Susan James

Why should we read Spinoza

Historians of philosophy are well aware of the limitations of what Butterfield called ‘Whig history’: narratives of historical progress that culminate in an enlightened present. Yet many recent studies retain something of this teleological outlook. Why should this be? To explain it, I propose, we need to take account of the emotional investments that guide our interest in the philosophical past, and the role they play in shaping what we understand as the history of philosophy. As far as I know, this problem is not currently much addressed, but it is illuminatingly explored in the work of Spinoza (1632-77). He aspires to explain the psychological basis of our attachment to histories with a teleological flavour. At the same time, he insists that such histories are epistemologically flawed. To study the history of philosophy in a properly philosophical fashion we must overcome our own Whiggish leanings.

The Politics of Emotion: Liberalism and Cognitivism

Liberal political theorists commend a comparatively orderly form of life. It is one in which individuals and groups who care about different things, and live in different ways, nevertheless share an overriding commitment to liberty and toleration, together with an ability to resolve conflicts and disagreements in ways that do not violate these values. Both citizens and states are taken to be capable of negotiating points of contention without resorting to forms of coercion such as abuse, blackmail, brainwashing, intimidation, torture or other types of violence. In explaining what makes such a state of affairs possible, such theorists have tended to present the citizens of liberal polities as more or less rational individuals who are aware of the advantages of a pluralist, yet co-operative way of life, and understand what it takes to maintain them. Liberalism works best, they have suggested, when, and because, individuals understand its benefits, and therefore act broadly in accordance with the norms it prescribes.

XIII. Passion and Politics

The sudden resurgence of interest in the emotions that has recently overtaken analytical philosophy has raised a range of questions about the place of the passions in established explanatory schemes. How, for example, do the emotions fit into theories of action organized around beliefs and desires? How can they be included in analyses of the mind developed to account for other mental states and capacities? Questions of this general form also arise within political philosophy, and the wish to acknowledge their importance and find a space for them has led to some fruitful developments. Among these are a new sensitivity to ways in which attributions of emotion can create and sustain unequal power relations, an interest in the underlying emotional capacities that make politics possible, a concern with the kinds of emotional suffering that politics should aim to abolish, and analyses of the emotional traits it should foster. While these and comparable explorations have enormously enriched contemporary political philosophy, a great deal of mainstream work continues to ignore or marginalize the emotions, so that their place remains uncertain and obscure. There is no consensus as to what kind of attention should be paid to them, or indeed whether they deserve any systematic attention at all. This is a curious state of affairs, because it was until quite recently taken for granted that political philosophy and psychology are intimately connected, and that political philosophy needs to be grounded on an understanding of human passion. In this essay I shall first consider why political philosophers ever rejected this set of assumptions. I shall then return to the pressing issue of how we might take account of the emotions in our own political theorizing.