“Sragionare con la ragione”: immaginazione e follia nell’opera di Spinoza

In Spinoza there is no such a thing as a proper analysis of ‘madness’: the lexicon that belongs to its semantic area does not play a particularly relevant role in his writings. In the Ethics, the presence of the term delirium especially in books III and IV reveals madness' explicit link to passions and highlight their pathological side (see for instance the definitions of pride, avarice, ambition, etc.), whilst the frequent usage of it alongside somnium and insania in the Preface to the Theologico-Political Treatise polemically exposes the phantasmagorical side of imagination and the strong impact of superstition on collective imagination. However, in chapter XVI of the Tractatus, where Spinoza expounds the main traits of the universal natural law, he uncompromisingly declares that there is no difference between men and the other individuals in Nature, neither between those endowed with reason and those without, nor – as a consequence – between ‘idiot’ (fatui) and ‘mad’ (delirantes) people and those of ‘sound mind’ (sani). These statements shed a light on the extreme modernity of Spinoza's reading of ‘madness’ and psychic disorders (and of imagination: not only vitium, but also potentia), and show that he paves the way to some important themes of 19th century antipsychiatry. This testifies, once again, the great fecundity of his thought in the theoretical context of other cultural systems, also in our age (etnopsychiatry, psychoanalysis, social sciences)

“Libera Repubblica” e filosofia. Note sul carteggio Spinoza-Oldenburg

With the aim of highlighting some conceptual elements found in Spinoza's letters, the article will focus on the texts – written by Spinoza or addressed to Spinoza – through which it is possible to reconstruct the subject of freedom of thought and speech. This theme emerges with great clarity in the correspondence with Heinrich Oldenburg, then Secretary of the Royal Society. In fact, it is in the name of this freedom that Spinoza rejected the prestigious chair offered by the University of Heidelberg. Moreover, the philosopher interrupted the drafting of the Ethics in order to publish the Theological-Political Treatise, so that he could get to the heart of the debate over the powers and limits of the imperium democraticum in the Dutch Golden Age. Spinoza’s Letters; Oldenburg; Libertas Philosophandi; Libera Respublica

Introduzione a "Spinoza nella cultura del Novecento. Percorsi attraverso la letteratura e le arti".

Con metodologie e orientamenti interpretativi diversi (alcuni di taglio più storico, o storiografico, altri di impostazione più spiccatamente teoretica) i saggi raccolti nel volume (pp. 442) si propongono di mettere a fuoco in che modo, nel variegato panorama culturale del Novecento, la presenza del pensiero, dell’opera e della vicenda umana di Spinoza abbia inciso nella composizione di un testo letterario o poetico, o sull’ispirazione di una creazione artistica, sia questa di tipo pittorico, teatrale o cinematografico. L’intento che accomuna i contributi presentati è quello di indagare quanto risulti profonda, in sostanza, la ricezione (diretta o indiretta) del pensiero dell’autore da parte di letterati, artisti, poeti del XX secolo prendendo le distanze dalle formule stereotipate un tempo tendenti ad appiattire l’immagine di Spinoza su quella tradizionale del filosofo del «metodo geometrico», offrendo spunti, suggestioni, percorsi anche al lettore non specialista

Homini nihil homine utilius. Spinoza e la cura

Beginning with the concept of “vulnerability” as thought of in the area of “care ethics”, and with due attention to the differences between the two perspectives, this study looks at our Spinozian notion of pietas in order to demonstrate how the Dutch philosopher’s approach to ethics distinguishes between pietas from commiseration – a sad passion that implies passivity and inadequacy. The study begins with the concept of tenuitas that Spinoza applies to our necessary subjugation to our passions. Deleuze observes that Spinoza’s understanding of ethics is not the same as “morals”. Spinoza’s ethics is a philosophy of joy and power in which our “vulnerability” is not an expression of ontological defect, but rather and expression of the participation of each finite mode in the infinite power of the whole of which it is a particula. As such, virtue comes to be understood as effort (conatus) aimed at the preservation of one’s own being, which, if directed by reason, will not be separate from the practice of the common good