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ABSTRACT
Spinoza says very little about art or literature in his work; a fact which partly explains the absence of references to him by the German initiators of aesthetics in the eighteenth century, including Baumgarten, Kant and Hegel. Spinoza's resolute opposition to teleology, however, provides an even more compelling reason for his absence, given the teleological conception of literary and artistic form common to the notion of aesthetics at the time of its emergence. Is it possible to fashion a counter-aesthetics from the materials provided by Spinoza's philosophy? I argue that his reading of the great Spanish Baroque writers, especially Luis de Góngora and Baltasar Gracián (whose works were found in his library), provided him with an alternative conception of literary form based on a rejection of formal coherence and closure in favor of constitutive incompleteness and an opening to the infinite.
Notes on contributor
Warren Montag is the Brown Family Professor of Literature at Occidental College in Los Angeles. His most recent books include Althusser and his Contemporaries (Duke University Press, 2013) and The Other Adam Smith (Stanford University Press, 2014). Montag is also the editor of Décalages, a journal on Althusser and his circle, and the translator of Etienne Balibar's Identity and Difference: John Locke and the Invention of Consciousness (Verso, 2013).
Notes
1 For an explanation of this dearth based on the position “that Spinoza's philosophy represents a certain type of philosophy and ‘cast of mind’ which is fundamentally alien to, even hostile towards, art and beauty”, see Morrison, “Why Spinoza Had No Aesthetics”, 359. There are signs that the long period of neglect is coming to an end. See Uhlmann, “Spinoza, Aesthetics, and Percy Shelley's ‘A Defence of Poetry’”; Gatens, “Frankenstein, Spinoza, and Exemplarity”; Richardson, “Spinoza, Kant and the Sublime”; Thomas, “From Complex Bodies to a Theory of Art”.
2 Althusser et al., Reading Capital, 344.
3 Garrett has argued that Spinoza's critique applies only to divine teleology and that he often describes goal-directed behavior in human individuals. In the passage from E1 Appendix cited above, the error Spinoza points to is that of attributing human characteristics to nature as a whole. It is not possible to develop a critique of this position here. I will simply say that I agree that Spinoza's argument poses a set of problems, a number of which are elided in the Appendix, but I disagree that Spinoza advances the thesis of a micro-teleology, except insofar as it offers imaginary compensation for individuals’ ignorance of the causes that simultaneously determine their ideas and their actions. The fact that we regard our decisions as causes of our actions is the foundation for the concept of guilt in both the theological and legal sense, one of the sad, passive affects that diminishes our power to think and act: it lies at the center of human servitude. Moreover, in the case of works of art (E3P2S), individuals imagine that their ideas and decisions determine the work that is theirs or that they create, and this prejudice prevents them from apprehending the causes of both their thought and their action. See Garrett, “Teleology in Spinoza”, 310–35.
4 Spinoza, Ethics, in Complete Works. References follow the standard abbreviations for Spinoza's Ethics: E for the Ethics, Arabic numerals for the five parts, P for Proposition followed by the proposition number. S for Scholium. D for Definition. Appen for Appendix.
5 Yerushalmi, “L’Espagne et l’espagnol”, 209–19.
6 Spinoza, Ethics, E4P39S.
7 See Comas and Reglá, Góngora; Gebhardt, “Spinoza, Judentum”.
8 See Ansaldi, Spinoza et le baroque.
9 Hegel, Aesthetics, 1.
10 Ibid., 1.
11 Baumgarten, Reflections on Poetry, 78.
12 Hegel, Aesthetics, 1.
13 Ibid., 2.
14 Spinoza, Ethics, E1App.
15 Ibid., E1Appen.
16 Ibid., E1Appen.
17 Ibid., E1Appen.
18 Kant, Critique of Judgment, 65.
19 Hegel, Lectures in the History of Philosophy, IV: 261.
20 Ibid., 262.
21 Spinoza, Ethics, E3P2S.
22 Proietti, “Adolescens luxu perditos”, 210.
23 See Cassuto, Spinoza et les commentateurs juifs.
24 Spinoza, Ethics, E2D6.
25 Spinoza, Works, Letter 53, 895–7.
26 Ibid., 897–900.
27 Spinoza, Ethics, E1P15S.
28 Cascales, Cartas filológicas I: Epistola VIII.
29 See Beverley, Aspects of “Soledades”; Lozano, Una poética de la oscuridad.
30 Jankélévitch, Le Je-ne-sais quoi et le presque-rien.
31 Góngora, The Solitudes, 3.
32 See Macchi, “Le poème”; Aubrun, “La Primera Soledad”; Gaylord, “Góngora and the Footprints of the Voice”.
33 Alsonso, “Soledades de Góngora”.
34 Gueroult, Spinoza—Tome I—Dieu, 258–9.
35 Spinoza, Ethics, E1P18.
36 Gracián, El Criticon: tomo primero.
37 Ibid., 141–2.
38 Ibid., 142.
39 Ansaldi, Spinoza, 59–60.
40 Hobbes, Leviathan, 3.
41 Ibid., 7.
42 Althusser et al., Reading Capital, 349.
43 Spinoza, Ethics, E2P18.
44 Ibid., E2P17S.