Affirmation and Resistance in Spinoza: The Strategy of the Conatus(Spinoza Studies)

Offers a powerful and influential interpretation of Spinoza's conatus the essential striving that defines each of us as fundamentally strategic. Spinozism must be understood as a dynamic ontology that necessarily unfolds on practical terrain. Laurent Bove analyses Spinoza's theory of affects as rooted in Habit, generating the constituent power of human beings, commonwealths, nations and multitudes. By interpreting sovereignty as a power that emerges through the active resistance of the always singular body of the multitude, Bove discovers in Spinoza a radically new approach to the State, to citizenship and to history.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction: Infinity and Strategy Chapter 1: The Strategic Logic of the Spinozist Conatus: The Stages of World Construction Habit as the Constituting Activity of Actual existence Conatus as Joy Principle Conatus as Memory Chapter 2: The Constitution of the Strategic Subject 2.1. The Object and its Recognition 2.2. Recognition, Useful Inadequate Knowledge 2.3. Theory of the Practical Subject Chapter 3: The Conatus as Imitation and Strategy of Self-Approval (Amour-Propre) 3.1. Conatus as Imitation and the Ambition for Domination 3.2. Love of Self and Strategies of Self-Love 3.3. Ostentation or Dissimulation? A Strategy of Appearance Chapter 4: Hilaritas and Acquiescentia in se ipso: A Dynamic of Joy 4.1. The Infant’s Joyful Passion 4.2. Acquiescentia Animi and Adequate Knowledge 4.3. Dynamic Equilibrium: Return and Productivity Chapter 5: Ethical Subjectivity and the Absolute Affirmation of Singular Existence: An Ethics of Resistance 5.1. The Spiritual Automaton and the Practical Subject 5.2. From the Practical Subject of Love to Ethical Subjectivity 5.3. An Ethics of Resistance and Love Chapter 6: The Innocence of Reality and the Recursive Cycle 6.1. Causa Sui as the Real Movement of the Production of Reality 6.2. Infinite Modes and Circular Necessity 6.3. From the Identification of the Synthetic and Analytic Links to the Absolute Expression of the Univocity of Being (Singular Essence and Law of Production) Chapter 7: Why Do People Fight for their Servitude as if it were Salvation? 7.1. Servitude as a Paradoxical Object of Desire 7.2. Sed Obtemperantia Subditum Facit… 7.3. The Theocratic Solution: From the Order of Signs to the Political Order, a Rational Strategy for a Barbarian Nation Chapter 8: The Hebrew State: Elements for a Second Theory of the Imaginary Constitution of the Political Body 8.1. From Habit (the Productive Activity of the ‘nation’’s actual existence) to the Self- Organization of the ‘multitudinis ingenium’ as the Practical Political Subject 8.2. The Covenant: From the Joy Principle to the Establishment of a Temporality and Space for the ‘Nation’ 8.3. The Institution of Freedom Chapter 9: The Strategy of the Multitudinis Potentia: The Political Conatus 9.1. The Political Project of Autonomy as Absolute Sovereignty and/or the Collective Body’s ‘absolutely absolute’ Affirmation 9.2. Resistance Makes the Citizen 9.3. Resistance as a Sovereign and Eternal right 9.3.1. The Ephors’ Right of Resistance: from the Monarchomachs to the Political Treatise 9.3.2. The Right of War and the Collective Body’s Active Resistance Strategy 9.3.3. Benevolence and Indignation: the ‘Affects’ of Resistance 9.3.4. From the Resistance of the Best to the Indignation of All: Machiavelli, La Boétie, Spinoza Conclusion: Strategy and Infinity

About the Author :
Laurent Bove is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Université de Picardie Jules-Verne. He is a member of l'Institut d'Histoire des Représentations et des Idées dans les Modernités à l’École Normale Supérieure de Lyon and President of l’association des ami.e.s de Spinoza. He is the author of La Strategie du conatus (Vrin, 1996; 2nd edition 2012) which was translated into Italian in 2002 and in Spanish in 2009. His other books include Albert Camus. De l’absurde à l’amour (1995), Albert Camus: de la transfiguration (2014), Vauvenargues ou le Séditieux (2015). He is the editor of a French translation of Spinoza’s Political Treatise (2002). He is the general editor of The Complete Works of Vauvenargues. Hasana Sharp is Associate Professor of Philosophy at McGill University. She is author of Spinoza and the Politics of Renaturalization, among other works. Émilie Filion-Donato is a McGill Philosophy graduate, Translator, Programmer, and Spinoza enthusiast. Émilie Filion-Donato is a McGill Philosophy graduate, Translator, Programmer, and Spinoza enthusiast.

Review :
Affirmation and Resistance in Spinoza is a totally new perspective on the relation between ontology and politics in Spinoza. By identifying with clarity and breathtaking acuity the notion of strategy as the negotiation, always contested, between the causality that determines us and the striving for self-preservation, Bove does not only offer a radical new reading of Spinoza, but also a vision of a radical politics of resistance much needed today.