About the genesis of the experience and the meaning of discourse in Spinoza's Political Treatise.

• Grant number: 12/24756-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Effective date (Start): June 01, 2013
• Effective date (End): September 17, 2016
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - Ethics
• Principal Investigator: Marilena de Souza Chauí
• Grantee: Andre Menezes Rocha
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 14/25535-7 - The logic of imperium in political treatise: passions and instituitions, BE.EP.PD

Abstract

We propose to extend the research that resulted in our doctoral thesis, about the meaning of political discourse in the Theological-Political Treatise, to analise the discourse of Spinoza's Political Treatise. From the analysis of the structure of Spinoza´s discourse, we can find evidences of how the discourse itself shows the relationships between its immanent meaning, that Spinoza named verum sensum in the Theological-Political Treatise, the political experience, the reason which is held by the common notions, history and the ontology. The analysis of immanent meaning of Spinoza´s discourse invites us to question established interpretations about some concepts like multitudo and imperium. In the latter case, for example, it was establisehd by many interpretations throughout the twentieth century, that it´s meaning in Latin could be perceived by the word State. And the main translations of Political Treatise into French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese established as a consensus the translation of the imperium by state. But Spinoza generally uses Civitas or Respublica to mean what we mean by the State, as indicated by the works of Marilena Chauí. For imperium therefore Spinoza seems to understand another political reality that can only be understood in the immanence of social power, as a logic of power that is closer than what Machiavelli understood, in his tuscan italian, by imperio. To the extent, therefore, that the Latin immanent sense of the Spinoza´a Political Treatise and comparative analysis with Machiavelli's discourses show us another way that eludes contemporary translations, we also propose a new translation of Spinoza's Political Treatise from the Latin Editio Princeps of the Opera Posthuma. Thus, we can offer the students and readers of Spinoza´s politics a new translation that differ of the established translations. We hope that our translation will raise questions and lead to new researches on the sense of Spinoza's political discourse.