Eugene Garver on Spinoza and the Cunning of Imagination (University of Chicago Press, 2018)

ICYMI: Eugene Garver, Spinoza and the Cunning of Imagination (University of Chicago Press, 2018). Here from the publisher's website is a description of the book's contents.

Spinoza’s Ethics, and its project of proving ethical truths through the geometric method, have attracted and challenged readers for more than three hundred years. In Spinoza and the Cunning of Imagination, Eugene Garver uses the imagination as a guiding thread to this work. Other readers have looked at the imagination to account for Spinoza’s understanding of politics and religion, but this is the first inquiry to see it as central to the Ethics as a whole—imagination as a quality to be cultivated, and not simply overcome. ​Spinoza initially presents imagination as an inadequate and confused way of thinking, always inferior to ideas that adequately represent things as they are. It would seem to follow that one ought to purge the mind of imaginative ideas and replace them with rational ideas as soon as possible, but as Garver shows, the Ethics don’t allow for this ultimate ethical act until one has cultivated a powerful imagination. This is, for Garver, “the cunning of imagination.” The simple plot of progress becomes, because of the imagination, a complex journey full of reversals and discoveries. For Garver, the “cunning” of the imagination resides in our ability to use imagination to rise above it.

 

Rethinking Privacy Using Feminism--and Spinoza

Janice Richardson, Monash University Faculty of Law, is publishing Spinoza, Feminism and Privacy: Exploring an Immanent Ethics of Privacy in volume 22 of Feminist Legal Studies (2014). Here is the abstract.

In this article I explore the usefulness of Spinoza’s ethics for feminism by considering ways in which it allows feminists to rethink privacy. I draw upon some of Spinoza’s central ideas to address the following question: when should information be classed as private and when should it be communicated? This is a question that is considered by the common law courts. Attempts to find a moral underpinning for such a tortious action against invasions of privacy have tended to draw upon Kant’s categorical imperative. In contrast, I want to consider how Spinoza provides an immanent ethics that reconfigures how privacy is understood.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Spinoza and Legal Theory

Hans Gribnau, Tilburg University, Fiscal Institute and the Center for Company Law, Leiden University, is publishing The Power of Law: Spinoza's Contribution to Legal Theory in Spinoza and Law (A. Santos Campos, ed., forthcoming). Here is the abstract.

In seventeenth century, the constitutional idea of the rule of law was recalibrated in the Republic of the United Provinces. Spinoza was one of the major figures in the Low Countries theorising about the optimal state and its constitutional foundations. He designs a dynamic system of checks and balances in the distribution of powers.

Spinoza’s naturalistic and descriptive approach of the relationship between law and power shows that the exercise of state power on that basis - within the constitutional constraints – may be formally almost unlimited, but, indeed, materially there are limits. The ability of government to regulate society has its limits which are inherent in the existence of the state.

Legal positivism can welcome Spinoza as a kindred spirit – although by no means unconditionally. Indeed, effectiveness is a constitutive requirement for positive law. However, effectiveness implies that citizens comply with the (civil) law not only for fear of reprisals, but also out of respect for commonwealth’s authority. Therefore, notwithstanding the conceptual separation between law and morality, positive law has to take into account the interests and moral convictions of the people.

Finally, Spinoza gives an answer to the key question of political philosophy, viz. the issue of sovereignty. Only a government that embodies the unity of the cooperating citizens has the exclusive (absolute) power to determine the bonum commune. Hence, government should permanently create a substantial loyalty of its citizens, on the one hand, but citizens must actively support the state because of their interest in the existence of the state, on the other hand.

In addition, citizen’s criticism of the political order should be based on obedience to the law. As a rule, obedience to the law should not be dependent on the substantive agreement with the law, which actually would undermine the democratic order. Otherwise, the legal order degenerates into a civil war.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.