Affects

Against the backdrop of increasing hostility targeting sexual and gender minorities in Indonesia, this study analyzes the conterminous relationships between safe spaces and risks of violence within the lives of Indonesian Muslim queers as they reflexively and relationally engage with reparative gestures towards the injurious dimensions of the social world. In my analysis I discern two archetypical safe spaces: a waria beauty salon and an activist camp for youth queers. Respectively, these spatial configurations cater to and accommodate distinct meanings and aspirations attached to the idea of safety. The research protagonists featured in this paper articulate safety in conflicting affective registers, sometimes enabled by tropes of (hetero)normativity in sociopolitical discourse, and at other times constrained by them.

There is a long history of the uses of the term 'catharsis'. Nowadays the term usually designates a process by which the production of strong emotions by adequate representations (literature, cinema, videogames, etc.) or by real events frees the subject (the reader, the spectator, the gamer, etc.) of those very emotions. Freud also had a specific understanding of what catharsis means, and he used the word to designate what would later become the “psychoanalytic method”. However, there is a long way between those modern understandings of catharsis and the original meaning Aristotle gave to the term in his ‘Poetics’. According to Aristotle, the catharsis produced by tragedy is linked to the emotions of pity and fear. Although pity and fear are two opposite affects depending on the position of the subject relatively to an event, the spectator of the tragedy is bound to experience both of them simultaneously because of the ethical similarity the playwright must keep between him and the tragic hero. But pity and fear are also two opposite affects on the physiological level: pity is a warm affect, fear a cold one. Catharsis is then a physiological balancing of pity by fear, of warmth by cold, and reciprocally, and this continuous suppression of excesses of temperature through the tragic imitation, while bringing a feeling of relief and pleasure, rids the spectator of all excessive affects. This physiological process of catharsis, as Aristotle understood it, has little to do with the current acceptions of the notion.

The rediscovery of the one-keyed flute in contemporary performance and composition allows renewed use of a wide spectrum of Baroque palettes, techniques, embellishments, and genres - keenly illustrated by recent works by Finnish composer Jukka Tiensuu.

W artykule autorka dyskutuje nowe zjawisko kulturowe, znane jako ASMR, w szczególności jego zainteresowanie multizmysłowością, w perspektywie posthumanistycznej, związanej z niehierarchicznością ludzkich zmysłów. Tekst analizuje wybrane filmy z gatunku ASMR opublikowane w serwisie internetowym YouTube, skupiając się na sposobach ukazywania w nich różnych wrażeń zmysłowych (wzrokowych, słuchowych, dotykowych, zapachowych, smakowych), stawiając tezę, że praktyki ASMR promują posthumanistyczny typ wrażliwości oraz zachęcają do wytwarzania alternatywnych trybów doświadczania świata.

Plus encore que le plaisir, la douleur représente chez Descartes une indication naturelle fondamentalement fiable de notre nature sensible et de ce qui est bon ou néfaste à notre survie. La plupart des successeurs de Descartes ont maintenu pour la douleur et, dans une moindre mesure, pour le plaisir, ce statut d’indicateurs de notre adaptation au monde environnant, quitte, comme Malebranche, à leur accorder une place prépondérante sur le plan de la détermination de nos actions. À l’inverse, on assiste chez Spinoza à une disparition presque complète de cette notion. Chez lui, c’est l’« affect » qui tient le rôle d’indice de notre état physique par rapport au monde extérieur, et il qualifie l’affect correspondant à la douleur comme étant une « tristesse » en tant que celui-ci est l’expression d’une baisse dans notre puissance essentielle. Mais la tristesse recouvre-t-elle exactement la même chose que la douleur ? A-t-elle la même fonction, la même fiabilité ? Et que signifie la dissolution de ce concept pour expliquer ce qui, justement, était chez Descartes ce qui aurait pu le mieux rentrer dans le cadre du conatus spinoziste ?

Ethica Sexualis -Spinoza et l'amour Présentation L'Éthique de Spinoza est communément appréhendée comme un ouvrage dans lequel est développée une philosophie dont la conséquence est de combattre les passions tristes, c'est-àdire les passions qui manifestent une diminution de notre puissance d'être et d'agir. La réflexion conduite par Bernard Pautrat, à partir d'une analyse précise et rigoureuse du texte, à l'intérieur duquel il décèle ce qu'il nomme trois étrangetés concernant l'amour et la sexualité, remet en cause cette interprétation un peut trop « lisse » de l'Éthique. Il nous aide à comprendre que les passions joyeuses, et c'est principalement le cas de l'amour, sont aussi à combattre parce qu'elles sont des passions qui par nature diminuent notre puissance et donc nous font toujours retomber, d'une manière ou d'une autre, dans la tristesse. Cependant, la maladie d'amour n'est pas sans remède, un autre amour peut nous sauver, non passionnel celui-là, l'amour intellectuel de Dieu.

Early 20th century birthed a radical phenomenon across several cultures and nations- the demarcating of certain public space for primarily leisure purposes. From India to the United States, urban parks became a symbol of democracy, openness, and freedom as they emerged from a protracted struggle to shift from the hands of the State or imperial power to that of the masses. There was much euphoria about their unregulated and public character, reflecting a new age of modernization and civilization. Yet, over time, it has been revealed how contentious the process of shaping, regulating, and sustaining of public parks can be as well as its pluralistic and transcultural nature. Interestingly, the 21st century is celebrating the birth of another leisure space that shares this rhetoric of being open, free, universal, non-utilitarian, and democratic: social network sites. As the Net shifted from the hands of the State to that of the user, its leisure spaces have been looked upon as sites where regardless of gender, age, and/or culture, people can commune, browse aimlessly, socialize and share their views openly. Yet, important concerns are emerging on what constitutes as openness, universality and democratic as governments to corporations are finding ways to architect and manage these virtual geographies and, users are harnessing these sites for a range of activities.

Thereby, by drawing parallels between urban parks and social network sites, this project aims to highlight the historical aspect of leisure spaces and provide a much needed rootedness in this highly speculative media discourse. The historical and comparative investigation to parks is innovative, as it will debunk much of the hype surrounding social network sites as a novel and unprecedented space for communication. Given that social network sites have a short and primarily Western-centric history of usage, the development and evolution of parks across nations allows for a fresh and transcultural perspective to this topic. Methodologically, using this real/virtual comparative strategy has become an essential means to understand online spaces. In fact, it is impossible to not evoke physical spaces to conceptualize virtual spaces. So we find ourselves on the information highway, at the electronic frontier, chatrooms, home pages, to MUD lobbies. In fact, this project builds on the popularly accepted parallel of the Net as the digital city, propositioning thereby, that its common public leisure areas are its virtual parks.

While the project strives to critique the public, democratic and free for all notions of contemporary leisure spaces, online and offline, for feasibility purposes, it focuses specifically on 3 areas of timely importance: (a) open and closed systems (b) private and public domains, and (c) work versus play dimension to leisure sites, emphasizing notions of corporatization, commercialization and the privatization of leisure spaces. Also, the diversity of parks such as industrial parks, theme parks to community parks will emphasize the pluralistic aspect of social network sites. Further, this project brings together disciplines of media studies and history of technology through an original avenue of urban planning, emphasizing the spatial aspects of technology and media practice. Given that most studies on new media spaces are artifact oriented, ahistorical and Western-centric, this project will provide a unique lens through its historical and transcultural approach.

The undertaking of this project is deeply relevant given that as leisure becomes central to the 21st century economy, corporations to the State are greatly vested in the understanding of these spaces. The dominant idea of its unprecedented novelty can be misleading and have damaging consequences on shaping policy and practice. Overall, the goal of this project is to leverage on real-virtual comparisons to develop a more integrated understanding of contemporary leisure, a prime space of digital residence in the 21st century.

Resumo:
De certo que compreender mais profundamente o ser humano é um empreendimento inacabado e por isso marcado pela provisoriedade teórica advinda dos diferentes saberes. No entanto, ainda que provisório, o entendimento antropológico se faz necessário para reflexão sobre a teologia política, sobretudo quando nos deparamos com o cenário contemporâneo do Brasil que evidencia o papel dos afetos na percepção política dos brasileiros. Dessa maneira, nosso objetivo é realizar breves reflexões sobre o papel fundamental dos afetos numa antropologia teológica, com vistas a contribuir com o campo da teologia política e suas propostas para o Brasil atual. Para isso, o método utilizado é de finalidade exploratória e conta com análise de fontes bibliográficas. Portanto, através de livros e artigos, demos dois passos em direção ao nosso objetivo. Primeiro, discutimos sobre a questão da antropologia filosófica, colocando em pauta o aspecto relacional e o afeto como elementos centrais do ser humano, os quais irão clarificar o caminho para repensar a teologia política sem recorrer à uma antropologia de cunho racionalista. Contudo, tais reflexões são realizadas através do olhar teológico, pressupondo o ser humano em sua condição de criatura, o que significa afirmar uma antropologia distintamente teológica. Segundo, a partir dos apontamentos anteriores, verificamos como essa perspectiva antropológica pode nos auxiliar na teologia política, com o intento de compreender o contexto sócio-político em que nos encontramos. Por fim, concluímos que pensar na antropologia é um trabalho indispensável para que a teologia política seja efetiva em seus projetos.



Abstract:
It is certainly true that a deeper understanding of the human being is an unfinished undertaking and therefore marked by the theoretical provisionality that comes from the different knowledges. However, even if provisional, the anthropological understanding is necessary for reflection on political theology, especially when we face the contemporary situation in Brazil that highlights the role of the affections in the political perception of Brazilians. Thus, our goal is to briefly reflect on the fundamental role of the affections in a theological anthropology, in order to contribute to the field of political theology and its proposals for the current Brazil. For this, the method used is exploratory in approach and relies on the analysis of bibliographic sources.Therefore, through books and articles, we took two steps toward our objective. Therefore, through books and articles, we took two steps toward our goal. First, we discuss the question of philosophical anthropology, highlighting the relational aspect and affection as central elements of the human being, which will clarify the way to rethink political theology without resorting to rationalist anthropology. However, these reflections are carried out through a theological view, presupposing the human being in his condition as a creature, which means affirming a distinctly theological anthropology. Second, based on the previous notes, we verify how this anthropological perspective can help us in political theology, with the intent of understanding the socio-political context in which we find ourselves. Finally, we conclude that thinking about anthropology is an indispensable work for political theology to be effective in its projects.

den ganzen Beitrag gibts auf der Seite der RLS https://www.rosalux.de/publikation/id/38325/work-in-progress-work-on-progress-6/...Ich stelle die These auf, dass an der Herstellung von kollektiver Handlungsfähigkeit in queeren Räumen verschiedene Elemente
wie Raum, Körper und Affekte beteiligt sind, wobei Affekte als Bindeglied eine wichtige Rolle einnehmen. Es gilt diese Konstellationen näher
zu betrachten. Handlungsfähigkeit haftet dann Subjekten nicht an, sondern ergibt sich vielmehr relational, situativ und kontextbezogen. Diesbezüglich sollen soziale Praktiken in queeren Räumen
betrachtet werden.

There is a long way between the usual modern understandings of catharsis and the original meaning Aristotle gave to the term in his ‘Poetics’. According to Aristotle, the catharsis produced by tragedy is linked to the emotions of pity and fear. Although pity and fear are two opposite affects depending on the position of the subject relatively to an event, the spectator of the tragedy is bound to experience both of them simultaneously because of the ethical similarity the playwright must keep between him and the tragic hero. But pity and fear are also two opposite affects on the physiological level: pity is a warm affect, fear a cold one. Catharsis is then a physiological balancing of pity by fear, of warmth by cold, and reciprocally, and this continuous suppression of excesses of temperature through the tragic imitation, while bringing a feeling of relief and pleasure, rids the spectator of all excessive affects. This physiological process of catharsis, as Aristotle understood it, shows an interesting example of pre-Kantian aesthetics. It gives to the body an importance that has been mostly lost in modern times. However, the interaction between language, emotions and body recently made a come-back in some parts of current literary theory, and with Freud's psychoanalysis.

Deleuze's interpretation of Spinozan philosophy is intrinsically related to the concept of intensity. Attributes are defined as intensive qualities, modal essences as intensive quantities or degrees of power; the life of affects corresponds to continuous variations in intensity. This essay will show why Deleuze needs the concept of intensity for his reading of Spinozan philosophy as a philosophy of expressive immanence. It will also discuss the problems that spring from this reading: in what way, if any, are modal essences modified by the intensive variations of affects? How can the Spinozan conception of eternal modal essences be reconciled with the idea of affections of essence? What is the ethical import of the life of existing modes, when modal essences are considered as eternal? While these questions, in particular the last two, confront each commentator on Spinoza and demand a solution in one way or another, the essay will conclude with a question which is posed from an exclusively Deleuzian perspective: why is the concept of the virtual, which takes centre stage in Deleuze's own philosophy of immanence, missing in his account of Spinoza?

Online interactions are a recent setting for intimacy and courtship since the introduction of new media of communication in the 1990s. Omani youth constantly uses this medium, particularly for dating. It brings a reformulation of gender interactions, reworks outlines of self-presentation, romantic expression and seduction practices in a global interrogation of intimacy. It is entangled with the material sphere by the reproduction of similar norms and behaviors, but also when these relations try to emerge on the physical surface, which marriage appears as a conclusive point in a progressive relation with love.

Further to my previous article in the last issues of ÍMPAR-Online Journal for Artistic Research, on the flattement and glissandos, I deepened my exploration of the post-modernist use of other extended techniques on the traverso with the study of flutter-tonguing and microtones. The most recent works written by Masahiro Arita, Hans-Martin Linde, Vasco Negreiros, Rodney Sharman, John Thow and Jukka Tiensuu demonstrate how resourcefully these extended techniques can be employed on this instrument. The section entitled 'the effect' explains how to execute them, while their musical meanings and expressive components are analysed in the section called 'the affect.'

Syliane Malinowski-Charles, Historia Philosophica, Vol. 8, 2010, p. 11-26:
Ce texte utilise l’explication que donne Spinoza du plaisir et de la douleur, considérées dans l’Éthique – certes non sans ambiguïté – comme des affects relevant simultanément du corps et de l’esprit, pour mettre en lumière des tensions qui relèvent d’une ancienne conception interactionniste du rapport esprit-corps. Cette hypothèse est corroborée par l’examen de quelques passages du Court Traité où Spinoza considérait les sensations comme le produit en l’âme des changements dans le corps. Nous revisitons également l’interprétation classique du parallélisme des attributs pour expliquer la différence entre la vie affective consciente, qui occasionne une impression d’interaction, et la chaîne ontologique complète des causes au sein de chaque attribut.

This paper explores the status of the sensations of pleasure and pain in Spinoza, which the Ethics presents – although not non-ambiguously – as affects both of the body and of the mind.  It aims to show that the tensions present in the Ethics on this subject are the remnants of an older conception of the sensations as the effects of the bodily causation on the mind, a conception that can be traced back to some passages of the Short Treatise. In the frame of the argument, the classical interpretation of the parallelism of the attributes is also revisited in order to explain the difference between what we consciously feel (namely, the interaction we imagine between mind and body) and the full ontological chaining of causes in each attribute.

This collection embraces the increasing interest in the material world of the Renaissance and the early modern period, which has both fascinated contemporaries and initiated in recent years a distinguished historiography. The scholarship within is distinctive for engaging with the agentive qualities of matter, showing how affective dimensions in history connect with material history, and exploring the religious and cultural identity dimensions of the use of materials and artefacts. It thus aims to refocus our understanding of the meaning of the material world in this period by centring on the vibrancy of matter itself. To achieve this goal, the authors approach "the material" through four themes - glass, feathers, gold paints, and veils - in relation to specific individuals, material milieus, and interpretative communities. In examining these four types of materialities and object groups, which were attached to different sensory regimes and valorizations, this book charts ...

Visualité vidéoludique : le jeu des affects Video Game Visuality: A Game of Affects À mesure des avancées technologiques de ces dernières décennies et de l'approfondissement des réflexions sur le game design, nombre de productions vidéoludiques ont fait des émotions un enjeu majeur de leurs modalités ludiques, qu'il s'agisse d'amuser, de tendre vers le pathétique ou encore d'horrifier. Ces propositions ludo-narratives tissent une relation complexe avec le joueur à travers le déploiement d'images dont le ressort majeur est leur capacité à « faire monde » et, ainsi, d'incorporer le joueur. « Image-objet » (Rieusset-Lemarié) étendue et profonde, elle est lieu à traverser et implique un régime de perception reposant sur l'immersion mais aussi l'acte de parcours. La fréquentation de l'image vidéoludique (tridimensionnelle) impose une économie de regard reposant sur une observation mobile incorporée imposant que le joueur soit à la fois spectateur et opérateur. Ces modalités spécifiques de lecture de l'image, combinée à l'expérience ludo-narrative proposée par l'activité vidéoludique, invitent à une expérience affective et esthétique dont il paraît important de tracer les contours. À ce titre, les jeux vidéo horrifiques constituent un objet d'étude heuristique en tant qu'ils mobilisent des affects extrêmes (peur, dégoût, etc.) par la création de situations de jeu éprouvantes et le recours à une iconographie dont la « puissance d'écart » (Ribon) est manifeste. De là, il s'agit d'interroger la capacité de l'image vidéoludique à réaffirmer le « pouvoir des images » (Freedberg) en proposant (via ses modalités spécifiques de perception) une confrontation avec l'image ne détournant pas de l'iconographique (qui est à la fois support et moteur ludique) et dont les enjeux vont pourtant au-delà du rapport au figuré. Ainsi, par le prisme de l'expérience vidéoludique horrifique, il est possible de se demander en quoi l'expérience vidéoludique, dans sa globalité, définit un régime de perception unique — par le jeu qu'elle entretient avec les affects du joueur.

This essay focuses on Spinoza’s claim that ideas of reason are necessary. While Spinoza understands necessity to imply that something cannot be otherwise, the author shows that Spinoza employs a narrower notion of necessity that applies only to some things, what LeBuffe describes as omnipresence: existing at all times and in all places. This account of the sense in which the ideas of reason
are necessary makes evident that such ideas have especially strong motivational power. Our affects are more powerful when they represent a thing present, which entails that our ideas representing things as always present and, thus, our ideas of reason are more powerful. On this basis, the author concludes that ideas of reason have a special motivating force, which explains how they serve as commands or dictates.

Qu'elle soit tournée vers ses collègues, vers un patient ou vers l'institution, sa propre colère n'est pas un affect aisé à aborder pour un soignant. Ou plus exactement : elle est l'expression d'un complexe affectif rarement adressé à qui de droit. Dans cette communication, nous nous proposons de construire une approche d'inspiration spinoziste de la colère des soignants et d'en analyser quelques exemples en lien avec les représentations sous-jacentes. Nous interrogerons alors la place de la philosophie à l'hôpital en tentant de montrer quel travail peut être mis en place avec les soignants dans une temporalité spécifiquement philosophique.

Cet article propose une relecture du cheminement éthique dans la connaissance chez Spinoza sous l’angle de l’affectivité qui l’accompagne. Il entend montrer que seuls les affects peuvent être à la source de la dynamique du perfectionnement individuel, et souligner tout particulièrement le rôle de la joie pour l’individu comme outil concret de dépassement de soi et de sa passivité. En plus de caractériser le terme idéal de la progression éthique sous la forme de la béatitude, nous montrons que la joie est présente à chaque étape de la progression où, comme les autres affects, elle joue un rôle d’indicateur à l’âme de la direction vers laquelle tendre, de son vrai bien. Notre analyse du passage de l’imagination à la raison lui réserve donc une place privilégiée, et ce non pour justifier ce passage, qui se fait mécaniquement par la comparaison entre elles d’idées du premier genre, mais pour expliquer la naissance d’un désir de connaissance dès qu’est donnée ne serait-ce qu’une idée vraie. De plus, l’affectivité joyeuse est également présente dans la connaissance vraie, et nous esquissons les grandes lignes d’une interprétation faisant de l’intuition l’expérience affective – l’expérience de la puissance – des idées données par la connaissance rationnelle.

Partir des hommes tels qu’ils sont, pour penser une éthique de vie à la mesure des soignants et des patients. C’est l’exigence que nous nous sommes fixée pour mettre en place une anthropologie éthique. Cela revient ainsi à porter une attention toute particulière aux affects et représentations en jeu dans le soin, à réinscrire les pratiques de soins dans leur contexte (celui de la recherche, celui de la clinique, celui des demandes sociétales, celui des contraintes organisationnelles, celui des imaginaires, …) et à ancrer l’éthique du quotidien dans une autre conception de l’humain sans pour autant l’y réduire ou renoncer à cheminer et à faire cheminer.
Nous nous proposons de rester dans la tonalité spinoziste à l’œuvre dans notre travail en milieu hospitalier, mais en l’enrichissant d’une approche plurielle (celle de la sociologie, celle de l’ergonomie, celle des enjeux socio-politiques, …) avec en prisme des pratiques de soins toujours à repenser et à réfléchir – au sens du miroir comme de l’approche réflexive. C’est ainsi une approche systémique du patient, mais aussi des soignants et des chercheurs, que nous cherchons à mettre en place et en œuvre progressivement.
Dans le même mouvement, cette approche plurielle sera alimentée de retours pratiques et réflexifs sur les projets en cours dans un Centre de lutte contre le cancer, dans un CHU et dans deux centres hospitaliers périphériques, avec un ancrage territorial (cœur d’une grande ville, espace montagnard et rural, …) et de spécialités (oncologie médicale, réanimation, soins palliatifs, rééducation fonctionnelle, hématologie, …) varié, venant enrichir et pluraliser la réflexion.
Ce séminaire vise ainsi une compréhension plus adéquate de la situation dans laquelle se trouvent les patients, les familles, le personnel soignant, l’encadrement et les chercheurs, au sein des pratiques de soins qui sont autant d’interfaces entre les différents acteurs.

Catálogo de la muestra 'Poéticas de la emoción', que recorre algunas maneras de representar las emociones en las artes visuales a partir de obras de épocas y contextos diversos, incidiendo en piezas contemporáneas y en las similitudes que han pervivido a lo largo de diferentes géneros y períodos. Las obras de la exposición muestran cómo las emociones básicas comunes a la experiencia humana –miedo, pena, rabia o alegría, entre otras– son transformadas en emociones estéticas y representadas por medio de gestos, signos y formas que sobreviven a lo largo del tiempo.
(Se puede descargar el catálogo en el link).

CaixaForum Barcelona. 7 de febrero - 19 de mayo 2019
CaixaForum Zaragoza 3 de julio - 27 de octubre 2019
CaixaForum Sevilla 29 de noviembre - 29 de marzo 2020

Die Faust als Symbol des Widerstands ist zum Klischee erstarrt. Wie kann und sollte es reaktiviert werden? Welcher Umgang mit Geschichte und Gesellschaft ist möglich und wünschenswert? Und was genau steht einer Öffnung zum sozialen Beteiligtsein im Wege? Entlang zweier Kunstwerke von Anna Lena Grau soll diesen Fragen nachgegangen werden. Zentral stehen dabei Affekte, Informationen, zeitliche Dauer, digitale Körperformationen und neoliberale Selbstbilder sowie die Möglichkeit, Kommunikation, Arbeit und Miteinander neu zu gestalten.

This article explores the meaning of " resistance " and suggests a new path for " resistance studies, " which is an emerging and interdisciplinary field of the social sciences that is still relatively fragmented and heterogeneous. Resistance has often been connected with antisocial attitudes, destructiveness, reactionary or revolutionary ideologies, unusual and sudden explosions of violence, and emotional outbursts. However, we wish to add to this conceptualization by arguing that resistance also has the potential to be productive, plural and fluid, and integrated into everyday social life. The first major part of the article is devoted to discuss existing understandings of resistance with the aim of seeking to capture distinctive features and boundaries of this social phenomenon. Among other things, we will explore resistance in relation to other key concepts and related research fields. We then, in the article's second major part, propose a number of analytical categories and possible entrances aiming at inspire more in-depth studies of resistance.

"On pourrait penser que les questions abordées par Tschirnhaus dans sa correspondance avec Spinoza sont à tel point disparates (elles abordent successivement la question de l’erreur, celle du libre arbitre, des enjeux éthiques puis une thématique épistémologique – la conception du mouvement – à connotation ontologique – le passage de l’étendue à la variété des choses singulières –) que cet échange de lettres n’a ni unité ni cohérence. Il ne justifierait donc pas une étude une et suivie. Mais ces questions présentent en réalité une double cohérence à mes yeux : elles sont reliées d’une part par les problèmes auxquels Tschirnhaus se trouve successivement confronté, et d’autre part par leur lien fondamental au sein de la pensée spinoziste.
En effet, en confrontant les théories cartésienne et spinoziste de l’erreur, Tschirnhaus est amené à évoquer la question du libre arbitre : sommes-nous absolument libres de porter un jugement, ou bien sommes-nous déterminés par une cause extérieure ? Or, cette dernière hypothèse suscite en lui un rejet immédiat, en raison des enjeux éthiques qu’elle suscite ; il oppose donc ces derniers à Spinoza en ces termes : « si nous étions contraints par les causes extérieures, qui serait en mesure d’acquérir la vertu ? Pire encore ! Sur ce fondement, tout forfait serait excusable ! ». Et la réponse de Spinoza en termes de variation des dispositions du corps et de l’esprit (notre esprit n’est pas toujours également apte à penser, de même que notre corps n’est pas toujours également apte à se mouvoir) l’amène à s’interroger sur la dualité des attributs (donnent-ils lieu à des mondes différents ?), puis sur le rapport entre l’attribut de l’étendue et les modes finis, question qui se révèlera fondamentale (et ultime !) pour Spinoza.
Parallèlement, mon hypothèse de lecture est que ce sont les enjeux éthiques, fondamentaux dans sa philosophie, qui amènent Spinoza à affronter à la toute fin de sa vie une question ontologique qui aurait pu se poser à lui dès sa lecture de Boyle et sa correspondance avec Oldenburg à ce sujet. En effet, Spinoza le dit très clairement dès la petite présentation de la deuxième partie de l’Ethique qui précède les définitions : il va s’attacher à expliquer « ce qui a nécessairement dû suivre [necessario sequi] de l’essence de Dieu » ; mais non pas tout ce qui a dû en suivre [non omnia] : seulement les choses qui « peuvent nous conduire, comme par la main, à la connaissance de l’esprit et de sa suprême béatitude [summae beatudinis] ». Et de fait, la « petite physique » passe très rapidement des corps en général au corps particulièrement complexe qu’est le corps humain. Mais ce qui va obliger Spinoza, quasiment contre son gré (puisqu’il évite aussi longtemps que possible de répondre à la question que Tschirnhaus ne cesse de lui poser et de lui reposer, celle du rapport entre l’étendue et la variété des choses singulières), à refaire le chemin inverse, c’est-à-dire à s’interroger sur le statut ontologique des corps singuliers en regard de l’attribut de l’étendue, c’est bien une double nécessité éthique : celle de penser des choses singulières distinctes, ayant une réalité ontologique propre, et celle de penser leur mode possible d’action, afin qu’elles ne soient pas exclusivement « agies » par des causes extérieures.
C’est donc ce double chemin, celui de Tschirnhaus de problèmes en problèmes, et celui de Spinoza d’enjeux en conditions, que je souhaiterais retracer aujourd’hui, par le biais d’une étude de la correspondance entre Tschirnhaus et Spinoza (octobre 1674 – juillet 1676, soit 7 mois avant la mort de Spinoza)."

Love was not born in the West during the twelfth century: the pre-Islamic Arabic poetry of the sixth century testifies to its existence in the ancient Arab world. These poems are well-known among Moors-the population in Mauritania who speaks an Arabic dialect called Ḥassāniyya-and inspire the local poetic forms. Unlike numerous traditions, poetic inspiration of Moorish poets is not spiritual but carnal because it takes root in the desire for a woman, who taste like Baudelaire's Fleurs du Mal. Love poems in Mauritania are not the privilege of a handful, they are primaly composed with the aim of reaching the woman's heart, like bedouin pre-islamic poetry. So her first name, her body, her qualities and defects, from erotized become poetized. In the Moorish society of Mauritania, the sphere of seduction and passion, very often poetized, coexists in parallel with the marital sphere. It is thus never his wife to whom the poet addresses his poetry but another woman that he desires. The lover's figure is a feminized figure, because he can no longer control himself and is subject to a passion that is annihilating him. However, even when the man is in this state in the seduction phase, marked negatively with passivity and suffering, it is only a temporary situation that represents minor harm on the way to conquering the woman and gaining a dominant position over other men. Courtship has commonly been a male prerogative, while women are often not supposed to manifest their desires except in an indirect way. The fact that the man is considered the desiring subject and the woman the desired object is a major cross-cultural gendered element which justifies men's appropriation of women's bodies.

Partir des hommes tels qu’ils sont, pour penser une éthique de vie à la mesure des soignants et des patients. C’est l’exigence que nous nous sommes fixée pour mettre en place une anthropologie éthique. Cela revient ainsi à porter une attention toute particulière aux affects et représentations en jeu dans le soin, à réinscrire les pratiques de soins dans leur contexte (celui de la recherche, celui de la clinique, celui des demandes sociétales, celui des contraintes organisationnelles, celui des imaginaires, …) et à ancrer l’éthique du quotidien dans une autre conception de l’humain sans pour autant l’y réduire ou renoncer à cheminer et à faire cheminer. Après ces trois années de relecture de l’éthique en santé à la lumière d’une anthropologie spinoziste, nous nous proposons pour les trois années à venir de rester dans cette tonalité spinoziste à l’œuvre dans notre travail en milieu hospitalier, mais en l’enrichissant d’une approche plurielle (celle de la géographie, celle de l’ergonomie, celle de la psychologie du travail, …) avec en prisme des pratiques de soins toujours à repenser et à réfléchir – au sens du miroir comme de l’approche réflexive. C’est ainsi une approche systémique du patient, mais aussi des soignants et des chercheurs, que nous cherchons à mettre en place et en œuvre progressivement. Dans le même mouvement, cette approche plurielle sera alimentée de retours pratiques et réflexifs sur les projets en cours dans un Centre de lutte contre le cancer, dans un CHU et dans deux centres hospitaliers périphériques, avec un ancrage territorial (cœur d’une grande ville, espace montagnard et rural, …) et de spécialités (oncologie médicale, réanimation, soins palliatifs, rééducation fonctionnelle, hématologie, …) varié, venant enrichir et pluraliser la réflexion. Ce séminaire vise ainsi une compréhension plus adéquate de la situation dans laquelle se trouvent les patients, les familles, le personnel soignant, l’encadrement et les chercheurs, au sein des pratiques de soins qui sont autant d’interfaces entre les différents acteurs. Notre exigence est de nous prémunir de tout jugement de valeur tout en gardant à l’esprit qu’un cheminement éthique est toujours possible, mais doit aussi être toujours en cours de réactivation.

Since 2015, the reintroduction of controls at northern Italian borders forced asylum seekers to take risky routes to reach their destinations in the European Union (EU). While several deaths have been registered since 2015 along the whole Alpine chain as a consequence of asylum seekers’ exposure to risk, some local villagers experienced unexpected encounters with migrants in distress transiting along mountain pathways. Based on six months of empirical fieldwork on the French-Italian border between the Italian Val di Susa and the French Briançon region, this paper explores the role of local supportive networks in co-producing the conditions of possibility for cross-border migration movements. In particular, it focuses on the articulation between local
villagers' emotions and affects (generated-by and, in turn, generators-of disruptive encounters with vulnerable migrants) and the rise of contentious politics against the lethal nature of the border regime. Through the heuristic potential provided by the focus on affect and emotions —but without neglecting the methodological challenges that such approach entails— the aim of the article is twofold. On the one hand, it illustrates how feelings associated with the exposure to potential and actual deaths of vulnerable “others” may trigger public demands. On the other hand, it shows the spatial effects of such affective experiences.

Partir des hommes tels qu’ils sont, pour penser une éthique de vie à la mesure des soignants et des patients. C’est l’exigence que nous nous sommes fixée, pour mettre progressivement en place une anthropologie éthique. Cela revient à ancrer l’éthique dans une autre conception de l’humain sans pour autant l’y réduire, et ainsi tenir compte des contraintes institutionnelles et des différentes temporalités, tout en laissant une place aux affects et à la singularité des diverses situations de soin.
Cela passe par la distinction des approches morale, éthique, juridique, institutionnelle et subjective d’une même situation, et par la mise en place d’une méthode permettant d’établir des points de rencontre et d’échange entre des outils réflexifs et des situations pratiques. Ce séminaire fait ainsi dialoguer la lecture de textes philosophiques de l’âge classique et l’étude de cas issus des services de réanimation, de rééducation et de soins de support dans lesquels nous intervenons. Il vise une compréhension plus adéquate de la situation dans laquelle se retrouvent les patients, les familles et le personnel soignant, afin de se prémunir de tout jugement de valeur tout en gardant à l’esprit qu’un cheminement éthique est toujours possible, mais aussi toujours en cours de réactivation.
Après avoir diversement abordé les questions éthiques qui se posent au quotidien (par la thématique des affects, à travers la question de la décision, par le biais des mots zet de leurs connotations, par l’intermédiaire d’une approche corporelle, etc.), nous travaillerons avec des médecins et soignants sur les apports d’un regard philosophique et anthropologique dans leur pratique quotidienne. Ces réflexions seront notamment déclinées dans les domaines de la pédopsychiatrie, de l’oncologie, et de la masso-kinésithérapie. L’attention sous-jacente restant l’approche de l’éthique en santé par le prisme des pratiques de soin au quotidien et l’implication des médecins et soignants dans la modification progressive des pratiques et de leurs représentations.

During the Second World War, about 70 000 Finnish children were evacuated to Sweden and other Nordic countries to stay in foster homes in order to ease the situation of Finnish families. In this article, I analyze narratives of a former Finnish Child Evacuee who was evacuated to Sweden and who lived in Swedish foster homes during two different periods. I scrutinize her experiences, stories and personal documents about evacuation and everyday life at foster homes from the perspective of affective and material memories. I approach the retrospective reminiscence of displacement as a mixture of a child’s perspective and an adult’s reflection. During the interview, the narrator also read letters that she had written to her mother, which bring out everyday life experiences in the midst of conflict that anchor in the material world. The written documents, as well as the sensory and material elements of the oral storytelling function as keys for rendering complex affective experiences. In this text, I analyze the process of reconstructing narratives of displaced childhood and transnational family history as part of personal memory work.

, the Augsburg merchant Hans Fugger was busy. He excitedly received two hundred loose, black ostrich feathers alongside two bound feather panaches in the "current Saxon manner" from Nuremberg and returned feathers to Munich as they were not up to date in style. Three months later, Fugger wrote to his Nuremberg agent about further fashionable new Saxon hats for his servants. He continued to inspect deliveries from Nuremberg to control their quality and sent patterns for hats he wanted to have made and accessorized. Each time he noted how much the feathers which adorned them pleased him. His esteem of feathers was no passing passion. In January 1578, Fugger noted the "incredibly beautiful and delicate" material of the new hats from Nuremberg. By 1585, he went to even greater efforts to source eighty to one hundred "really long, delicate and beautiful" heron feathers from either Venice or Vienna, where they were traded via Constantinople and Hungary. 1 Hans Fugger was one of many contemporaries deeply fascinated by the sensual qualities of materials. Fifty years later, Lewes Roberts told readers of his merchant's handbook that "All commodities are known by the senses." He added: "experience tells us that all commodities are not learned by one sense alone, though otherwise never so perfect; not yet by two, but sometimes by three, sometimes by foure, and sometimes by all." 2 During the same period, artists all over Europe strove

In the province of Quebec (Canada) like in many other secular settings, the visibility of the religious practices of newcomers as well as their claims for public recognition triggered lively debates that dramatically shifted the issue of secularity in the realm of public controversy, social tensions and possible fragmentations. First, in 2007 to 2008, a controversy followed the implementation of a Canadian federal legal measure known as 'reasonable accommodation' that aimed at facilitating accommodation of the religious practices of minorities in public spaces, namely in the workplace and in schools. In the aftermath of lively public debates on the social desirability and acceptability of such accommodations, the Quebecois government commissioned two experts (Charles Taylor, a philosopher, and Gérard Bouchard, a sociologist) to launch a large public reflection over the role and conditions of the integration of religious minorities into the local cultural and social landscape. Among others, the commissioners recommended state intervention with a ban on the wearing of obvious religious signs for civil servants or representatives of the state, including kindergarten educators. The Liberal government never legislated in this regard, either for lack of interest in societal issues or for lack of time before it lost power, or for both, thereby neglecting collective concerns over the definition of Quebecois identity and the possible role Catholicism may occupy in this setting. Some commentators proposed that the commission aimed more at cooling down the public turmoil caused by the push for reasonable accommodations than it did at setting up a legal framework to delineate minorities' claims. Indeed, the commission gave the public the opportunity to express their feelings over the presence of minority groups but did no more than witness the expressions of fears, resentments and hostilities emerging from local individuals as well as from civil actors with respect to religiously and culturally diverse populations henceforth present in the province. In 2012, four years after the Bouchard-Taylor commission, the Parti Québécois, whose agenda draws primarily on provincial sovereignty, won the provincial election partly by resurrecting collective mobilization over issues of national identity. This programme reached its climax when the government proposed the adoption of a Charter of Values (Charte des valeurs) that was explicitly designed and presented as a 7

I. Du rapport entre éthique et affect ! a) La question que je voudrais poser aujourd'hui pourrait être formulée de la façon suivante : comment en vient-on à parler des affects dans une recherche portant sur l'éthique ? Un premier élément dans la réponse à cette question consiste en la perspective qui était la mienne dans mon projet de thèse : ne pas retracer ce qu'est (ou ce que pourrait être) l'éthique, mais se demander comment peut-être conçu, dans le cadre de la philosophie spinoziste, un passage à une manière d'être que l'on pourrait qualifier d'éthique, dans le cours d'une existence individuelle concrète. Autrement dit, je ne m'interroge pas avant tout sur la constitution d'un idéal éthique, ou encore sur l'étude de la figure du sage et du troisième genre de connaissance, mais plutôt sur ce qui peut susciter le passage à un mode d'être autre, si nous admettons l'idée qu'il n'y a aucun libre arbitre concevable et que l'homme est une partie de la nature de même que le sont les autres parties -même si ce n'est pas exactement au même titre [idée que l'on peut incarner différemment un seul et même déterminisme, notamment selon la complexité de son corps].

Objectives Tendency toward substance use is influenced by a range of individual, familial, and social factors. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between family emotional atmosphere, sense of coherence, and affects with tendency toward substance use among university students. Methods In this descriptive-correlative study, a total of 400 students (311 males and 89 females) were selected using multistage cluster sampling method from Shahid Beheshti Teacher Training University, Mashhad, Iran. Then they completed measures of parental-child interaction rating scale, sense of coherence scale, positive and negative affect scale, and tendency toward addiction scale. Data analysis was conducted using Pearson correlation and backward multiple regression. Results There were significant and negative relationships between subscales of family emotional atmosphere, sense of coherence, and positive affects with tendency toward substance use among students (P˂0.01). Moreover, negative ...

In works previous to Thousand Plateaus (2005), such as Logic of Sense (1990), Gilles Deleuze stresses the importance of the impersonal as the dimension one must reach in order to counter-effectuate the Event. Impersonal, or neutrality, is a characteristic of singularities and of the Event. Although Deleuze never relates the Event to an experience, regarding experience as an event is our answer to such a question as the becoming-imperceptible or the radical affirmation of any body as a haecceity. Impersonality is a way of allowing the becoming. However, there seems to be a misuse of the notion of becoming as a process of deconstruction or transformation, underlining or enforcing the self instead of dismantling it. Patricia MacCormack's (2011) defense of the lizard-man, and the cat-man, as both bodies in-between and becoming, is such a misuse. Their and Body Art practitioners attempt of overcoming the Self and a subjectivity through the excess and extreme emphasis of turning all bodies “as aesthetic events which can experience and are experienced through zones or folds of proximity” (198) not only falls on the field of mimesis and representation, as they inflate subjectivity and a fixed Self.
Turning the body into an event calls for a re-questioning of an ethical-aesthetic êthos, one which seeks to free life (DELEUZE, 1996) through the creation of encounters, and a much radical de-personalization of the self. This de-personalization or impersonality understood as an elimination process of subjectivities and selves determined by the socius follows Deleuze's Bartleby (1993) three characteristics, plus one: a trait of expression, a zone of indeterminacy, a fraternal function and a subjective-significative nudity. This is a fundamental dismantlement through a «leap of the will», as to achieve that composition in which we are a life in the same immanent plane as everything that composes Nature (DELEUZE, 2005). This is an impersonality towards life and creation (close to asceticism), one could argue, opposed to an imposed depersonalization of death and destruction (close to death camps' bare life).
Nevertheless, for a body to become the event that it is, i.e., a body for a life, one must also address art's territory. First as an encounter (an ethic-aesthetic realm), which can produce what we call the space of the Event, following the idea of taking extra-daily practices and techniques into daily life. Art is too mediated/mediatic and mediates too much (perceptions and experiences). It is most of the time a stance for the production of the monolithic​ Self. To release both Life and Art, affects and percepts, from their shackles, one must avoid and produce actions and situations evading the alienation and fetishism of forces, close the gap of mediation between subject and object of experience. Hence, we propose to rethink Hakim Bey's Temporary Autonomous Zones (1994), as a possibility of how to deterritorialize and produce encounters in daily life. A practice of immediatism: creation happening outside Art.

Turn to Film: Film in the Business School offers creative and powerful uses of film in the business school classroom and surveys the pedagogical and performative value of watching films with students. This volume examines not only how film offers opportunities for learning and investigation, but also how they can be sources of ideological poison, self-delusion and mis-representation. Throughout the text, renowned contributors embrace film's power to embark on new adventures of thought by inventing images and signs, and by bringing novel concepts and fresh perspectives to the classroom. If film often reveals organizational dysfunctionality and absurdity, it also teaches us to understand the other, to see difference, and to accept experimentation. A wide spectra of films are examined for their pedagogical value in terms of what can be learned, explored and discussed by teaching with film and how film can be used as a tool of research and investigation. The book sees film in the cl...

The main research question concerns the nature of tactile experience, and why it has largely been ignored in the humanities and social sciences. Throughout the book I argue towards a ‘felt phenomenology’, a way of writing and thinking about touch as both sensory and affective experience. More specifically, the questions can be grouped along these lines:

1) How do we theorise touch and tactile experience?
This project articulates novel ways of thinking about an under-examined yet crucial aspect of experience – touch – while consolidating previous work on affects, technology and the body. It furthers debates about embodiment and explores the links between phenomenology, technology and the affective content of sensory experience. Within the framework of a ‘felt phenomenology’ it considers the social and historical constructions of tactile and multisensory experience, and the embodied immediacy of touching and being touched. It extends historical frameworks concerning sensory experience into the technologised present, providing a basis for the consideration of case studies and empirical investigations into these areas.

2) How do we understand the extensions of touch, its other senses?
Tactile experience accompanies our interactions with other bodies, objects and machines, and so to develop a ‘felt phenomenology’ I explore the extensions of touch. In surveying these various senses of touch a range of areas are examined, exploring the relationship between touch and affect in: sculpture and architecture (chapter 3); the human-computer interface and digital design (chapter 4); multimedia art and performance (chapter 5); the role of touch in spatial perception and memory (chapter 6); and therapeutic touching (chapter 7). The result is a rich mixture of theoretical and empirical work, drawing examples across a variety of disciplines and media in order to conceptualise the varieties of sensory experience, the diverse ‘senses’ of touch.

While work in the anthropology and cultural history of the senses has become more prominent (e.g. Corbin 1985; 1996; Ackerman 1990; Classen 1993; Classen and Corbin ; Rodaway 1994; Classen, Howes and Synott 1994; Stoller 1997; Howes 2005), the particularity of the sense of touch has not been examined, although recent works in film theory (e.g. Marks 2000; 2002) and performance (Sedgewick 2003) go partway towards this. Therefore, this timely interdisciplinary project examines various senses and meanings of touch. It engages in existing debates about the primacy of vision (e.g. Jonas, Crary, Jay) in order to return to the bodily senses. Through a careful selection and elaboration of historical accounts, detailed case studies, and empirical work, the various senses of touch are explored, including the affective (being touched), the aesthetic, and newly-emerging technologies of touch (haptics). In addition it works as an intervention, using arguments from the psychoanalytic feminism of Luce Irigaray, the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty, Benjamin’s writings on technology and experience, the philosophy of Deleuze and the psychology of affects to reassert the importance of the tactile within everyday experience, and to explore the different ‘senses’ of touch. These insights are augmented by original empirical research conducted with new, emerging technologies of touch and within therapeutic settings.

What is power, what is the relationship between power and art? To be more precise the question should be asked differently: “How is it [power] practiced?” This is undoubtedly a difficult if not impossible question. By it we do not mean some kind of representation of power (“power does not pass through forms”) nor the notion of power as a solely aesthetic experience. Neither is power interpreted as a system of certain relations that call its internal operations into being, as for example museums’ legitimation to produce what they name (works of art), making rules establishing what is meaningful, who has the authority to decide, privilege to speak, and so on. Instead we are interested in something else. Power, as will be emphasized in the continuation of this text, is understood as a relation between forces, “a set of actions upon other actions”; in other words, an exercise in affects.

PhD Thesis, Ioannina 2006.

If the objective of Spinoza’s philosophy, as it is formulated in his central work, the Ethics, is to lead man to happiness as if taking him by the hand, then he should define what this happiness consists of and he should also delineate the basic content lent to the moral principles of good and evil. Yet what kind of content can these terms acquire in a philosophy according to which a) both God as well as each and every singular thing comply with the law of causal necessity, b) where will, be it God’s or man’s, is not free but is always determined causally and c) perfection is induced to reality?
This thesis focuses attention on the study of the notions of good and evil. More specifically, it attempts to elucidate the way in which three different views are articulated within Spinoza’s system of philosophy and to see the outcome of their correlation. The philosopher discards any ontological status regarding the notions in question and considers them to be modes of thought and more specifically beings of reason, relevant notions that are created by man in an effort to comprehend things through their interrelation. Nevertheless, people act aiming at the achievement of goals and deem things as good or evil, even though the philosopher insists that “we neither strive for, nor will, neither want, nor desire anything because we judge it to be good; on the contrary we judge something to be good because ……we desire it”. Why is it then that he believes that despite this “still we must retain these words (vocabula)”? “For because we desire to form an idea of man as a model of human nature, which we may look to, it will be useful to us to retain these same words, with the meaning I have indicated. In what follows, therefore, I shall understand by good what we know certainly is a means by wich we may approach nearer and nearer to the model of human nature we set before ourselves. By evil what we certainly know prevents us for becoming like that model”. And furthermore why does he proceed to genetic definitions of the notions of good and evil defining as good “what we certainly know to be useful to us” and as evil “what we certainly know prevents us from acquiring something good”?
The chapters of our thesis follow the train of thought indicated by our questions. In the first chapter we are attempting to define and determine the real by studying beings and their distinctions. According to Spinoza in nature there are only substances and modes. More specifically there is a substance called God related to innumerable attributes, eternal and infinite, each in its own right, and independent from one another. Each one of them is expressed through modes (modi) or modifications (modificationes) infinite or finite. Man is one of God’s finite modifications. A singular thing (res singularis) consisting of body and soul, which constitute expressions of its essence in relation to the attributes of extent and thought respectively. Good and evil can’t have an ontological status, as they do not pertain to any of the categories of beings. What does their characterization as beings of reason mean then? 
In the second chapter we are analysing the gnosiology principles by which man approaches the real, one’s ability for knowledge and the limits to this knowledge, the mechanisms through which knowledge is gained, as well as further distinctions related to the kinds of knowledge laid out in Spinoza’s philosophy.  A fundamental axiom in Spinoza’s system is the principle of absolute comprehensibility of all that is real, based on which man can know things in the same way God does, through intellect, so that man’s truth is God’s truth. But in order to understand how man knows, we must know the nature of man’s soul (mens). The human soul is an idea, the idea of the body as actually existing, but this is the idea God has of it. The soul itself, does not have the idea that is, but it knows itself and other bodies through its own body, and more specifically through the modifications it undergoes during its interaction with surrounding things, and then forms ideas about these modifications. 
If human knowledge is to perceive things as they are, it should be able to distinguish between things that really exist, modes of thought, and the impact of the use of language on this process. The kinds of knowledge that man can gain fall within three categories. The first is imagination, that is the way in which the soul perceives through the images that things imprint on its body. The analysis of the way imagination works allows us to grasp the notion of beings of reason. The first kind of true knowledge is Reason, that is the perception of common notions. This knowledge is a result of an innate ability of the soul, is related to the psychosomatic status of man, and it is definitely true. Reason is an attribute of man and all men. At the climax of the progress towards knowledge man can attain a third kind of knowledge; intuitive knowledge. At the last part to this chapter we are also examining the role of experience in Spinoza’s theory of knowledge.
In the third chapter, in the light of our familiarisation with the basic principles governing Spinoza’s philosophy, we attempt an analysis of the ontological status of good and evil. We present the views pertinent to the relativity of the notions of good and evil through different works of his, only to conclude that they remained unalterable from his first Treatises to Ethics. Within the framework of this chapter we quote the correspondence of the philosopher with Blyenbergh, elaborating on the topic of evil, and then we present the theory on the perception of good and evil emanating form the theory of the encounter of bodies.
In the fourth chapter we highlight that these notions have a meaning viewed in the light of man, perceived as good and evil for man. We proceed thus to the analysis of human nature through the study of the fundamental notion of conatus and its expression as desire. We define the notion of affect (affectus) and then go on to the basic distinction between active and passive affects, a distinction based on the knowledge they comprise, which alludes to the distinctions touched upon in chapter two. The definition of good and evil refered on desire, integrates these notions in the very human nature, which is expressed as a desire and is oriented towards things according to the other two fundamental human emotions; joy and sorrow. We examine the mechanism of imitation based on the perception of the other man as same, as a thing like us (res nobis similis) and then we analyse how good and evil are defined by desire as a passion.
The fifth chapter elaborates on the definition of notions based on the distinction between good and evil and truly good and evil, as perceived by Reason. It then goes on to explore the notion of an exemplary human nature and elucidate on the definitions of truly good given according to that exemplar, aiming at finding the reason that leads the philosopher to the preservation of the phonemes and allows him to proceed to genetic definitions. The ability of Reason to grasp what is common is bound to lead to the true knowledge of human nature, so that by this yardstick the content of the terms in question can be defined. The knowledge of the nature of soul leads to the realisation that knowledge itself constitutes what is truly good and the knowledge of God is the supreme good. Furthermore, the knowledge of Reason dictates that the virtue of man consists in acting according to the laws of man’s nature. It is again desire then that defines what is truly good for man, but it is the rational desire that constitutes an active affect.
The functionalism of the knowledge of good and evil, which is now also true, is examined in relation to action in the sixth and last chapter. In what way is the true knowledge of good and evil related to human action? And to what kind of ethics is the philosopher finally led to, judging by the way in which he deals with the notions of good and evil? The cause that leads to the formation of an exemplar is related to the mechanisms of desire and its functionalism is determined by the very nature of rational knowledge, which is abstract and is projected in the future, highlighting the main weakness of Reason to lead to action. Drawing on that we then proceed to the exploration of the conditions necessary for the development of an initially immature Reason and examine to what extent the same mechanism related to the formation of an exemplar can be exploited in conjunction with knowledge and through knowledge, which now has the drive of imagination to its benefit. The tail–piece seeks to find to what extent and in what mode the road indicated by Spinoza’s philosophy can meet with an empirical route, in which man is not equipped with the deductions of philosophical knowledge. We underline the notion of attention that is a direction to further investigation.
After summarising the basic views highlighted by our analysis we conclude wondering about the character of Spinoza’s ethics. We ascertain the grades of ethics, which are nevertheless established from beginning to end within the same ontological principle, the nature of man viewed as desire, a desire which goes through different stages of self-consciousness, to wonder in the end if the philosopher finally proves to be consistent in his dismissal of teleology.