Spinoza and the problem of labor: State, multitude, and radical democracy

• Grant number: 21/05942-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: October 01, 2021
• End date: December 31, 2021
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - History of Philosophy
• Principal Investigator: Luís César Guimarães Oliva
• Grantee: Nicolas Guillermo Lema Habash
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 18/19880-4 - Power, conflict and freedom: Spinoza and the ways of Modern and Contemporary Political Philosophy about democracy, AP.TEM

Abstract

The aim of this project is to contribute to the still understudied concept of labor in Spinoza and to examine how it relates to his idea of democracy and the multitude. The hypothesis guiding this research states that Spinoza's work gives us theoretical and analytic resources to establish a more comprehensive idea of democracy than the one he himself aimed at describing in the Political Treatise. This more comprehensive regime would eventually require the abolition of what we now call "waged" or "salaried" labor. The project consists of 3 research axes. Its first axis, on the relationship between Spinoza's conceptions of labor, democracy, and the multitude, establishes the general problems to be investigated and the hypotheses to be explored. The second and third axes will extend the reflections on Spinoza's Political Philosophy into other historical periods and geographical contexts: contemporary Spinoza scholarship and radical democratic thought in Latin America. (AU)