Early Modern Liberalism Annotated Bibliography_Wright

8/11/2019 Early Modern Liberalism Annotated Bibliography_Wright

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Melissa Wright

Professor HammillEarly Modern Liberalism

March 3, 2014

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explicating the differences between Hobbes and Spinoza, Armstrong chiefly relies on primary

sources, though she does in a few places draw on Balibar to stake out a few fundamental

distinctions. Of course, Armstrong also situates herself in a rich disservice milieu and references

dozens of critics and philosophers in helpful footnotes throughout.

Frankel, Steven. January 2011. Determined to Be Free: The Meaning of Freedom in Spinozas

Theologico-Political Treatise. Review of Politics Volume 73, No. 1: 22 pages. Retrieved

through Articles+ Search, University at Buffalo Libraries. Accessed on 29 March, 2014.

Frankels primary thesis is that political freedom for Spinoza is incompatible withif not

altogether antithetical tophilosophical freedom. Interestingly, political freedom in Spinoza

wouldprima faciappear to be consistent with political freedom in its conventional usage,

namely, some form of autonomy or free will. As Frankel argues, however, this conventional

understanding of freedom is the myth upon which the most stable societies rest. It is, in other

words, is a decisive illusion designed to maintain securitywhat, Frankel points out, is the

primary, if not sole, purpose of the state. Philosophic freedom, on the other hand, possible in any

state, is the power to understand and accept the determinate conditions of ones lifea concept

Spinoza works out separately inEthics. Political freedom then has no truck with philosophic

freedom because most men are irrational and superstitious throughout their entire lives, and so,

political freedomthe illusion most consonant with the natural state of humankindis deployed

to maintain security. Frankel first draws fromEthicsto depict Spinozas conception of


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philosophical freedom, so that he may, in the second half of the essay, contrast it to political

freedom as it is taken up in Tractatus Theologico-Politicus andTractatus Politicus.

James, Sandra. Fall 2005. Democracy and the Multitude. The South Atlantic QuarterlyVolume

104, No. 4, 21 pages Fall 2005. Retrieved through Articles+ Search, University at

Buffalo Libraries. Accessed on 25 March, 2014.

Despite the wide attention Negris work has yielded, Field contends that his use of the Spinozist

multitude is unfit for his project and argues that political institutions are not, as Negri would

have it, the product of the raw power of the multitude on its singular path toward virtue; rather,

the multitude, Field argues, is constituted both by its power (potentia) and those powers which

can act upon it (pati). In this way, the mediation of political institutions serve to control and

harness thepotentia of themultitude, sometimes toward more virtuous endsas with popular

institutionsor divide the multitude against itselfas with coercive institutions. Field

paraphrases and cites directly from a few of Negris texts to first explicate his argument and then

demonstrate how his use of Spinoza is more strategic than faithful. Often, she cites from

SpinozasEthics, Tractatus Politicus, and Tractatus Theologico-Politicusalongside Negris

arguments to further validate the extent to which his approach to Spinoza is untenable.

James, Susan. "Democracy and the Good Life in Spinoza's Philosophy."Interpreting Spinoza:

Critical Essays.Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2008. 128-46. Print.


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Jamess central claim is the necessity of imagination in the maintenance of a successful state.

Her argument hinges on an understanding of imagination and its simultaneously reactive and

productive forms: A sovereign, just as a prophet, must be able to not only successfully imagine a

political state that is satisfactory to the people, but also convince them of this fact. No prophet or

sovereign that fails this second task is successful in their role. The sovereign then is reactive to

the extent that they must, just like the free man, imagine the passions of their people; it is

productive to the extent that such an imaginative vision constructs or reasserts various

cooperative practices in the social life of the people. Though James analysis and argumentation

deal almost exclusively with primary sources from Spinoza, she does explicitly state that her

article is indebted to Ed Curley and sets out from the start to organize it with regard to his

scholarship on the similarities and distinctions between Hobbes and Spinoza, specifically their

differing conceptions of democracy.

Kahn, Victoria Ann. "Political Theology and Early Modern Texts." The Future of Illusion:

Political Theology and Early Modern Texts.Chicago and London: University of Chicago,

2014. 115-231. Print.

Kahn argues that Strauss is correct to return to Spinoza to understand a conception of civil

society as coincident with religion, but she diverges from Strauss with respect to the role of

religion in Spinozas political theology. Indeed, Kahn views Spinozas dismantling of Hebrew

theocracy not as a mere critique of orthodoxy, but an attempt to replace such a model with a

democratic state. Like Machiavelli, Kahn observes, Spinoza understands the political usefulness


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of religion in securing order. And yet, as Kahn finally concludes, Spinoza sees in religion

something more than the first form of cultural heritage: Presaging contemporary conceptions of

literature, Spinozas analysis and hermeneutics of scripture seems to function as an early form of

ideology critique. For Kahn, this serves as evidence of Spinozas liberal conception of culture

and argues that a defense of democratic values is still important today. Early in the chapter, Kahn

traces the intersection of politics, religion, and culture throughout German philosophic thought

throughout the 1920s, centering her analysis and evidence around Strausss influences (e.g.,

Heidegger, Barth), his debate with Schmitt, and the change in his thinking that led him back to

Spinoza. Later in the chapter, Kahn turns to Arendt and her understanding of the role of culture

as a preparation for political life. This acts as a bridge to Althusser, who Kahn references to

make her final major point in the book concerning the political value of biblical hermeneutics, as

noted above.

--. February 2014. Hobbes, Romance, and the Contract of Mimesis.Political Theory Volume 29,

No. 1: 25 pages. Retrieved through Articles+ Search, University at Buffalo Libraries.

Accessed on 29 March, 2014.

Drawing on the historical figure of the Earl of Essex, Kahn reads this figure as a larger

problematic for Hobbessunderstanding of fear and the manner in which a self-protective and

rational fear (the good kind of mimetic desire) could give way to a dangerous and romantic form

of fear (the bad kind of mimetic desire). She specifically argues that already in the state of nature

for Hobbes, the passions, and most importantly fear, are intermingled with the imagination to the


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extent that men do not act solely out of fear in the face of danger, but are also driven by the

romantic urge for vain-glory and social recognition. In order to stabilize Hobbess contract from

this socially coded resistance to fear and natural reason, the contract, Kahn argues, must be read

as one that establishes the limits of mimetic desire. Kahn begins the essay with a helpful

biography of Essex and account of the importance of romance in early 17th

century England.

From this historical foundation, she proceeds to analyze Hobbes in a series of close readings.

Thayer, V.T. October 1922. A Comparison of the Ethical Philosophies of Spinoza and Hobbes.

Hegeler InstituteVolume 32, No. 4: 15 pages. Retrieved through Articles+ Search,

University at Buffalo Libraries. Accessed on 1 March 2014.

In what would appear to be a faithful reading of Hobbes and Spinoza, Thayer asserts that

Spinoza cannot be read as a mere disciple of Hobbes, at least in part because they maintain

different metaphysical orientations: Hobbes is a mechanic materialist and Spinoza a rationalist.

Hobbes, Thayer argues, bases the justification of the commonwealth on fear and seems to

structure the rationale for the state around the belief that might makes rightboth in nature and

in the sovereigns power to command law. For Spinoza, however, fear and the passions in

general, cannot ever bring about reason as they do for Hobbes; passions, on the contrary, arise

from inadequate ideas on the plane of Imaginative Knowledge, and it is only within the state

free from that fear which compels men to oppose self-interest to the good of othersthat an

individual can truly hone their faculty of reason. In drawing his comparison, Thayer works

directly and exclusively with a number of primary sources from both authors.


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Vatter, Miguel E. Winter 2014. Strauss and Schmitt as Readers of Hobbes and Spinoza. TheNew

Centennial Review, Volume 4, No. 4: 54 pages. Retrieved through Articles+ Search,

University at Buffalo Libraries. Accessed on 24 March, 2014.

Vatterscentral claims surround the correspondence of Schmitt and Strauss and the fundamental

distinctions in their interpretations of Spinoza and Hobbes. Whereas Strauss views liberalism as

erected on the foundation of moral relativism and nihilism and reads Spinoza and Hobbes as the

authors thereof on the basis of their atheism, Schmitt maintains that all secularized political law

is inherently theological, and that this concept is best expressed in HobbessLeviathan. As

Vatter carefully argues, Schmitts critique of Spinoza, in favor of Hobbes, mistakes Spinozas

freedom to philosophize (libertas philosophandi) as a public freedom to voice ones conscience,

a right Schmitt saw as absolutely inimical to sovereignty, because it contests the sacralization of

the human that is fundamental to the state of exception. Vatters most original contribution,

however, is tracing that mistake to a larger anti-Judaic (and possibly anti-Semitic) strand in

Schmitt, specifically arguing that because Schmitt couples politics and theology (and specifically

Christian theology), any attempt made by interest groups to separate church and state appears as

an attempt by the Jewish people to act in their own interests outside the absolutist power of the

sovereign. For Strauss, on the other hand, Spinozas freedom to philosophize undermines the

natural reason of science by presupposing faith in man, a problem that throws into question its

foundation of reason and sows the seed of destruction into the very justification for Spinozas

state of culture as well as his radical Enlightenment. Vatter, however, does not seem convinced


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Early Modern Liberalism Annotated Bibliography_Wright