Michael Mack
Hasana
Sharp, Spinoza and the Politics of Renaturalization, University of
Chicago Press, Chicago, 2011, 242 pp.
Spinoza's philosophy becomes
increasingly relevant for a critique and revision of traditional humanism. The
term humanism describes the attempt to elevate human life over and above that
of the merely natural. On this view nature names a lack (hence the expression
'merely natural'): it lacks rationality which distinguishes humanity. A divide
between the natural and the human characterizes the concept of humanism. In
this sense humanism concurs with the philosophical school of compatibilism
which assumes that the contingent and merely natural aspect of our existence is
compatible with being ruled by its opposite: the adjudicating and governmental
human mind. Most contemporary philosophers adhere to a compatibilist view of
humanity. This is the point of departure for Hasana Sharp's intriguing book
about Spinoza's contemporary relevance for the following fields of inquiry:
post-humanism, feminism, ecological thought and political philosophy.
The starting premise of this
brilliant book is that Spinoza's thought diverges from philosophies (those of
Kant and Descartes) which posit a compatibility of our naturalist tendencies
with a rationalist ideal of subduing and controlling natural urges, feelings
and inconsistencies. By departing from compatibilism Spinoza is at odds with
most philosophers who have come after Descartes and Kant. As Sharp points out,
"most philosophers today maintain a 'compatibilist' idea of the person, a
view of moral agency in which freedom of the will is seen to be compatible with
natural determination" (p. 2). The view that we can exert our rational
free will despite natural determinations holds sway in social thought and thus
exerts a strong influence on politics.
For there to be compatibility
between two disconnected entities there needs to be some form of a divide
between them in the first place. As I have shown in Spinoza and the Specters
of Modernity, Spinoza radically outdoes the duality between nature and
reason (or free will). There is continuity rather than a duality between affect
and concept, between desire and thought, between reason and nature. Building on
Spinoza's thought, Sharp attempts to counter our current form of politics with
a new one of "renaturalization". What does this mean for our
understanding of humanity and its social habitat, politics? Sharp argues that
Spinoza at once questions the grandeur with which traditional humanism endows
the term 'humanity' and re-enforces the value of human life in its diversity.
Spinoza "redefines human agency as entirely natural, locating it within a
system that reserves no special status whatsoever for humans" (p. 4). This
devaluation of the eminence of humanity within the larger context of nature of
which we are only a tiny part does, however, help alleviate human suffering.
From Spinoza's perspective violence,
hierarchy, humiliation and warfare are the result of the human presumption to
triumph over the lowly sphere of the merely natural, of 'mere life'. The
"denial of human exceptionalism serves, first and foremost, to attenuate a
particular destructive passion: hatred, directed at oneself and others"
(p.4). Spinoza at once undermines traditional humanism and revaluates it in
philanthropic terms. Spinoza takes issue with what he takes to be the
supernaturalism of humanism. This may sound incongruous. Does not humanism
reject the supernatural? Spinoza argues, however, that the very attempt to
distinguish itself from nature risks turning humanity into a supernatural
entity.
Traditional humanism posits a
compatibility between two distinct spheres: human freedom within the determined
but not determining context of nature from which humanity separates itself.
This rise above nature endows humanity with supernatural powers: "Even if
humanism typically rejects a supernatural order in favour of human community on
earth, from the perspective of Spinozism it relocates supernaturalism within
the human mind" (p. 5). The human mind thinks itself above the sphere of
the merely natural. Other members of the human community can become
placeholders of the merely natural too. If this happens, we witness the
ideational formulation and the political perpetuation of religious, racist,
economic and other forms of hatred. The author shows how misanthropic forms of
ecological thought perpetuate what Spinoza critiques as anthropocentricism:
ecologists who attribute higher value to non-human nature are as much bound to
a moralist notion of perfection as traditional humanists who impose a
transcendent standard of perfect moral conduct on us which we can never attain.
The author provides a fascinating
analysis of the relevance of Spinoza's thought to feminism, in particular to
that of the more Hegelian bent of Judith Butler and the Nietzschean approach of
Elisabeth Grosz. Sharp brings to the fore how Butler combines Hegel's and
Spinoza's philosophies, while still clinging to a Hegelian philosophy of
recognition. Butler's Hegelianism is one that is inclusive of otherness because
it is revisable. Butler reconstructs Hegel's philosophy along Spinozist lines.
This makes her reading of both Hegel and Spinoza highly creative. Butler opens
up Hegel's humanism to Spinoza's posthumanism.
As Sharp clearly shows, the most
striking difference between Hegel and Spinoza is, however, their different
approach to representation. Hegel's philosophy of recognition is premised on
the act of representation: we are vying for social recognition via the way we
represent ourselves. The more elevated from the lowly sphere of the merely
natural our representations are, the more we hope to receive social esteem for
our rational-moral capabilities which enable us to overcome the sphere of
affective inclinations.
For Spinoza, by contrast, the term
affect embraces not only the emotive but also the active and rational aspects
of our lives. His conatus establishes the continuity between concept and
emotion, between mind and body. Spinoza levels the playing field: as I have
argued in Spinoza and the Specters of Modernity, his vision is radically
non-hierarchical. Sharp astutely analyzes how Spinoza's posthumanism is as much
concerned with keeping an even keel regarding elevation toward the supernatural
as he is careful not to establish a natural norm which could be used as a means
to measure and streamline human diversity: "Human was, for Spinoza, a
rallying call to oppose sectarian conflict and deny that some peoples are
favoured above all others by God" (p. 218), and equally, "Spinoza's
words on beast suggest that we ought to be wary of any reactionary antihumanism
that may animate our turn away from the human" (p. 219). Sharp points out
that the sentimental approach toward animals in the style of Montaigne or the
idealization of nature (Rousseau) may evidence misanthropy.
She argues that "misanthropy is
easily observed in the ecological movement, for example" (p. 219). Spinoza
avoids the Scylla of humanism and the Charybdis of antihumanism. Humanism
causes hatred of others by holding out the ideal of a quasi-supernatural norm
which we cannot meet and antihumanism demotes our specific human needs and
inclinations by extolling those of non-human animals. In both cases Spinoza
critiques the way we structure our lives and thoughts along the
theological-literary method of representation:
The
intellectual love of God does not follow from mutually satisfying
correspondence of representations between two structurally identical beings; it
is not a relationship of recognition. God does not seek a satisfying portrait
of singular beings. The divine intellect always already contains ideas of every
existing thing. Humans never arrive at a comprehensive representation of God,
or nature as a totality. (p. 147)
By undermining methodologies of
representation, Spinoza has led the groundwork for a new conception of
literature. This new understanding of literature revises our approach towards
politics. It is no longer a politics of recognition.
Is it one of renaturalization, as
Shark has persuasively argued? Sharp carefully hedges her arguments. This is a
wise move, because the word nature has all too often been abused as normative
device, laying down rules as to how women or men should "naturally"
behave. Judith Butler has analyzed how "nature" is culturally
constructed. And yet we live in a substantive, embodied world of nature. The
point is not to conflate the natural with the cultural. The study of
representation is of huge socio-political value, because it reveals how, in
different contexts, the cultural becomes represented as the natural. A politics
based on representation and recognition does not, however, do justice to our
diversity. Instead of representation, Spinoza's conatus evokes the
diverse and idiosyncratic forces of creativity and self-determination.
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