power, virtue, or freedom. The proud man is moved, as the homo liber, by the love of freedom, but, unlike the latter, that which he enjoys is a falsa libertatis specie (E5P10S), which coincides with the presumed power or right to do everything one considers good; that is, everything suggested by one’s libido (E5P40S). Finally, it should be noted that the recourse to the idea of license (licet) and right (de suo jure cedere) proves that, in E5P40S, freedom is no longer considered in its merely ontological aspect, in the light of the alternative between free will and potentia, but from a point of view that is at the same time explicitly both ethical and juridical.
33 TP II, 15.
34 TTP XVI, 2.
35 TP II, 3 and E4d8.
36 E2P47S.
37 See E2P48S and DefAff26E.
38 TP II, 23.
39 E3P39S.
40 See E3P40S.
41 On humility, see DefAff26 and, regarding the ethical evaluation of this passion, Toto, “L’humilité et la pénitence”. For this form of authoritarian pedagogy, see what Matheron states in another context: “when we tyrannize our fellow men […] we always want to make them happy” but “we claim to define the conditions ourselves: they do not know what is really good, it is up to us to teach them, they will thank us later” (Matheron, Individu et communauté, 171).
42 “If […] men were all equally proud, ashamed of nothing, and afraid of nothing, how could they be united or restrained by any bonds” (E4P54S).
43 E4P40.
44 TP VI, 4.
45 On the concept of ingenium and its political significance, see Moreau, L’expérience et l’éternité, 395–404 and 427–40.
46 E4Chap24. In the Latin expression “sui, vel alterius jus vendicare”, the verb vendico can mean both “to claim” and “to avenge”.
47 E3S39S.
48 See E4P57S and DefAff29E.
49 E3P31C and S and TP V, 7. See Toto, “Esemplarità e imitazione”; Douglas, “Spinoza’s Unquiet Acquiescentia”.
50 See TP VII, 27.
51 Ibid.
52 Ibid.
53 On abjectio, see DefAff29 and Kambouchner, “Spinoza et le problème de l’Abjectio”.
54 TTP XVII, 6. Moses’ imperium is also of this kind. At first, the Hebrew theocracy is defined as democratic because all citizens participated equally in the sovereign right to question God, to receive and interpret his laws, and to administer the State. Later, however, Moses holds supreme rule as a king because he sees himself transferred that same right, and he remains absolutely a king (TTP XVII, 9 and TTP XIX, 6). The popular view that Moses would not order anything that was not revealed to him by God’s decree does not undermine the monarchical character of his authority (TTP XVII, 10); if anything, it guarantees its absoluteness (TTP XIX, 21).
55 TTP V, 9.
56 TP V, 4.
57 TTP V, 9.
58 E4P18S.
59 The question of the contractualist or anti-contractualist character of Spinoza’s foundation of State power, and its possible evolution between the TTP and the TP, has been discussed at length. See, e.g. Matheron, “L’évolution de Spinoza du TTP au TP”; Moreau, “Pacte social et Histoire”; Rosenthal “Two Collective Action Problems”. What I am saying here prescinds from this problem: already in the TTP, in which the mechanism of the pact is undoubtedly at work, Spinoza does not fail to question the affective conditions of its validity and effectiveness. The covenant, in other words, is not central even in the TTP.
60 E4P37S2. On this collective dimension of revenge, see Santos Campos, Spinoza’s Revolutions in Natural Law, 125 (with accompanying note); Jaquet, “Longing (desiderium) for Vengeance”.
61 TTP XVII, 6, XVII, 23.
62 See TTP XVII, 25, in which the neighbour is reduced to fellow citizen (proximum, sive concivem); TTP XVII, 14, in which Spinoza recalls that the Jews were fellow citizens only “respectu Dei et Religionis”; TTP XIX, 12, which recalls the precept of loving one’s neighbour and hating one’s enemy, where previous passages make it clear that “the enemy” is any member of another nation, or more precisely of a nation that is not bound by covenants of friendship with the Jewish nation (TTP XVI, 17).
63 TTP III, 1, TTP III, 7, TTP III, 8, TTP III, 10.
64 TTP II, 15, TTP III, 1, TTP 17, 23 TTP I, 26. On this nationalistic device, see TTP XVII, 6 and XVII, 23 and Balibar, “Jus-Pactum-Lex”.
65 E4P37S.
66 TP VII, 1.
67 Here we can appreciate the objections that the analysis of the “dark side” of recognition linked to superbia allows us to raise against a reading such as Vinolo’s. Attributing to mercantile exchange the role of mediator between individual interest and common utility, the author correctly notes how this connection does not operate in spite of competition, but through the immanent orientation of competition itself to socially positive goals. A key part of Vinolo’s argument is the role played in this orientation by the mechanism of imitation of the affects. According to the author, this mechanism would allow the individual to assert himself, in his own excellence, only by accepting the socially established criteria of distinction, leading Spinoza to the conclusion, in TP X, 6, that the greed of the ignorant should not be curbed but incentivized in its connection with the glory attached to riches. What the author fails to grasp, due to an overly Smithian reading of Spinoza’s imitatio affectuum, is that the mimetic process – in itself undoubtedly a mechanism aimed at introducing a bridge between the territory of imagination and passion and that of reason and virtue, and at inserting in the former an element of compatibility with the universalistic demands of ethics – is overdetermined by the natural disposition to pride. It is precisely this disposition, in fact, that drives individuals not only to distinguish themselves according to socially shared criteria, but to claim to dictate these criteria themselves (see E3P31S). It is precisely for this reason that imitation underlies, in E3P31S, the fall into a Hobbesian war of all against all, and it is precisely for this reason that the link between wealth and glory advocated by TP X, 6 cannot be a natural link, but a link promoted by institutions.
68 E3P59S. On the rational regime of Spinoza’s recognition, see Lazzeri, “Pascal and Spinoza”.
69 E4P52D, E4p73S, TTP III, 57.
70 See E3D2-3 and E2P33-5.
71 See Klever, “The Truth of Error”.
72 See E5P39S, in which we read that the child “possesses a body fit for very few things” and a mind that “is hardly at all aware of itself or […] of things”. See also DefAff28: “Everything, in fact, that man imagines he cannot do, he necessarily imagines, and by this imagination he is disposed in such a way that he cannot really do what he imagines he cannot do. As long as he imagines, in fact, that he cannot do this or that […] it is impossible for him to do it”. On the problem of childhood as powerlessness and growth as development and transformation, see Zourabichvili, Le conservatisme paradoxal de Spinoza, 119–32.
73 See Keith Green, “Spinoza on Self-Hatred”, 73–95.
74 E4P49. I have not dealt here with this subjective repercussion of received esteem because it depends on a principle, that of the imitation of affects, which opens up a completely different affective territory from the one I focus on in this work.
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Francesco Toto
Francesco Toto is a researcher in History of Philosophy at Roma Tre University. His researches are mainly focused on modern philosophy, in particular on Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Rousseau, Helvétius, Dom Deschamps. He is Co-director of the journal “Consecutio Rerum” and of the series “Spinoziana”, he is the author of L'individualità dei corpi. Percorsi nell'Etica di Spinoza (2015) and L'origine e la storia. Il Discorso sull'ineguaglianza di Rousseau (2019).