June 27

Sandra Leonie Field (Yale-NUS)

Marx, Spinoza, and Radical Democracy

Abstract: Democracy is a central theme of Marx’s 1841 notebook transcriptions of Spinoza's Theological Political Treatise. Positively, Marx highlights Spinoza's conception of democracy as the most natural of regimes; negatively, he lays out Spinoza’s hostility to abstract claims of political right divorced from the actual concrete power (potentia) of the people. In this paper, I draw a three-way comparison, between Marx’s own understanding of democracy, democracy as it appears in Marx’s Spinoza, and democracy according to Spinoza himself. It is sometimes presumed that approaching democracy from the standpoint of concrete power (rather than political right) grounds and necessitates a radical conception of democracy; this radicalism is evident in Marx and in Marx’s Spinoza. However, I argue that in Spinoza’s own hands the concrete power of the people has rather more equivocal political ramifications.

Sandra Leonie Field is Assistant Professor of Humanities (Philosophy) at Yale-NUS College, Singapore. She is the author of Potentia: Hobbes and Spinoza on Power and Popular Politics (Oxford University Press, 2020). Her research investigates conceptions of political power and their implications for democratic theory; she approaches these themes through engagement with texts in the history of philosophy. She has also written on non-Western political philosophy.

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

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The Workshop thanks The Johns Hopkins Philological Society for its sponsorship of this co-organized event.