Hope, Hate and Indignation: Spinoza on Political Emotion in the Trump Era

Can we ever have politics without the noble lie? Can we have a collective political identity that does not exclude or define ‘us’ as ‘not them’? In the Ethics, Spinoza argues that individual human emotions and imagination shape the social world. This world, he argues, can in turn be shaped by political institutions to be more or less hopeful, more or less rational, or more or less angry and indignant. In his political works, Spinoza offered suggestions for how to shape a political imaginary and create collective identities that are more guided by hope than by fear or anger. In this talk, using the framework of Spinoza's theory of emotions, I will investigate how Barack Obama's promise of 'hope' was translated into Donald Trump's rhetoric of hate. Such a transition, from hope to fear is one that would be unsurprising to Spinoza. Spinoza worried about the political and personal effectiveness of hope. He argued that hope can easily be turned into what he called ‘indignatio’ or indignation – an emotion that he believed eroded trust in political institutions and was the limit of state power. Spinoza warned about the danger of governance that relies upon the emotions of anger and hatred. In the Ethics, Spinoza painstakingly reconstructs the way in which individual emotions, ideas and motivations are shaped within social worlds. He argued that emotions based on pain, including hatred and indignation, diminish the power of the individuals who experience them and the political collective in which those individuals reside. Anger, fear and indignation weaken the state. In the second section of the paper, I will set out how the Trump administration’s reliance on the motivational forces of hate and anger risk what Spinoza called indignation. Trump's reliance on exclusionary conceptions of American identity have fanned the flames of racial, ethnic and religious hatred to motivate his base have had widespread social and political effects. I will offer arguments and examples which bear out the Spinozan worries about the effects of anger and indignation on the political and the social. Spinoza’s political works were written not just to explain the worries about an angry and indignant multitude, but also to show how to turn political indignation and anger into a chastened, and perhaps more rational, hope. Finally, I will propose that we may derive from Spinoza participatory, democratic institutions and collective identities that can overcome this indignation

Developing Normative Consensus: How the International Scene Reshapes the Debate over Internal and External Criticism

Can we ever justly critique the norms and practices of another culture? When activists or policy-makers decide that one culture’s traditional practice is harmful and needs to be eradicated, does it matter whether they are members of that culture? Given the history of imperialism, many argue that any critique of another culture’s practices must be internal. Others argue that we can appeal to a universal standard of human well-being to determine whether or not a particular practice is legitimate or whether it should be eradicated. In this paper, I use the FGC eradication campaigns of the 1980s to show that the internal/external divide is complicated by the inter-connectedness of these debates on the international level. As the line blurs between internal and external criticism and interventions, new questions emerge about the representativeness of global institutions

Affective Disorders of the State: A Spinozan Diagnosis and Cure

The problems of contemporary states are in large part “affective disorders”; they are failures of states to properly understand and coordinate the emotions of the individuals within and in some instances outside the state. By excluding, imprisoning, and marginalizing members of their societies, states create internal enemies who ultimately enervate their own power and the possibility of peace and freedom within the state. Spinoza’s political theory, based on the notion that the best forms of state are those that coordinate the power and emotions of those within a state, offers us both a diagnosis of and a cure for these affective disorders. In this paper I will outline Spinoza’s notion of the power of the state as a function of the power and coordination of the emotions of its citizens, and show that when the state contracts an affective disorder, such as excessive crime, rebellion, terrorism, etc. the state has failed to properly empower, include and coordinate the passions of the multitude of its citizens and subjects

Spinoza’s hobbesian naturalism and its promise for a feminist theory of power

In recent years feminist philosophers have taken up Spinoza’s conception of humannature as providing a useful foundation for feminist naturalism. Although theseaccounts extol Spinoza, they tend to vilify Hobbes. I will show that when wework through the centuries of misinterpretations of Hobbes, we can see that theelements that feminist theorists find so promising in Spinoza are precisely thosehe developed from Hobbes. I argue that the misunderstandings of Hobbes as anegoist efface his contribution to Spinoza’s more praised views. Setting out Spinoza’stheory of human nature, I explain how and when he derived elements of histheory from Hobbes. The naturalism of Hobbes, and following him, Spinoza isnot that brand of naturalism that seeks to derive what ‘ought’ to be from what ‘is’,thereby justifying the status quo. Rather, it is a revolutionary naturalism; onethat seeks to understand the causes of what ‘is’ in order to fashion what can be.Hobbes and Spinoza’s naturalism consisted not in celebrating social hierarchiesand conventions as natural and therefore good, but rather in trying to understandthe forces that affect individuals’ behavior alone and collectively. They believedthat peace, stability within a community, or state, were preconditions to bothjustice and individual empowerment. Spinoza, armed with Hobbesian naturalisticprinciples and method, is a philosopher of reform. He believed that investigationinto the natural world, without recourse to supernatural or immaterial speculation,was the first step to creating real and lasting change, and the first step to creatingthe foundation for any kind of justice. Through the influence of his reading ofHobbes and his increasingly materialistic theory of the affects, Spinoza showshow we can reform harmful collective norms through fighting them with strongerliberating affects.Nos últimos anos, os filósofos feministas tomaram a concepção de Spinoza da natureza humana, como base para um naturalismo feminista. Embora exaltem Spinoza, eles tendem a difamar Hobbes. Eu mostro que quando decompomos os séculos de interpretações errôneas de Hobbes, podemos ver que os elementos que teóricos feministas acham tão promissor em Spinoza são precisamente aqueles que ele desenvolveu a partir de Hobbes. Defendo que o mal-entendido de tomar Hobbes como um egoísta apagam sua contribuição para o ponto de vista mais elogiado, de Spinoza. Delimitando a teoria da natureza humana de Spinoza, eu explico como e quando ele derivou elementos de sua teoria de Hobbes. O naturalismo de Hobbes, e em seguida o de Spinoza não é o tipo de naturalismo, que procura o que “deveria” ser a partir do que “é”, justificando, assim, o status quo. Pelo contrário, é um naturalismo revolucionário, que busca entender as causas do que “é”, a fim de moldar que pode ser. O naturalismo de Hobbes e de Spinoza não consistia em celebrar hierarquias e convenções sociais como natural e, portanto, boas, mas sim na tentativa de compreender as forças que afetam o comportamento dos indivíduos isolada e coletivamente. Eles acreditavam que a paz, a estabilidade dentro de uma comunidade, ou do estado, são pré-condições para a justiça e empoderamento individual. Spinoza, armado com princípios naturalistas hobbesianos e método, é um filósofo de reforma. Ele acreditava que a investigação sobre o mundo natural, sem recorrer a especulação sobrenatural ou imaterial, é o primeiro passo para criar uma mudança real e duradoura, e o primeiro passo para criar a base para qualquer tipo de justiça. Através da influência de sua leitura de Hobbes e sua teoria cada vez mais materialista dos afetos, Spinoza mostra como podemos reformar normas coletivas nocivas combatendo-as com fortes afetos libertadores