Bento de Espinosa: política liberal e ética libertina

Abstract

The purpose of this dissertation is to present some reasoning which support the idea of the existence of two philosophical postures characterized by Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise and Spinoza’s Ethics. The posture of the Treatise is a result of a civic effort of secularization pertinent to seventeenth-century. The main purpose is to promote the institutional protection of some liberties, which we identify as a liberal policy. The posture of Ethics is related to an individual effort of rational elevation. It is the result of a reasoaning that sees the desire as the human essence itself, and because of this and other reasons such as the appreciation of the body, the monism, the reflections of values and virtues without make use of transcendences, the work is identified as libertine. The purpose that guides the tree chapters of this dissertation is to show how this two books contribute to a philosophical posture which is not separated in a project of immanent philosophy. The first chapter presents the philosopher and his work in complex historical and political context, showing the fragility and the power of that time. Specially in Holland, the seventeenth-century was a very important time to the construction of the modern political thinking. To understand this, we approached some factors which have influenced the free-thinkers of that time and the tension between them and the religious authorities. The second chapter approaches some concepts and reasonings tha are fundamentally extracted from the firsts books of Ethics. The development of some questions of the third chapter depends on the approach of some subjects with the support of the conceptual web elaborated by the philosopher. The critic about the finalist thinking was the way choosen to lead to the reasonings that will be presented. To understand this critics, we tried to develop the concept of power, which is fundamental to the elaboration of the immanence plan. This issue is quite relevant, because we find in Spinoza the idea that the way the reality is seen and organized interferes in our comprehension power of things, and with it, interferes in the way men proceed. The concept of power goes through discussions about ontology and politics in a very peculiar way on spinozist thought. Having this in mind, we will lead the discussion about the power to modal level issues, in other words, issues about conatus as essence of finite modal (human) and the passion web in wich it is submited. The goal of the 3rd chapter is to present what Spinoza shows his liberal proposal of political conduction. Besides we direct our attention to books IV and V of Ethics. First, we show the possibility of institutional liberty seen by the philosopher and, after this, we explain how the Ethics point to a kind of liberty that can’t be obtained by another way unless by the individual effort of searching knowledge and virtue, which we identify as the libertin ethics