May 30

Jack Stetter (Loyola University)

Spinoza on Ignorance

Abstract: The paper interrogates Spinoza’s distinction between philosophers and non-philosophers, according to which there are the lucky few who are guided by reason and then the rest of us, the vulgus or plebs. For the purposes of this talk, I consider how we might think Spinoza could try to justify this distinction in light of his conception of the conditions under which the imagination effectively supports the work of reason. As I see it, the puzzle is to know how Spinoza can maintain that we form fewer ideas of bodily affections in the imagination that support the work of reason than we form ideas of bodily affections in the imagination that impede the work of reason. Turning to Ethics Part 4, I show that the answer comes in the form of Spinoza sorting between the (fewer) number of things he thinks we can conceive insofar as they are “useful” to us or “agree” with us (that is to say, the things we conceive insofar as they share properties in common with human nature) as compared with the (greater) number of things Spinoza thinks we conceive that “disagree” with us and to which we must “accommodate” ourselves. I conclude by speculating that Spinoza may have been ultimately dissatisfied with this arrangement. Thus, I suggest that Spinoza took to writing the Political Treatise as a way of developing a more robust account of how, by means of collective action, the number of things which we conceive insofar as they agree with us can be significantly increased, democracy being the ideal candidate for the development of a more extensive reason-supporting regime of imagination.

Jack Stetter is Visiting Assistant Professor in Philosophy at Loyola University, New Orleans. Click here to learn more about his work.

Please navigate to “Downloads” in the upper-right corner of this page for a draft of the pre-circulated paper.

A recording of the session will be made available for some time following the event.

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