Affectivity and Philosophy after Spinoza and Nietzsche: Making Knowledge the Most Powerful Affect

262 Pages·2015·1.573 MB·English

by  Stuart Pethick (auth.)

Affectivity and Philosophy after Spinoza and Nietzsche
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Affectivity and Philosophy
after Spinoza and
Nietzsche
Making Knowledge the Most Powerful
Affect
Stuart Pethick
© Stuart Pethick 2015
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2015 978-1-137-48605-9
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
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in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2015 by
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ISBN 978-1-349-55307-5 ISBN 978-1-137-48606-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137486066
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Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Note on Referencing viii
Introduction 1
1 Spinoza: Discovering What the Body Can Do 18
1.1 Descartes’ cogito and the power of ideas 20
1.2 Spinoza and the affective-imagination 28
1.3 Affectivity: a vacillation of joy and sadness 34
1.4 The body as duration 37
1.5 Euphoric and dysphoric bodies 41
1.6 Adequacy of ideas 45
1.7 The signs of the affective-imagination 54
1.8 From general to common notions 59
1.9 Conatus: ‘how’ things are, not ‘what’ things are 63
2 Nietzsche and the Sign Language of the Affects 68
2.1 Interpreting the sign-language of the affects 71
2.2 Neither substance nor subject 74
2.3 Will as affect 78
2.4 Consciousness and other perspectives 81
2.5 Evoking the multiplicity of the body 85
2.6 Consciousness as communication 89
2.7 Affect as interpretation 96
2.8 Consciousness and responsibility 99
2.9 Memory, consciousness and morality 103
3 Will-to-Power: Redeeming the Body from the Ascetic Ideal 110
3.1 Philosophy as the negation of the perspectival 111
3.2 The joy and sadness of Plato’s idealism 117
3.3 The eternal return of the ‘Something’ 121
3.4 Amor Fati: life after the eternal return 129
3.5 Redemption from salvation 133
3.6 Wille zur Macht: philosophy as redemption 140
v
vi Contents
4 Making Knowledge the Most Powerful Affect 156
4.1 Redeeming the past 161
4.1.1 Descartes and philosophy’s graphophobia 161
4.1.2 Spinoza: interpretation as redeeming expression 168
4.1.3 The metaphoricity of language 178
4.1.4 Ephexis and the ethics of reading 187
4.1.5 God is in the grammar 191
4.2 Provoking the future 198
4.2.1 Ethics and redemption 198
4.2.2 Good and bad, good and evil 208
4.2.3 Neither art, nor science, but la Gaya Scienza 212
4.2.4 Affectivity and philosophy after Spinoza and
Nietzsche 227
Bibliography 231
Index 245
Acknowledgements
Given that it is simply impossible to name all the influences that
have helped inspire this book, family, friends and happy chance
encounters can only be acknowledged insofar as the writing bears
witness to the singular joys that only they made possible – joys that
explain Spinoza’s cryptic remark: per realitatem et perfectionem
idem intelligo.
The following is thus restricted to the barely possible task of
acknowledging those who have had a direct influence on the content
of the book. First of all, if it were not for the inspiration of my first
two philosophy teachers, namely Gordon Bartlett and William
Large, this book would not have been possible. Gordon provided
the confidence and encouragement to follow this unusual passion,
while Will provided the provocation and constant challenge to push
this passion further. If philosophy does survive as a living, engaging
practice, then it will be down to such teachers.
I would like to thank colleagues from Aarhus University, especially
Morten Sørensen Thaning, Jon Utoft Nielsen, Patrick Cockburn and
Martin Ejsing Christensen, for reading drafts of various sections of
this book – and a special thanks to Martin for sacrificing countless
hours of his time to read and discuss some of the most provocative
works of philosophy with me, including an intense and extremely
joyful axiom by axiom, proposition by proposition reading of
Spinoza’s Ethics. A big thank you is also extended to Aarhus
University’s Filosofisk Studenterkollokvium (Philosophical Student
Colloquium) and the Philosophical Hermeneutics research group
for giving me the opportunity to present and discuss many of the
ideas that are presented in this book. I would also like to extend my
gratitude to my doctoral supervisor, Thomas Schwarz Wenzer, for
the invaluable lesson of what it is to show ephexis in interpretation,
and to Aarhus University itself for its support.
Last but not least, I would like to thank Hans Fink, Sverre Raffnsøe
and Jim Urpeth for their engaging and challenging critiques of an
earlier version of this text.
vii
Note on Referencing
A Harvard style reference system has been adopted for this book,
with the exception of references to Spinoza and Nietzsche, which use
standards that are common when referring to their works (abbrevia-
tions of text titles followed be section numbers). All translations into
English are the author’s unless the reference to a quote refers to a
published translation. References to other philosophers occasionally
include extra information specific to their works too; for example,
references to Plato are accompanied by the Stephanus page number.
For Spinoza, the following abbreviations are used when referring to
the Ethics (1994):
E Ethics
D (directly after part number) Definition
A Axiom
P Proposition
D Demonstration
C Corollary
S Scholium
Post Postulate
L Lemma
DefAff Definitions of Affects
GenDefAff General Definition of the Affects
Abbreviations for other Spinoza works are (including translated
titles and referencing information):
OP Opera (1925)
TIE Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione (followed by section
number and Bruder paragraph number) – Treatise on the
Emendation of the Intellect (1985: 3–45).
TP Tractatus Politicus (followed by section number) – Political
Treatise (2002: 676–754)
TTP Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (followed by section number and
Akkerman paragraph number) – Theologico-Political Treatise
(2007)
viii
Note on Referencing ix
All original citations are from Opera (1925), and all letters of
correspondence are referenced by page and letter number from
(2002: 755–960), alongside the volume and page number from Opera
and the letter number.
References to Nietzsche follow a standard form of an abbreviated
title followed by the relevant section numbers coupled with a refer-
ence to the volume and page number of the Kritische Studienausgabe
(1980). References to Nietzsche’s correspondence cite the division,
volume and page number of Briefwechsel: Kritische Gesamtausgabe
(1975–2004). These two collected works have been used as the source
for all the Nietzsche research in this book.
Abbreviations to all the works cited are as follows:
Abrv. Title English Title and Reference
Information
Der Antichrist
AC The Antichrist (2005)
ASZ Also sprach Zarathustra Thus Spoke Zarathustra (2006a)
DFW Der Fall Wagner The Case of Wagner (2005)
EH Ecce Homo Ecce Homo (2005)
FW Die fröhliche Wissenschaft The Gay Science (2001a)
GD Götzen-Dämmerung Twilight of the Idols (2005)
GM Zur Genealogie der Moral On the Genealogy of Morality
(2006b)
GT Die Geburt der Tragödie The Birth of Tragedy (2000)
JGB Jenseits von Gut und Böse Beyond Good and Evil (2001b)
KGB Briefwechsel: Kritische n/a (1975–2004)
Gesamtausgabe
KSA Kritische Studienausgabe n/a (1980)
M Morgenröthe Daybreak (1997b)
MM1 Menschliches, Human, All Too Human 1
Allzumenschliches 1 (1996)
MM2 Menschliches, Human, All Too Human 2
Allzumenschliches 2 (1996)
UB2 Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen Untimely Meditations 2: On
2: Vom Nutzen und the Uses and Disadvantages of
Nachtheil der Historie für das History for Life (1997a)
Leben