Power, conflict and freedom: Spinoza and the ways of Modern and Contemporary Political Philosophy about democracy

• Grant number: 18/19880-4
• Support type: Research Projects - Thematic Grants
• Duration: August 01, 2019 - July 31, 2024
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - History of Philosophy
• Principal researcher: Marilena de Souza Chauí
• Grantee: Marilena de Souza Chauí
• Home Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Pesquisadores principais: Alberto Ribeiro Gonçalves de Barros ; Luís César Guimarães Oliva ; Maria das Graças de Souza
• Assoc. researchers: Andre Scoralick ; Antônio Mário David Siqueira Ferreira ; Bernardo Bianchi Barata Ribeiro ; Celi Hirata ; Douglas Ferreira Barros ; Fernando Dias Andrade ; Homero Silveira Santiago ; Luiz Damon Santos Moutinho ; Martha Gabrielly Coletto Costa ; Patricia Fontoura Aranovich ; Silvana de Souza Ramos ; Tessa Moura Lacerda
• Associated scholarship(s): 21/06235-6 - Ontology, metaphor and modern literature in Merleau-Ponty, BP.DR; 22/03084-0 - Freedom and servitude: coincidences and tensions in Spinoza's and Fichte's metaphysics, politics and moral., BP.PD; 21/13834-3 - The power over life and death: biopolitics and biopower through racism and Eugenics in Michel Foucault, BP.IC; + associated scholarships 21/05942-0 - Spinoza and the problem of labor: State, multitude, and radical democracy, BP.PD; 20/08275-2 - The language of history in The order of things, BP.IC; 20/12605-8 - Power and trade: association and conflict during the emergence of political economy, BP.PD; 20/13022-6 - Transindividuation and self-determination: bringing together the problem of race and the limits of the individual within contemporary thought, BP.PD; 19/27118-8 - The definition of error as privation in Spinoza's philosophy, BP.MS; 19/22352-2 - The issue of equality between men and women in Marie de Gournay, BP.DR; 19/07998-3 - Time and history in the New Science of Giambattista Vico, BP.DR; 19/17635-5 - The role of the proletarian experience and the construction of concept of society in Claude Lefort, BP.IC - associated scholarships

Abstract

Three moments are decisive in the constitution of Political Philosophy: the one that Moses Finley called "the invention of politics" to refer to the birth of Greek democracy and Roman republic; the one defined by Machiavelli through the original division of society between the desire of the Great to oppress and command and that of the People to be neither oppressed nor commanded; and that one which, with Spinoza, introduced the modern idea of democracy as an immanent power in the multitudo or collective power of creation and expression of rights. These three moments open the field of the history of the invention of the republic and democracy as an exercise of freedom and invention of rights, politics being effected as a passage from the logic of force to the logic of power, that is, from war to legitimacy of conflict under laws. Of these three founding moments, we will take as axis the modern conception of Spinozistic origin. By means of this it will be examined, on the one hand, the political significance of the emergence of modern ideas of individual and natural/civil right, and, on the other hand, the continuities and ruptures in political thought brought by Contemporary Philosophy - that is, the development of ideas of class struggle, of state, of power and of violence. We believe that it is possible to find there a tradition within which Spinoza's political thought gains a new light, a tradition designed by contemporary authors who, like Spinoza, in so far as we’re concerned to mark the legitimate instance of the conflict, searched support in Ancients and Machiavelli in order to understand the political participation of the citizens under the aegis of the struggle for guarantee and conquest of new rights, having as reference the defense of freedom of dissent. (AU)