cline - 2010 - autonomy, identity and common notions in spinoza - unpublished

Autonomy, Identity and Common Notions in Spinoza Alex Casper Cline

Unpublished December 2010

Autonomy, Identity and Common Notions in Spinoza

Alex Casper Cline

December 2010

The Common Notions originate in the middle of the Second Book of Spinoza’s Ethics. The

opening book, titled On God, lays out in a striking manner the unique nature of Spinoza’s

project. One understands that he is proposing a unique form of Monism, one that

confounds not only Descartes’ separation of mind and body, but also the Scholastic

separation of the finite from the infinite. The universe is to be viewed as one unified

substance, not created by but rather contained within an immortal being. “Whatever is,

is in God...”; Spinoza has established that the deity he will be working towards is

immanent and inclusive, as opposed to the transcendental and withdrawn God of his

contemporaries. [IP15] In the scholium to Proposition 10 of Book 2, he explains the1

importance of his initial investigation; other thinkers believed in contemplating the

divine last; the result of this is a latent teleology, and a separation of phenomenology and

other practical sciences from the study of the divine. A perfect example of a structure he

believes to be fallacious would be the Leviathan of Thomas Hobbes, which begins with a

discussion of man and his faculties before ascending, by way of government, towards the

kingdom of the divine. For Spinoza, God is not simply an unmoved mover, but rather

fully integrated within, and necessary for the explanation of, the actions of his attributes

1Spinoza quotations, except where otherwise noted, are from the Ethics. I used the EdwinCurley translation for reference, but all quotes are from Samuel Shirley’s Complete Works ofSpinoza



or component parts.

Spinoza’s second Book refers to minds, but it also refers to bodies; the two are quite

explicitly interchangeable. The true distinction between the second book and the first is

that while the initial chapter looks at the universe from the level of the whole, the

totality of existence that God represents, its successor begins with an investigation at the

level of the multiplicity. For Spinoza “individual thoughts,” as well as bodies, “are modes

expressing the nature of God in a definite and determinate way.” [IIP1Dem] One

understands that the pattern of the Ethics is circular; it is opposed in form to texts like

the Leviathan, which follow Dante’s linear progression of an ascent towards heaven.

Spinoza’s scattered thoughts compose themselves into bodies and minds, which form

intellectual States and Common Notions. Never is it expressly stated that humans are

the only creatures capable of finding their way to divine knowledge, but Spinoza is a

human in a community of humans; he starts with what he knows, that “man thinks” and

is self-aware. [IIAII] The project for the rest of his text will be a recovery from this

diaspora towards an adequate knowledge of the divine nature, and of our inclusion within

it - what Spinoza calls the third kind of knowledge. Yet with the exception of messianic

figures, this level of knowledge is unreachable alone. In order to understand the

progression towards it, we require an understanding of affects and of passions, of

adequate and inadequate ideas, and finally and perhaps most importantly of Democracy,

Theology and of Common Notions. Yet while Common Notions have been explored by a

variety of thinkers, most notably Gilles Deleuze, one might argue there is still room for



expansion. One benefits from contemplating an understanding of how Common Notions

might be formed, or of what possibilities they afford us; these functions to do not

transcend identity, but rather take advantage of instability within that very concept.

Deleuze and Common Notions

Deleuze was not the first thinker by any means to consider the Common Notions as a

critical component of Spinoza’s philosophy. Others correctly identified it as opposed to

Platonic Formalism, which gave credence to universal ideals, or Aristotelian beliefs that

the object contained its own idea. Some debated whether this could be considered

rationalism, since it involved the mind and faculties of understanding, or an eccentric

form of empiricism involving feeling instead of sense perception. Deleuze’s reading,

Expressionism in Philosophy, is important because, though his text has a strong

consistent argument, it is a result of a nonlinear approach to the text. The discussion of

Common Notions and of the Third Kind of Knowledge is given penultimate place, despite

the fact that these concepts originate in the Second Book of the text. Affects, though they

compose the majority of the text, are not given pride of place in this text. Just as in order

to discuss Common Notions we need an understanding of the unity and omnipotence of

the divine nature, in order to understand affects we need to understand their purpose.

“Spinoza” writes Deleuze, “proposes a grand principle: to consider structures rather than

forms or functions.” [278]2

2Deleuze citations in this text are from Expressionism in Philosophy, except, as noted those from a 1978lecture.



The images and ideas created by the divines’ scattered modes vary greatly: “each,”

writes Spinoza, “will form universal images according to the conditioning of his body”

(IIP40Schol1) In Propositions 26-28 a theory of inadequate ideas has been established;

it is explained that “so long as the human mind perceives things from the common order

of Nature, it does not have an adequate, but only a confused and mutilated knowledge of

itself, of its own body, and of external bodies.” [IIP29Cor] If we trust the products of our

sense perceptions, given to us in a “fragmentary and confused manner without any

intellectual order”, or if we “recall things to mind” from ‘symbols’, and base our ideas off

of rumors or hearsay, we are bound to accept false notions. [IIP40Schol2] In this

respect, Spinoza is a solid opponent of empiricism, but also of subjectivity. Spinoza’s

inclination is to mistrust any individual experience in favor of learning from contact with

other bodies and minds. Deleuze writes “when we encounter a body that agrees with our

own, when we experience a joyful passive affection, we are induced to form the idea of

what is common to that body and our own.” [282]

In a 1978 lecture, Deleuze explains that Spinoza has three ideas based on affects. The

first of these, Affectus, relates to a body’s capacity to act. The second and third derive

from Affectio, which, according to Deleuze, “is a mixture of two bodies, one body which is

said to act on another, and the other receives the trace of the first.” “If we can be the

adequate cause of any of these affections, I understand by the affect and action;

otherwise a passion,” writes Spinoza. [Deleuze 1977] Affections are not affects; they are



rather actions wherby we have no idea of their cause. Yet affections retain a dynamic

nature; passions, through the addition of adequate knowledge can become actions, in a

process facilitated by common notions. “We accumulate passive joys, finding in them an

opportunity to form common notions, from which flow active joys,” writes Deleuze; “the

increase of our power of action thus presents us with the opportunity of coming into that

power, or of becoming truly active.” [308] The inclusion of Common Notions as a major

concept, as opposed to a minor segment of the theory, helps explain the transition

between the multiple parts and the whole. Passions abound, with the vast majority being

unwilling or unable to diagnose the origins of their feelings. Yet Spinoza sees this as the

key to empowerment: “those things that are common to all things and are equally in the

part and in the whole can be conceived only adequately,” he writes, beginning by talking

about the most universal and basic of the common notions. [IIP38] Consequently,

notions based on these universal common notions are also adequate, by virtue of

Proposition 40.

The less universal Common Notions are problematic in that ideas that are less

universally common are prone to provoke dispute, questions about authenticity and

other issues. This, however, does not preclude their adequacy. For the adequacy is based

around shared experience and affection, that is in itself empowering, regardless of the

content or value of precise ideas that are shared. Concordance represents a move

towards unity, which serves as an affirmation of the unity of the divine. “A common

notion,” writes Deleuze, “is always an idea of a similarity of composition in existing



modes.” [275] They constitute a move towards perfection, since perfection in Spinoza is

synonymous with adequacy as well as reality. They require virtue, in that virtue “insofar

as it is related to man, is man’s very essence, or nature, insofar as he has power to bring

about that which can be understood solely through the laws of his own nature” [IVD8]

and entails power. Further, “to act in absolute conformity with virtue is nothing else but

to act according to the law’s of one’s own nature” [IVP24Dem] and

“it arises not by accident but from the very nature of reason that men’s highest good iscommon to all, because this is deduced from the very essence of man insofar as that he isdefined by reason, and because man could neither be nor be conceived if he did not have theability to enjoy this highest good. For it belongs to the essence of the human mind to have anadequate knowledge of the eternal and infinite essence of God.” [IVP36Schol]

The system permits even divisive common notions, since by virtue of their basis in more

universal common notions, they at least have the capacity to be understood. Deleuze,

quoting Spinoza, reminds us that “no thing can be evil through what it has in common

with our nature, but insofar as it is evil for us, it is contrary to us” [IV 29, c.f Deleuze

281]

This comes as a result of the very nature of the affects. “The mind is averse to thinking

of things that diminish or check its power and body’s power,” writes Spinoza.

[IIIP13Cor] We have a natural aversion to what Spinoza calls ‘bondage’, to the

powerlessness that comes with passive emotions. This bondage is not to others,

however, but to our own powerlessness; in that sense Spinoza is a precursor to

Nietzsche. Yet Spinoza does not see an escape through individual ‘will’, but rather the

formation of commonalities with others. ”We also endeavor,” writes Spinoza, “to do



whatever we imagine men to regard with pleasure...;” [IIIP29] This counteracts the

Hobbesian, competitive human nature without even necessarily positing a ‘human

nature’; if it is in our nature, it is because it is also in the nature of all things to seek to

inspire joy, and action in other bodies and minds, to the best of their ability. Writes

Deleuze “active affections, when they occur, are necessarily joyful: there is no sadness,

since all sadness is the diminution of our power of action; only joy can be active.” [274]

The formation of, or participation within, Common Notions can only be an activity, since

it requires a circulation of positive affects and understanding with others, an agreement,

(this is shown by IVP32) and it can only be joyful.

Vacillations: Individuality to Collectivity

It makes sense, however, to look at the bodies being affected by Common Notions, while

subsequently looking at the political implications of the so-called second kind of

knowledge. Clearly, this knowledge in Spinoza’s philosophy provides a basis for the

construction of truth without recourse to universal or so-called transcendental ideals. It

is therefore poses a potential for forms of knowledge at odds not simply with the

Scholastic and Clerical authorities of Spinoza’s time, but with many reformulated

Modern ideas. Common Notions are a danger to, and are certainly not the property of

Sovereign Power, though they often are regulated by it. Yet they also pose a critical role

in the definition and subsequent redefinition of the individual. Susan Ruddick, in The

Politics of Affect, writes that

“it is cooperation itself that enables the individual: the social field is the terrain that enables



any possible notion of the individual: the social field is the terrain that enables any possiblenotion of the individual. And as we operate within a social field that prefigures ourconstitution as individuals, it is a fiction to insist on our mere ability to act on our passions asevidence of our freedom or free will.”

The social movements of Spinoza’s time, whether they were nationalist, religiously

partisan or radically democratic in nature, actually allowed their participants an identity.

The same could easily be said of experiences of collectivity in our or any time - this is

hinted at in Ruddick’s discussion of Deleuze and Audre Lorde. Yet while she provides an

essential analysis of the difference between Deleuze and Negri’s respective approaches

to collective liberation, she avoids direct engagement with Spinoza’s text.

Perhaps the most critical statement for determining the relation of individuals to the

formation Common Notions comes at the heart of the Ethics, in Proposition 17. “If we

imagine that a thing which is wont to affect us with an emotion of pain,” writes Spinoza,”

has something similar to another thing which is wont to affect us with an equally great

emotion of pleasure, we shall hate it and love it at the same time.” As a Scholium,

Spinoza explains that this occurrence, called a vacillation, is similar to a doubt, except for

two things: firstly, doubt takes place only in the mind while vacillation also has a physical

component. In addition to this, they differ in degree of intensity; we might assume that a

vacillation is more unsettling. A postulate in the Second Book has already explained that

“we feel a certain body to be affected in many ways” [IIPostIV]; it is important to

Spinoza’s conception of multiplicity that different bodies are acted upon by a variety of

different forces. Yet here is explained the result of these varying forces: a pervasive

anxiety that runs through what we might call the subject. Except the subject itself is no



more; in the Scholum Spinoza continues by asserting that “the human body is composed

of very many individual bodies of different nature...” As such, individuality serves as an

interesting concept within Spinoza; it is hardly a given.

We know that individuals are composites. This constitutes the core teaching of the

beginning of the Book of II, whereby Spinoza, after having expanded his first set of

definitions and thirteen propositions on the relationship between unity and multiplicity,

then begins to develop what might be considered the basis of a scientific theory. Bodies

are in motion or at rest; they are determined by other bodies; this is not surprising.

What is critical and innovative in Spinoza’s Philosophy comes in his definition:

When a number of bodies of the same or different magnitude form close contact withone another through the pressure of other bodies upon them, or if they are moving atthe same or different rates of speed so as to preserve an unvarying relation ofmovement among themselves, these bodies are said to be united with one anotherand all together to form one body or individual thing, which is distinguished fromother things through this union of bodies. [II Def]

Various individuals moving in unison can comprise one body, but also, by this logic,

bodies are themselves made up of a multiplicity of smaller bodies. The Definition

provides the linchpin between what might be considered Spinoza’s Physics, and his

Biology. Obviously, bodies that are not alive can constitute composites also, but life and

death is not an important delineation for Spinoza: all systems are living systems. Rather,

Communication is key; we see this in Lemma 7: “the individual thing so composed

retains its own nature, whether as a whole it is moving or at rest, and in whatever

direction it moves, provided that each constituent part retains its own motion and

continues to communicate this motion to the other parts.”



With the Postulates, it becomes clear where Spinoza is heading, why exactly his

conception of the subject is so innovative. Postulate 1 states “The human body is

composed of very many individual parts of different natures, each of which is extremely

complex,” while Postulate 3 asserts that “the individual components of the human body,

and consequently the human body itself, are affected by external bodies in a great many

ways.” In Deleuze, we see a focus on an initial tension arising from the bridging of the

chasm between mind and body:

“one feels that soul and body have at once a sort of identity that removes the need for anycausality between them, and a heterogeneity, a heteronomy, that enders it impossible. Theidentity or quasi-identity is an “invariance,” and the heteronomonomy is that between twovarying series, one of which is corporeal, the other spiritual.” [327]

Yet this tension is expanded when we consider, via Spinoza’s physio-biology, the

inherent heterogeneity in all bodies and, consequently, minds. One recalls Deleuze’s later

work with Felix Guttari in Anti-Oedipus, and Guttari’s own work regarding the concepts

of ‘Chaosmosis’ and ‘Chaosophy’. To become an individual, we must ensure proper

communication between composite parts of our body, developing a scheme of mediation

and synthesis. This is the basis of Rationality in Spinoza; it is not thinking according to a

certain objective pattern, but rather refusing to let a certain nature become dominant or

be affected independently; for to do so would cede part of ourselves to another, or

diminish our capacity to be affected by others. Rationality revolves around constituting a

degree of consistency within the multiple components of what we call an individual.

Yet being trapped in individuality is obviously, given the centrality of Common Notions,



a bad thing; we are only able to access the first, false kind of knowledge. Yet we might

gain from looking at the Fourth Book, which expands on our assertion. In proposition 56,

we learn that “extreme pride, or self-abasement, indicates extreme weakness of spirit,”

while in its corollary we are told that the proud and the self-abased are the most

emotional. Valuation or formation of the self independently does not allow for autonomy,

but rather makes the individual most subject to the passions. This has a dual effect: one

the one hand, it puts them most at risk at being trapped in the pathetic world of the sad

passions. On the other, however, it allows them to be more exposed to the domain of

joyful passions. Deleuze defines individuality as “the permanence of a relation of

movement and rest through all the changes which affect all the parts, taken to infinity, of

the body under consideration.” [1978] In other words, individuality engenders a raising

of the stakes; following the formation of an individual, said individual is either

strengthened or ‘poisoned’ when it is affected by other bodies. Deleuze, in his lecture,

notices a word used only a single time in the Ethics which he finds critical: ‘occursus’,

translated as encounter. Both the proud and the self-depreciating are more prone to the

encounter, yet the proud are less likely to gain anything from an encounter - their pride,

while ignorant, is pleasurable.

We might suggest, therefore, that the ‘self-abased’ are the most susceptible to Common

Notions; they are most susceptible to emotion. Michael Hardt writes in the An

Apprenticeship in Philosophy that in Spinoza, “the human condition resides principally in

the point of the minimum of power; when we adopt this position we can adopt too a truly



ethical position.” [95] The self-abased are certain of their individual existence, yet they

are also convinced of its worthlessness. As such, they search for an encounter, at the risk

of their own annihilation. In recognizing their own doubt, they strive to move away from

the first kind of knowledge, based on superstition or conjecture. This necessarily results

in a movement towards the Common Notions. Vacillations or a despondent nature are

not, however, requirements for passage towards the Common Notions; as Book four

shows, no finite body or mind can escape the passive affections, or develop a complete,

‘adequate’ understanding of all forces that affect them. Such an understanding would

require perfect rationality, an intimate knowledge of God that can be aspired to but not

directly obtained. So there are no completely rational humans, yet the humans with the

capacity of rational thought, that Spinoza labels ‘Free’, are of less concern to Spinoza

than those who have the capacity to be emotionally affected and gain nothing from the

encounter. These humans, the proud, generally move no closer to the formation of

Common Notions; they are comfortable in their ignorance. This ignorance comes not

naturally, but as a result of the active affections: gratuitous exercise of misunderstood

power.

Religious Autonomy in the Theologico-Political Treatsie

Spinoza’s Ethics was precluded by his final published work, the Theologico Political

Treatsie, which he suspended the completion of his masterpiece to write. The TPT is

generally seen as a specific intervention into the political and religious crises of the day,



or as an attempt to create a climate favorable to the publishing of his major text. That

being said, it was written as an abstract theological text, a political history of the Jews

during biblical times and an analysis of different forms of state; only small segments of

the text refer to Spinoza’s particular time period. The text generally had an adverse

affect, bringing Spinoza under additional scrutiny and making it near impossible to

publish the Ethics while he was alive. Yet the text is critical in that it picks up from

where the fourth chapter of the ethics leaves off, in that it provides a context for the

relatively abstract politics of the Ethics. In his text Spinoza and Politics, Etienne Balibar

goes so far as to call the TTP a “Democratic Manifesto”; it was definitely an important

bridge between the Ethics and his later work. Yet Spinoza’s arguments go far beyond

Democracy.

Though the book is divided into four parts, though it really consists of three sections. The

first, the refutation of miracles and of superstition, is a practical application of certain

propositions that would later be elaborated in the ethics. The second contains a history of

the Hebrew state, while the third is a veiled discussion of lessons for the modern state.

As opposed to the Political Treatise, the TPT was formulated as a concrete intervention

into the present situation in Holland. Yet Spinoza took precautions to protect himself; the

book was published anonymously on a fake imprint and was structured, for the most

part, as a history lesson. We see a tension between theocracy and democracy, that is not

resolved through elimination. Rather, in contrast to the popular formulation of the

God-fearing state, seen at the time in Cromwell’s Puritan Dictatorship or the reactionary



Calvinist opposition present in Spinoza’s Netherlands, we see in the TTP the formulation

of an alternative, libertarian order with theocratic elements. “I show,” writes Spinoza,

“that the revealed Word of God is not to be identified with a certain number of books,

but is a simple conception of the divine mind as revealed to the prophets.” [TPT 392]

We have seen already in the preface a drive towards autonomy in the practice of

religious beliefs:

“as men’s ways of thinking vary considerably and different beliefs are better suited todifferent men, and what moves one to reverence provokes ridicule in another, I repeat theconclusion already stated, that everyone should be allowed freedom of judgement and theright to interpret the basic tenets of his faith as he thinks fit, and that the moral value of a

man's creed should be judged only from his works.” [Preface, TPT 393]

Furthermore, as clearly stated it is the execution, not the maintenance of beliefs that

qualifies faith. With politics, also, we begin in a world which privileges autonomy;

“nobody is bound by natural right to do as another pleases, each man being the guardian

of his own freedom.” We might give our rights over to a sovereign as a maneuver to

promote collective living, but we maintain the right to dissent. If Spinoza proves “that

governments are the guardians and interpreters of religious law as well as civil law,” it is

because laws are designed, under the right circumstances, to be broken. We get a

disclaimer that this book is not meant for the ‘common people’ or those with similar

‘emotional attitudes’; this may be motivated by a desire to keep it out of the hands of

ideologues of Conservative Calvinists, quite likely of a lower social class. Alternatively we

might read this as a straight deception, in the same way at those who compose a

Republican reading of Machiavelli’s the Prince identify it as demysticizing the



mechanisms of power; if this is the case, we might also discard the disclaimer wherein

Spinoza says his objective is to ensure his writing “should be in complete agreement with

[his] country’s laws, with piety and with morality.”

Giorgio Agamben suggested in Means Without Ends that we see The Ethics as a

‘strategic manual’; we might suggest that the TPT is of a similar nature. The command

to “obey God with all one’s heart by practicing justice and charity,” later formulated by

Spinoza, is then a disposition towards two specific Common Notions seen as necessary for

radical liberation. [392] For justice is the subject of the fourth book of the Ethics; we

already know that for Spinoza, justice entails the elimination of human bondage.

Elsewhere in the TPT, “justice as commonly defined, is the steadfast and constant will to

render to each his own.” [427] In a similar formulation, charity is a disposition towards

others, a sharing of not only material resources but of ideals and positive affects. This

charity should be based, as Spinoza will later show in Book IV of the Ethics, not on pity,

but on reason; in other words, it is not liberal humanitarianism, but rather a recognition

of the true value of solidarity. [EIVP50] A dispensation towards Justice and Charity,

therefore, could be seen not as an acquiescence towards traditional Christian values, but

rather as a demand in line with the later political philosophies of Anarchism and

Communism.

Paraphrasing Isiah, Spinoza writes that “in return for the freeing of the oppressed and

for charity, the prophet promises a healthy mind in a healthy body, and the glory of the



Lord even after death; but in return for the observance of ceremonies he promises only

the security of the state, prosperity, and material success.” [437] As such, there is a

conflict between the democratic acquiescence to the state and the theocratic pursuit of

common notions that has been completely overlooked in modern scholarship. This then

has necessary political implications; for while Spinoza praises the State in the latter part

of the Ethics, this rational political system of deliberation is only preferable when

compared to popular, collective movement based on the mobilization for certain core

values. It is telling that we find at the end of Spinoza’s chapter on obedience to divine

laws a reference to St Paul’s letter of the Gallatians: “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy,

peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against

such things there is no law.” Similarly, in letter 76, Spinoza rails against a young man,

Alfred Burgh, who in letter 67 privileges the doctrine of the official Catholic Church over

an autonomous divination of God’s will - “you used to worship an infinite God... but now

you dream of a Prince”, he writes. [948] For Spinoza, Common Notions supersede both

Political and Religious law.

Conclusion: Beatitude and Multitude

The proud are worthless for Spinoza’s project of liberation. We might expand this

category, even, to include the religious dogmatists of his day, or the political dogmatists

of ours. Those who are completely secure in their own identity are proud, irrational.

They live in the world of affections; they act, but in a misguided way oblivious to the



knowledge and affects of others, and to the depth causes of their own actions. Because of

the way an individual works in Spinoza’s physio-biology, the ‘proud’ individual does not

necessarily have to be a single human, but rather can be an entire social group or

perhaps overzealous adherents to an idea, a religion or a national identity. Yet within

these composites, whether they are an identity or collective, we might find a moment, a

nucleus of dissent. This is the moment of ‘self-depreciation’, a nagging anxiety in the

subject, giving rise to passive affections, or a dissident individual in the social body -

perhaps an alienated academic such as Spinoza, but more frequently a nobody - an

anonymous individual in Sidi Bouzid or a worker with ‘nothing to lose but their chains’, a

fourteen year old vigilante against rapists or a ‘casseur’ in the banlieus. A moment of

vacillation becomes a moment of affective disorder, in which a vacillation between a

multitude of passive affections becomes a significant opportunity for escape. We find this

most clearly in the Political Treatsie; the tenth segment of the second chapter, we are

told that men remain in bondage, acting according to they as long as they have faith in

hope, or are bound by fear. If either of these two forces are removed or challenged - if

the hopeful individual loses that hope or feels their life is worthless - then they are most

open to alternatives. The self-depreciating accepts the encounter, is affected by the

widest variety of passions.

The Common Notion results from the development of an affinity, a concord between

bodies or ideas that develops into a collective concept. This concept provides the basis

for actions, for affects, that have a known root. Yet at the basis of every Common Notion



is an understanding of the positive implications of community, elements that Spinoza

discovers in the fourth and fifth chapters of his ethics. We witness an assertion of the

value of living in society, of mutual aid, of allowing and supporting others to live as we

live. This is echoed in the Political Treatsie: “If two men come together and join forces,

they have more power over Nature, and consequently more right, than either one alone;

and the greater the number that form a union in this way, the more right they will

together posses.” [Pol 2.13] This later develops into an argument for acting according to

the communal will [Pol2.16], but is preceded by the assertion that we might break a

pledge or social contract if we consider it to be in our own interest. This is necessary,

since it distorts the possibility absolute conformity, leaving open the opportunity for

revolt through the process detailed above. This is more than necessary, since otherwise

it would be all too easy for Common Notions to lose their focus, to become universally

agreed upon but no longer about mutual affection and dynamic expansion. Spinoza’s

Common Notions need to have a core of dissent within them, to prevent their

misinterpretation and reapplication as Universal Notions.

The strive for totality in the work of Hardt and Negri, for this reason, is problematic.

Their conception of the multitude is, though this is a gross simplification, still in line with

the project of creating a revolutionary subject. This subject might, by its actions, realize

the Common Notions of Spinoza’s radical theocracy, Justice and Charity. Yet without an

internal tension, a propensity for subjects to debase themselves, disregard their

individual identities in favor of collective singularities, there is little to motivate this



multitude in the first place. Further, it is this tension that causes the Multitude to grow,

preventing it from becoming a static ideal with claims to Universality. Deleuze talks little

of the Multitude, but according to Daniel Colson it would no doubt be different: for

Deleuze,

“with Proudhon and against Negri, the multitude ceases to be the hypothetical andimperceptible horizon of a revolution to come; it is already there, at hand, in us andaround us. The multitude is no longer the final and unifying synthesis of all the humanindividualities led by only one soul, on the side of the infinitely large (the“constitution of being”); it is geared down in an infinity of multitudes, inside aninfinity of body and hearts, on the side of an infinity of infinitely small things. Betterstill, because it is interior to each body and each soul, therefore with all the bodiesand all the souls, the multitude ceases being attached to only human realities, humanindividuality and the narrowness of its passions. Interior to any thing, it embracesthe totality of bodies and souls, the totality of individualities, whether they arehuman or non-human.” [Colson 114-115]

‘The Multitude,’ then, is not something to be aspired to as a totality; rather, it is an

inherent component of every polity, but also every subject or even body. One recalls the

Conatus, the ‘striving’ by which a thing asserts its being; except we might now view it as

a tension resulting from multiplicity, from affective disorder and vacillation. Yet one also

recalls the conclusion of Deleuze’s book, in which he reveals that the ultimate stage of our

realization is not in the Common Notions, but rather in another prospect, something he

refers to as ‘Beatitude’. This does not occur during life, but rather when the constituent

parts are broken down, reduced into their smallest of composite parts. “While we

existed,” Deleuze writes, “we could have only a certain number of active affections of the

third kind, themselves related to active affections of the second kind, which were in turn

related to passive affections. We could only hope for partial beatitude.” In death,

however, our capacity for receiving passive notions is eliminated, as is our capacity to



receive sad passions. We become nothing but the affects we have had on others,

particularly those affects that have caused tension, vacillation in others. As our presence

is ethereal, our actions become progressively indistinguishable from the will of the

Universe, or that of a divine power, or, perhaps most interestingly, that of a new,

reformulated multitude.



Bibliography

Balibar, Etienne. Spinoza and Politics. 1998. London; Verso. Trans: P. Snowdon

Colson, Daniel. “Anarchist Readings of Spinoza” in Journal of French Philosophy. Fall 2007. 17:2pp90-129

Deleuze, Gilles. Expressionism in Philosophy. 1993. New York; Zone Books. Trans: M. Joughin

Deleuze, Gilles. “Lecture Transcript on Spinoza’s Concept of Affect” 24th January 1978. Trans: Emilieand Julien Deleuze. Source: http://www.webdeleuze.com/php/sommaire.html

Hardt, Michael. Gilles Deleuze: Apprenticeship in Philosophy. 1993. Minneapolis; U Minnesota Press.

Hardt, Michael. The Art of Organization. Source: http://www.duke.edu/~hardt/Dissertation.html

Negri, Antonio. The Savage Anomaly. 1991. Minneapolis; U Minnesota Press. Trans: M Hardt.

Ruddick, Susan. “The Politics of Affect : Spinoza in the Work of Negri and Deleuze” in Theory CultureSociety. 2010 27: 21

Spinoza, Benedict.“Ethics”, “Political Treatise”, “Theologico Political Treatise”, “Letter 76” in Complete Works of Spinoza. 2002. Indianapolis; Hackett. Trans: S. Shirley Ed: M. Morgan

Schoen, Edward, The Role of Common Notions in Spinoza's "Ethics" in Southern Journal ofPhilosophy. Winter 1977 15:4 p.537

Other Works Consulted

Agamben, Giorgio. Means Without Ends. 2000 Minneapolis; U. Minnesota Press. Trans: M. Hardt

Deleuze, Gilles. Spinoza: Practical Philosophy. 1988. San Fransisco; City Lights. Trans: R. Hurley

Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guttari. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. 1983. Minneapolis; U

Minnesota Press.

Guttari, Felix. Chaosmosis: An Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm. 1995. Indianapolis; Indiana U Press

Hull, Gordon. “Capital sive nature: Spinoza and the Immanence of Empire” in International Studies

in Philosophy. 2005. 37 pp 29-48

Spinoza, Benedict. Ethics. 1994. Princeton, NJ; Princeton U. Press. Trans: E. Curley.

http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.webdeleuze.com%2Fphp%2Fsommaire.html&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNHGLFJkpKgL5O0XWBf-GPL5plI7Xg

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