Spinoza and the Politics of Renaturalization

by Sharp, Hasana

• ISBN13: 9780226750743
• ISBN10: 0226750744
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-09-30
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr

Summary

There have been many Spinozas over the centuries: atheist, romantic pantheist, great thinker of the multitude, advocate of the liberated individual, and rigorous rationalist. The common thread connecting all of these clashing perspectives is Spinoza's naturalism, the idea that humanity is part of nature, not above it. In this sophisticated new interpretation of Spinoza's iconoclastic philosophy, Hasana Sharp draws on his uncompromising naturalism to rethink human agency, ethics, and political practice. Sharp uses Spinoza to outline a practical wisdom of "renaturalization," showing how ideas, actions, and institutions are never merely products of human intention or design, but outcomes of the complex relationships among natural forces beyond our control. This lack of a metaphysical or moral division between humanity and the rest of nature, Sharp contends, can provide the basis for an ethical and political practice free from the tendency to view ourselves as either gods or beasts. Sharp's groundbreaking argument critically engages with important contemporary thinkersincluding deep ecologists, feminists, and race and critical theoristsmaking Spinoza and the Politics of Renaturalizationvital for a wide range of scholars.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. vii
List of Abbreviations	p. xi
Introduction: The Politics of Renaturalization	p. 1
A Practical Wisdom of Renaturalization	p. 5
Impersonal Politics	p. 10
Ingredients	p. 25
Reconfiguring the Human
Lines, Planes, and Bodies: Redefining Human Action	p. 21
Action as Affect	p. 25
The Transindividuality of Affect: Spinoza and Simondon	p. 34
The Tongue	p. 42
Renaturalizing Ideology: Spinoza's Ecosystem of Ideas	p. 55
The Matrix	p. 58
Ideology Critique Today?	p. 61
The Fly in the Coach	p. 64
"I am in Ideology," or The Attribute of Thought	p. 68
What Is to Be Done?	p. 75
Man's Utility to Man: Reason and Its Place in Nature	p. 85
The Politics of Human Nature	p. 87
Reason and the Human Essence	p. 93
Man's Utility to Man	p. 100
Nonhuman Utility	p. 107
Beyond the Image of Man
Desire for Recognition? Butler, Hegel, and Spinoza	p. 117
Spinoza in Hegel	p. 121
Desire in Hegel	p. 224
Conatus and Cupiditas in Spinoza	p. 232
From Interpersonal Recognition to Impersonal Glory	p. 139
Judith Butler's Post-Hegelian Politics of Recognition	p. 249
The Impersonal Is Political: Spinoza and a Feminist Politics of Imperceptibility	p. 155
The Politics of Recognition	p. 259
Critique of the Politics of Recognition	p. 163
Thinking beyond the (Hu)Man	p. 169
A Politics of Imperceptibility	p. 175
Nature, Norms, and Beasts	p. 185
The Beast Within	p. 188
Animal Affects (and) the First Man	p. 201
Ethics as Ethology?	p. 210
Works Cited	p. 221
Index	p. 235
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