Collective Imaginings: Spinoza, Past and Present (review)

Benedict Spinoza's philosophy has typically been overshadowed by the work of others. But now, due to growing interest in interpretations that emphasize his materialism, Spinoza is increasingly visible in contemporary philosophical attempts to radicalize the relation between embodiment and politics. In Collective Imaginings: Spinoza, Past and Present, Moira Gatens and Genevieve Lloyd uniquely contribute to this unfolding discussion. Maintaining the debated interpretation that Spinoza's ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, and politics are interwoven, Gatens and Lloyd solidly link Spinoza's materialist thinking to contemporary concerns with freedom, responsibility, embodied difference, and cultural diversity.. Their provocative and ambitious text ranges from arguing for the Stoic origins of Spinozistic materiality, to extending Spinoza's view of "social imaginaries" to indigenous people in Australia.

Gatens and Lloyd evenly divide their text between the historical roots and contemporary relevance of Spinozistic thought. They open the text with an insightful analysis of the materiality of the imagination, its central role in politics, its connection with sociability, and its relation with emotion. Significant to their argument is the case they make for the Epicurean and Stoic roots of Spinoza's materialism.

Their framework communicates, and allows them to expand on, two important theses. First, in Part One they argue that a productive way to clarify Spinoza's material view of the imagination and its contemporary social/political significance is to pursue its Stoic origin. To this end, the authors focus on the related themes of freedom and responsibility. Part Two elaborates their second claim that Spinoza's view of the social imaginary reveals a culturally determined capacity for normative judgment, an acceptance of difference, and a preservation of individuality in a community. The success of the text rests on the authors' wager that "despite—indeed, because of—its apparent strangeness, the philosophy of Spinoza can be a rich resource for cultural self-understanding" (1).

Gatens and Lloyd develop their first thesis by arguing that Spinoza's view of freedom and its unique social dimension expand upon Stoicism. While Spinoza himself claimed that his views were antithetical to Stoic freedom, Gatens and Lloyd challenge him by powerfully arguing for significant ties. They also carefully trace out, in response to Spinoza's rejection of the will in Stoicism, how Spinoza can disagree with the Stoic account of the will and still share with the Stoics a common emphasis on knowledge over volition. The authors' comparison also yields a clear articulation of the thorny Spinozistic proposition that freedom is neither dependent on free will nor opposed to necessity.

Gatens and Lloyd also claim that Spinoza's view of responsibility is a refiguring of Stoic ideals. They solidly establish continuity through a detailed historical discussion of the consonance and dissonance of the Stoic identification of divine will and fate, and the Spinozistic coincidence of freedom and necessity without a divine purpose. While this is sufficient to establish a claim of indebtedness, they keenly raise the implicit ethical concern—crucial to the contemporary relevance of Spinozism—of whether necessity without divine purpose precludes responsibility. To alleviate this concern, they refer to Etienne Balibar's claim that Spinozistic responsibility is found in the material link between understanding ourselves and our relations to others. Gatens and Lloyd then parallel Spinoza's views of individuality with Hannah Arendt's political concept of "collective responsibility." In this view, interestingly developed in their conclusion, the collective, imaginative nature of selfhood demands that individuals take a degree of responsibility for their ancestors' actions.

In Part Two, Gatens and Lloyd explore Spinoza's relevance to contemporary debates about 'social imaginaries' by denying that he even inadvertently advocates either tyranny or social uniformity. They begin with an impressive argument that surveys the supposed ethical dilemma presented by Spinoza's "uncompromising naturalism." For Spinoza, humans entering society agree to limitations that allow each to pursue self-preservation. However, Spinoza rejects both transcendent laws and transcendent values. This might appear to allow a dangerous equation of power and right. But, drawing from Gilles Deleuze's nontraditional ethological reading of Spinoza, Gatens...