Power and the Multitude

Abstract

Benedict Spinoza (1634-1677) is feted as the philosopher par excellence of the popular democratic multitude by Antonio Negri and others. But Spinoza himself expresses a marked ambivalence about the multitude in brief asides, and as for his thoughts on what he calls "the rule of (the) multitude," that is, democracy, these exist only as meager fragments in his unfinished Tractatus Politicus or Political Treatise. This essay addresses the problem of Spinoza's multitude. First, I reconstruct a vision of power that is found in the Ethics but that tends to be overlooked in the scholarly literature: power is not just sheer efficacy or imposition of will, but rather involves a capacity for beingaffected; I call this the conception of power as sensitivity. The second part of my argument shows how, given Spinoza's emphatic political naturalism, the conception of power as sensitivity can be extended to his political philosophy to shed light on what Spinoza calls potentia multitudinis, or "the power of the multitude"-a term found solely in the Political Treatise and nowhere else in his oeuvre. This juxtaposition reveals significant qualifications to the liberatory potential of the multitude currently claimed in the scholarly literature.

The Importance of Being Useless: A Cross-Cultural Contribution to the New Materialisms from Zhuangzi

“…Daoism, the tradition to which the Zhuangzi has often been ascribed, consists of a large corpus of texts, including not just classics Zhuangzi and Daodejing ( 道德經 ), but also temple scriptures passed down from master to disciple, as well as alchemical, meditation, medical and longevity practices (Chan, 2000;Kohn, 2000;Kirkland, 1997Kirkland, , 2002Strickman, 1980). 6 This unwieldy corpus is itself part of diverse traditions that have only with much difficulty-often through the force of a bureaucratic State apparatus-become corralled within a singular descriptor: Chinese (Descola, 2013;Needham, 1954;Schwartz,1985;Smith, 2003).…”

“…Recent Spinozist scholarship has emphasized his counterintuitive conception of power: all finite things are mutually interdependent, and this interdependence is not a weakness, but rather constitutes the true nature and power of things (res in Latin). This is why power always involves an element of sensitivity, of receptivity, or what Spinoza calls 'being affected' (Deleuze, 1988;Kwek, 2014). Instead of specifying from the outset what qualifies as a thing, actant, or body, Bennett traces their varying capacities for affecting and being-affected.…”

The egoistic teacher: educational implications of Spinoza’s ethical egoism

“…5.6; E3p7s2 4 ). That is, it may be described as an individual comparable to an individual human being only much more complex (see Zac, 1963;Matheron, 1969;Kwek, 2015). This state, however, presupposes fully rational citizens that strive collectively with a unified will.…”

Affective Arrangements

“… 6 See Kwek (2014) for a reconstruction of Spinoza’s conception of power as the capacity to affect and being affected (see Spinoza, 1677/1985). Kewk puts emphasis on the aspect of receptivity or sensitivity ( being affected ), so that it becomes clear that the potentialities of bodies—in the sense of power ( potentia )—at issue always include their agentive and their receptive capacities.…”