Spinoza: Fiction and Manipulation in Civic Education (SpringerBriefs in Education) 9811671249, 9789811671241

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SPRINGER BRIEFS IN EDUC ATION KE Y THINKERS IN EDUCATION

Johan Dahlbeck

Spinoza Fiction and Manipulation in Civic Education 123

SpringerBriefs in Education

Key Thinkers in Education Series Editors Paul Gibbs, Middlesex University, London, UK Jayne Osgood, Middlesex University, London, UK Labby Ramrathan, School of Education, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa

This briefs series publishes compact (50 to 125 pages) refereed monographs under the editorial supervision of the Advisory Editor, Professor Paul Gibbs, Middlesex University, London, UK; Jayne Osgood, Middlesex University, London, UK; and Labby Ramrathan, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa. Each volume in the series provides a concise introduction to the life and work of a key thinker in education and allows readers to get acquainted with their major contributions to educational theory and/or practice in a fast and easy way. Both solicited and unsolicited manuscripts are considered for publication in the SpringerBriefs on Key Thinkers in Education series. Book proposals for this series may be submitted to the Editor: Nick Melchior E-mail: [email protected]

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Johan Dahlbeck

Spinoza Fiction and Manipulation in Civic Education

Johan Dahlbeck Malmö University Malmö, Skåne Län, Sweden

ISSN 2211-1921 ISSN 2211-193X (electronic) SpringerBriefs in Education ISSN 2211-937X ISSN 2211-9388 (electronic) SpringerBriefs on Key Thinkers in Education ISBN 978-981-16-7124-1 ISBN 978-981-16-7125-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-7125-8 © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Preface

This book is conceived as a relatively brief but detailed study of Spinoza’s original take on the means and ends of civic education. As such it is situated at a very specific junction, placed between the careful mapping of early modern political philosophy and the elusive quest for a comprehensive, yet practical, theory of civic education; one that is capable of responding to the dynamics and turmoil of the landscape of contemporary democracy. For some years now, I have studied the educational implications of Spinoza’s philosophy. When I started out, I was primarily interested in investigating the educational promise of Spinoza’s moral theory.1 This seemed to me to be the most practical way of making sense of the educational consequences of Spinoza’s exciting metaphysics. In the last few years, however, his political theory has attracted renewed interest in the international field of Spinoza studies. Recent contributions have highlighted the tight interdependency of Spinoza’s metaphysics, his ethics, and his political theory.2 In fact, Spinoza’s political theory may even be taken to represent the practical application of his metaphysics and his ethics, and as such it is clearly of great interest for philosophy of education. While Spinoza wrote very little on education specifically, this book argues that his political philosophy actually contains the outlines of a more or less comprehensive theory of civic education. This book serves to explain the importance of reading Spinoza’s political philosophy in close connection with his moral philosophy and his metaphysics. It is proposed that this is a practical way of envisioning educational reform as a political concern without losing sight of the overarching aims of ethical and intellectual flourishing. It is also suggested that Spinoza’s thoughts on civic education stand to introduce a fresh approach to the long-standing problem of manipulation and indoctrination in education. It is important to note that the focus of this book is on Spinoza’s ideas about civic education, not to be confused with his ideas about

1

The result of this work was subsequently published in the book Spinoza and Education (Dahlbeck, 2016) and the paper ‘A Spinozistic model of moral education’ (Dahlbeck, 2017). 2 See for example James, 2012; 2020; Lærke, 2021; Melamed & Rosenthal, 2010; Melamed & Sharp, 2018; Sangiacomo, 2019; Steinberg, 2018. v

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liberal arts education.3 The line of reasoning is that civic formation is a necessary precondition for a more egalitarian form of liberal arts education that is conceived as part and parcel of the freedom of philosophizing. Beyond hoping to attract further interest in a very exciting part of the history of political philosophy, I admit to having an additional motive for writing this book. This is so insofar as the book conveys an interest in what contemporary philosophy of education might learn from Spinoza’s curious account of manipulation as an unavoidable part of political life. From this standpoint, the book takes on a contemporary problem intimately related to public education and to the endeavor to foster rational democratic citizens. We live in a day and age when many concerned voices are being raised in warning of serious threats to democracy and to the democratic way of life. Opportunism, manipulation, and cynical populism are believed to threaten the stability of liberal democracies all around the world. While this is conceived in terms of a serious democratic problem it also raises questions about how unconventional politicians and demagogues can succeed in attracting large groups of voters by manipulating their emotions rather than by appealing to their ability to reason. Indoctrination is typically conceived in terms of an illegitimate political and pedagogical tool, based on the manipulation of emotions and resulting in a narrow (rather than a broadened) understanding of the world. The negative outcome of indoctrination is commonly described as closed-mindedness (Callan & Arena, 2009; Taylor, 2017), being contrasted with the idea of personal autonomy and the ability to reason independently. The starting point of such discussions tends to be that indoctrination results in a dangerous limitation of human reason and that this, in turn, risks creating people that are easily manipulated rather than critical and autonomous. There are virtually no mitigating features to this conception of indoctrination, and as a result, the phenomenon is only worth studying as something to be combated. However, a venture into the history of ideas reveals that indoctrination needs not to be so onesidedly conceived. When indoctrination is conceived more neutrally, as the teaching of doctrine, it becomes possible to distinguish between good and bad cases of manipulation in education. Benevolent forms of manipulation may involve the teaching of doctrines that serve to strengthen the conditions for rationality through the manipulation of emotions conceived as a temporary yet necessary evil. Bad cases of indoctrination are those working in the opposite direction. The problem to be addressed is no longer the manipulation of emotions as such, but the cases of manipulation where this is done in a way that is detrimental to a life guided by reason. A starting point for a more neutral conception of educational manipulation is that human beings require collective narratives to relate to in order to create a sense of shared meaning in their lives. This may concern narratives that function by uniting people—such as the myth of the social contract—but it may also concern narratives that have a more divisive effect—such as the myth of ‘blood and soil.’ Divisive 3

For a sample of different approaches to the theme of Spinoza and education see the various contributions to the Special Issue of Educational Philosophy and Theory titled “Thinking with Spinoza about education” (de Freitas, Sellar & Jensen, 2018). It should be noted, however, that none of the contributions to this Special Issue deal explicitly (or at length) with Spinoza’s conception of civic education or with the question of manipulation/indoctrination.

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narratives are useful for despots who wish to make use of fictions that can help them enslave rather than emancipate people. Narratives that unify people, in contrast, are useful for forging strong social bonds, providing people with the security and stability they need in order to flourish as individuals. It goes without saying that the line between unifying and divisive narratives is anything but clear-cut. This is a good starting point for approaching Spinoza’s understanding of the role of fictions and narratives in the fostering of citizens, and it rests on a particular understanding of the limits of human reason and of the influence of the imagination. It is also a good starting point for appreciating the scope and aim of this book: to introduce the reader to an exciting political theory that stands to give shape to a radical theory of civic education capable of unsettling some of our most taken for granted assumptions about educational influence and the formation of political communities. Below follows a brief description of the chapters of this book. In Chap. 1, I will introduce the reader to Spinoza’s political theory. I will argue that Spinoza’s relational conception of human autonomy (grounded in the Ethics) has important ramifications for how he conceives education as an integral part of civic formation and political governance. Focus is placed on explicating how political organization, for Spinoza, serves to compensate for natural limitations in human reason and cognition. Because humans are prone to be moved by passions, civic education becomes a way of countering dangerous passions so as to promote peace and security within the state. Peace and security, in turn, are conceived as preconditions for the ability of individual humans to flourish intellectually and ethically. Having looked into the basic metaphysical and psychological mechanisms behind Spinoza’s political theory, I will focus on the crucial distinction that Spinoza makes between prophets and philosophers, where philosophers are guided by reason whereas prophets are highly imaginative and creative in using narratives that can captivate the imagination of large groups of people. It is argued that teachers, specifically in the context of civic education, have more in common with prophets than with philosophers, and that their primary task is to present compelling narratives and fictions that speak to the imagination of the students while promoting peace and security and countering passions such as hatred and fear. The first chapter closes by introducing the three themes dealt with in Chap. 2 (the role of fictions in the education of the passions), Chap. 3 (the role of ingenium and the exemplary function of teachers and narratives), and Chap. 4 (the role of manipulation in civic education). Chapter 2 focuses on the role of fictions and popular narratives in civic education. It begins with an investigation of Spinoza’s writings on the use of narrative in his political treatises. Drawing on Spinoza’s thoughts on the use of Scripture as a tool for political governance, it argues that popular narratives are well placed to act as bridges between the imagination and reason, making the art of selecting fictions that are conducive to a life guided by reason into a pivotal task for the teacher. I will then look into how fictions, unlike illusions, can be willfully entertained and therefore used to further a more rational understanding of the world without themselves being entirely truthful. This makes fictions into potentially effective tools for curbing dangerous passions, as they can be made to appeal to the imagination while still serving the

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long-term educational aim of striving to understand the world better so as to live better. In Chap. 3, I will look closer at Spinoza’s use of the idea of ingenium, describing the affective constitution of individuals and groups of people. It is argued that diagnosing and understanding the student’s ingenium is an important part of being a teacher. Again, this is something that connects the role of the teacher to the role of the prophet in Spinoza’s political theory. Both figures are conceived as proficient at selecting and communicating popular narratives that fit with the affective constitution and experience of the people they are addressing. The fictions and narratives used thereby serve an exemplary function, insofar as they can indicate universal moral truths without expressing them in a philosophical language. This aspect may be termed didactical exemplarity, while the role of the teacher is to be that of an ethical or pedagogical exemplar, serving to illustrate what an ethical life might look like in a way that speaks to the imagination and experience of the students. An important aspect of this is that for a teacher to become an effective exemplar, he or she needs to be affectively attuned to the students so as not to come across as too distant or irrelevant from their particular point of view. In Chap. 4, I will take on the important question of manipulation in civic education from the point of view of Spinoza’s political theory. It looks closer at the parts of the Theological-Political Treatise where Spinoza appears to condone manipulation and indoctrination as a way of establishing peace and security in the state. Based on a close reading of these texts, I argue that manipulation is an unavoidable part of civic education and that what is important is not whether education contains elements of manipulation, but determining to what extent manipulation serves to promote the peace and security of the state. This is so as Spinoza believes that the peace and security of the state is a precondition for the ethical and intellectual flourishing of the individual. This chapter makes a distinction between a contemporary understanding of indoctrination as a kind of teaching that amounts to a form of moral wrongdoing and Spinoza’s understanding as to the more neutrally conceived teaching of doctrines. This, it argues, can help open up for a new way of tackling the stand-still in the contemporary indoctrination-debate by bracketing the question of how to combat indoctrination writ large and instead focusing on how to ensure that manipulation in education is made to be conducive to the ethical well-being of students as an aim of civic education. In the final chapter of this book, I will summarize and recapitulate the key steps taken in the previous chapters, and I will raise some critical questions with regard to the relevance of Spinoza’s political theory for contemporary studies in the philosophy of education. I argue that while it is important to pay close attention to the historical context of Spinoza’s work, there are still valuable lessons to be learned here from a contemporary point of view. Much like Spinoza draws on earlier historical examples to prove more contemporary points, this chapter argues that Spinoza’s diagnosis of human nature as less-than-fully rational provides a very good starting point for a comprehensive theory of civic education. It does so as it veers away from more ‘idealistic’ conceptions of civic education grounded in an unrealistic conception of human nature as fully rational in an epistemically self-sufficient sense, while still

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retaining the ethical flourishing of the individual as its ultimate aim. The last chapter closes by suggesting that, in times of political unrest, it is especially important to look into education, as education is one of the key places in society where the narratives that capture the imagination of young people are being shaped and disseminated. Malmö, Sweden

Johan Dahlbeck

References Callan, E., & Arena, D. (2009). Indoctrination. In H. Siegel (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of philosophy of education. Oxford University Press. Dahlbeck, J. (2016). Spinoza and education: Freedom, understanding and empowerment. Routledge. Dahlbeck, J. (2017). A Spinozistic model of moral education. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 36(5), 533–550. de Freitas, E., Sellar, S. & Jensen, L. B. (2018). Thinking with Spinoza about education. Special Issue of Educational Philosophy and Theory, 50(9), 805–891. James, S. (2012). Spinoza on philosophy, religion, and politics: The Theologico-Political Treatise. Oxford University Press. James, S. (2020). Spinoza on learning to live together. Oxford University Press. Lærke, M. (2021). Spinoza and the freedom of philosophizing. Oxford University Press. Melamed, Y. Y., & Rosenthal, M. A. (2010). Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise: A critical guide. Cambridge University Press. Melamed, Y. Y., & Sharp, H. (2010). Spinoza’s Political Treatise: A Critical Guide. Cambridge University Press. Sangiacomo, A. (2019). Spinoza on reason, passions, and the supreme good. Oxford University Press. Steinberg, J. (2018). Spinoza’s political psychology: The taming of fortune and fear. Cambridge University Press. Taylor, R. M. (2017). Indoctrination and social context: a system-based approach to identifying the threat of indoctrination and the responsibilities of educators. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 51(1), 38–58.

Acknowledgments

I want to acknowledge the research group Philosophical Studies in Education (PSE) at Malmö University, where I have benefited from critical discussions on indoctrination, exemplarism, the use of fiction in education, and other concepts and ideas central to this book. I would also like to acknowledge the first generation of students of the international MA program in Educational Theory at Malmö University for always being eager to engage in valuable discussions on the history of educational theory and on the contentious relation between education and politics. For generously reading and commenting on draft versions of the manuscript or on papers turned into chapters for this book, I owe a debt of gratitude to Mogens Lærke, Justin Steinberg, Avi Mintz, Andreas Hellerstedt, Moa De Lucia Dahlbeck, Christian Norefalk, Mattias Nilsson Sjöberg, Peter Lilja, Morten Korsgaard, Hanna Sjögren, and the two anonymous reviewers commissioned by Springer. I wish to thank the editorial team of the SpringerBriefs on Key Thinkers in Education series for taking a chance on this book and on me. But most of all I want to thank Maria, Melvin, and Bill for putting up with my lesser evils in the hope of a greater common good. Parts of Chap. 2 are reprinted by permission of John Wiley and Sons from Dahlbeck, J. ‘Education, illusions and valuable fictions,’ Journal of Philosophy of Education, 2020, 54(1): 214–234 (DOI: 10.1111/1467-9752.12369). Parts of Chap. 3 are reprinted by permission of Springer Nature from Dahlbeck, J. ‘Spinoza on ingenium and exemplarity: some consequences for educational theory,’ Studies in Philosophy and Education, 2021, 40(1): 1–21 (DOI: 10.1007/s11217-020-09730z). Parts of Chap. 4 are reprinted by permission of SAGE publishing from Dahlbeck, J. ‘Spinoza on the teaching of doctrines: towards a positive account of indoctrination,’ Theory and Research in Education, 2021, 19(1): 78–99 (DOI: 10.1177/1477878521996235).

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About This Book

Spinoza: Fiction and Manipulation in Civic Education engages with Spinoza’s political philosophy, seeking to tease out a comprehensive theory of civic education offering valuable insights into contemporary educational thought. Synthesizing recent trends in Spinoza scholarship with themes in contemporary theory of education, the book functions at once as an accessible introduction to Spinoza’s political theory and as a provocative call for a re-evaluation of the status of indoctrination in civic education. Looking closer at the role of fiction in education, at the importance of diagnosing and matching the affective makeup of students and teachers, and at the ambivalent role of manipulation, Dahlbeck raises important questions about how to differentiate empowerment and disempowerment in educational relations. The book concludes with a discussion taking stock of Spinoza’s lesson for a contemporary theory of civic education. Keywords Spinoza · Civic education · Fiction · Manipulation · Indoctrination

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Editions Used and List of Abbreviations

Primary Literature: Edwin Curley, ed. and trans. The Collected Works of Spinoza. Vol. 1. (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1985). Edwin Curley, ed. and trans. The Collected Works of Spinoza. Vol. 2. (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2016). Carl Gebhardt, ed. Spinoza Opera, 4 vols. (Heidelberg, Carl Winter, 1925). The following abbreviations are used for referring to primary literature: E Ep. KV TIE TP TTP

Spinoza’s Ethics (Ethica) Spinoza’s correspondence (Epistolae) Spinoza’s Short Treatise on God, Man, and His Well-Being (Korte Verhandeling van God, de Mensch en deszelfs Welstand) Spinoza’s Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (Tractatus de intellectus emendatione) Spinoza’s Political Treatise (Tractatus Politicus) Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise (Tractatus Theologico-Politicus)

The KV is cited by part, chapter number, and sometimes by section number. The TP and TTP are cited by chapter number and sometimes by section number. The TIE is cited by section number. Spinoza’s correspondence is cited by letter number from Gebhardt’s Spinoza Opera. References to Spinoza’s Ethics first cite the Part, and then use the following abbreviations: a app c d l D

axiom appendix corollary demonstration lemma definition xv

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DOE exp p post pref s

Editions Used and List of Abbreviations

Definition of the Emotions (end of Part 3) explanation proposition postulate preface scholium

Accordingly, E2p13c refers to Ethics, Part 2, proposition 13, corollary. Translations of the Ethics and the TIE are taken from Curley’s The Collected Works of Spinoza, vol. 1. Translations of the TP and the TTP are taken from Curley’s The Collected Works of Spinoza, vol. 2. References to the non-geometrically ordered passages from the Ethics, as well as references to the TP and the TTP are sometimes supplemented by references to Gebhardt’s edition Spinoza Opera.

Contents

1 Spinoza’s Political Theory and Its Consequences for Civic Education: On Prophets, Philosophers, and Educators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1 Passions and Reason in Spinoza’s Philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 The Imitation of Affects and Relational Autonomy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3 The Importance of Understanding People . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4 Different Ways of Understanding People and Different Ways of Influencing People: Prophets Versus Philosophers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.5 Upshots for Civic Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Illusions and Fictions: Educating the Imagination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 The Educational Promise of Spinoza’s Use of Fictions . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 On False Beliefs and Illusions in Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 The Use of Fictions in Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4 Necessary Illusions or Valuable Fictions? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.5 Reconciling the Two Seemingly Contradictory Aims of Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.6 Identifying Valuable Fictions and Accommodating Them to Ordinary People: Engaging the Prophetic Teacher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 The Pedagogical Importance of Ingenium: Exemplarism and Popular Narratives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Reconnecting with a Lost Pedagogical Tradition: Diagnosing and Accounting for the Student’s Ingenium and Understanding the Role of the Teacher Qua Exemplar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 Spinoza on the Ingenia of Individuals and Collectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 Exemplarity in Spinoza: Ethics, Politics, and Education . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4 The Paradox of Civic Education: Gaining Autonomy by Losing Oneself in a Crowd? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1 3 8 11 15 20 21 23 25 30 32 36 37 39 42 43

45 49 54 58 59

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4 Teaching Doctrines to People: Manipulation and Civic Education . . . . 4.1 Indoctrination in Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 Idealism and Realism in Education and Politics: Spinoza’s Warning in the Political Treatise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3 Accommodation, Ingenium, and the Power of Collective Narratives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4 Spinoza on the Teaching of Doctrines in the Theological-Political Treatise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5 Civic Education and Emotional Manipulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

61 62

72 75 76

5 Spinoza’s Lesson to the Contemporary Political Imagination . . . . . . . . 5.1 Retracing the Steps Taken . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2 Critical Questions to Spinoza . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3 Spinoza’s Lesson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

79 79 82 86 90

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Chapter 1

Spinoza’s Political Theory and Its Consequences for Civic Education: On Prophets, Philosophers, and Educators

‘Friend,’ I cried, ‘we are all human, and the bit of sense any one of us might have is of little or no use when the passions rage and by the constraints of being human we are put under duress…’—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther For there is no such thing as perpetual tranquility of mind, while we live here; because life itself is in motion, and can never be without desire, nor without fear, no more than without sense.—Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, Part 1, VI.58

Benedict de Spinoza (1632–1677) was no stranger to political upheaval and civil unrest. One of the more colorful accounts of Spinoza’s personal life concerns the night when he set out to protest against the brutal lynching of the De Witt brothers in The Hague in 1672. Equipped with a placard inscribed with the text ultimi barbarorum, Spinoza was intent on publicly displaying his disgust with the abhorrent behavior of the angry mob but was prevented by his host from leaving the house in such an agitated state of mind (Nadler, 1999, p. 306). This is a rare depiction of Spinoza as a man overtaken by raging passions.1 After all, Spinoza was once famously characterized by Bertrand Russell as ‘the noblest and most lovable of the great philosophers’ (2004, p. 521). It serves to illustrate how all of us, even the most stoic of rationalist philosophers, will inevitably fall victim to the passions at one time or another. This brief example serves as a fitting way of opening an investigation into the educational ramifications of Spinoza’s political thought. It brings together two central aspects of Spinoza’s mature philosophical work: the striving for a more rational society where people can flourish intellectually as a collective, and, what amounts to its negative counterpart, the attentiveness to the ever-present threat of human irrationality, easily overlooked or downplayed in treatises on political philosophy. It is the combination of these two aspects that give rise to Spinoza’s particular brand of political theory, balancing between promoting the ideal of the freedom of philosophizing and closely adhering to a realistic conception of the natural limitations of human reason. 1

Steven Nadler provides more context to this incident in his comprehensive biography Spinoza: A Life (1999, Chap. 11). © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 J. Dahlbeck, Spinoza, SpringerBriefs on Key Thinkers in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-7125-8_1

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1 Spinoza’s Political Theory and Its Consequences …

Rosenthal (2018) argues that Spinoza is a modern republican political philosopher, offering a theory that is uniquely his own. While his political ideas to some extent overlap with Hobbesian social contract theory, as well as retain some aspects of Aristotelian natural law theory, they also differ in important ways from both of these traditions. It is true that Spinoza offers an account of natural law based on a concept of virtue, but he equates virtue with power2 (E4d8), and he also does not allow for the kind of teleology in nature where humans are assumed to inhabit a privileged metaphysical position (c.f. Melamed, 2011). Accordingly, Spinoza does not accept the notion of a ‘divinely ordained political order based on natural law that could be discovered and elaborated by reason’ (Rosenthal, 2018, p. 412). In the state of nature everyone has the right to do whatever is within their power (TTP 16[5]), which leads to a dangerous and unstable world. The social contract is a necessary means for stabilizing the human social world, making it rational for each individual to transfer their power to the sovereign so as to gain a measure of protection against one another (TTP 16[13]). Spinoza’s understanding of the state is therefore that of a human construct founded on a mutual agreement between individuals who strive for self-preservation. This means that the purpose of the state and the strivings of the individual are joined at the root: To the extent that individuals act on the basis of reason and can check their irrational passions, and to the extent that the institutions of the state are developed in accordance with a scientific understanding of human nature, the state will be more stable and the individual more free. (Rosenthal, 2018, p. 411)

The idea behind civic institutions, then, is to ensure that all individuals can act in accordance with reason, regardless of whether they are inclined to do so or not, or of whether they understand the reasons for doing so or not. The reason behind this is always grounded in the individual’s striving for self-preservation. Spinoza’s notion of the social contract differs from Hobbes in that Spinoza places no normative significance in the contract itself beyond its utility for individuals. It is only binding to the extent that it helps the individual persevere. As such, ‘a contract can have no force except by reason of its utility. If the utility is taken away, the contract is taken away with it, and remains null and void’ (TTP 16[20], G III/192/25–27). Because the individual is often not the best judge of what is truly beneficial for persevering, however, political and civic institutions are put in place to help people navigate in these matters on the basis of reason and to help keep debilitating passions like hatred and envy in check. In sum, Spinoza offers a form of republicanism informed both by a natural law theory that is averse to all forms of human exceptionalism and a social contract theory that flows directly from the natural self-interest of the individual. Its purpose is to maximize the power of the state, something that requires the participation of its citizens. Accordingly, as Rosenthal notes, ‘Spinoza takes Hobbes’s concern with the stability of a state and fuses it with the republican idea of the virtue of 2

In Chapter 16 of the TTP, where Spinoza outlines his conception of the social contract, he similarly points out that ‘[each person’s] natural right is determined only by his power’ (TTP 16[24], G III/193/9–10).

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public engagement. A state is stable to the extent that it can foster broad and deep participation among its citizens’ (2018, p. 428). Because its citizens are always going to be less-than-fully rational, ‘if a state is to be successful, then its institutions ought to address the imaginative and emotional factors that motivate participation’ (ibid.). One of the crucial questions for this theory to address, then, is how political and civic institutions can strike a good balance between promoting reason and curbing dangerous passions.3 In order to properly set the stage for the upshots of Spinoza’s political theory for civic education it seems called for to begin by looking beyond Spinoza’s political treatises, to his work on metaphysics, epistemology, psychology, and ethics. First, I would like to turn to the two opposing yet fundamentally interconnected poles— passions and reason—that Spinoza’s political theory revolves around in important ways. This entails looking closer at Spinoza’s theory of the affects.4 Having done so, I will look into the connection between Spinoza’s psychology—more specifically his doctrine of the imitation of affects—and his conception of autonomy as fundamentally relational. This connection obviously has consequences for his political theory insofar as it sets up a tight and dynamic relationship between the individual and the collective. Spinoza’s psychology also carries over into his understanding of governance to the extent that for Spinoza, good governance hinges on the ability to correctly read and understand people’s affective constitution. This brings us to the radically different points of view of the philosopher and the prophet, where one is marked by the ability to follow the guidance of reason and the other by the ability to successfully appeal to people’s imagination. This chapter closes with a brief reflection on the role of the educator in relation to these two different points of view and a summary of the central upshots for civic education.

1.1 Passions and Reason in Spinoza’s Philosophy One of the most exciting things about Spinoza’s philosophy is his unwillingness to allow for loose ends in his system of thought (Della Rocca, 2008, Chap. 1). A consequence of this is that he cannot allow himself to introduce unexplained exceptions to rules that are taken to be pervasive in nature. In this sense, Spinoza’s naturalism is thoroughgoing and unapologetic. It does not allow for different rules for different things but must suppose that if one thing differs fundamentally from another, then there is a sufficient reason for this, and this reason can be rationally explained. As much as there would seem to be an unbridgeable gulf between reason 3

In a sense, Spinoza’s entire political theory may be said to hinge on the task of inquiring ‘how far this freedom [of judging and thinking] can and must be granted to each person consistently with the peace of the republic and the right of the supreme power’ (TTP 20[10], G III/240/28–30). 4 A compelling reason for beginning with the theory of the affects, as Sandra Leonie Field points out in a recent study, is that Spinoza’s political theory is concerned with addressing the central question of ‘how the internal organization of the regime channels, develops, or thwarts the actual passions and desires of its subjects’ (2020, p. 10).

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and passions, then, this gulf is no less explainable than other natural things. Spinoza establishes this important premise in the Preface to Part 3 of the Ethics: [N]othing happens in nature which can be attributed to any defect in it, for nature is always the same, and its virtue and power of acting are everywhere one and the same, i.e., the laws and rules of nature, according to which all things happen, and change from one form to another, are always and everywhere the same. So the way of understanding the nature of anything, of whatever kind, must also be the same, viz. through the universal laws and rules of nature. (E3pref, G II/138/12–18)

Spinoza goes on to explain how this means that human affects and emotions are just as explainable as other things in nature, but that if we want to understand them adequately we should avoid assuming that they are governed by laws separate from the ones governing all other things.5 This becomes a way of setting up a methodological scheme for understanding and predicting human behavior that maps onto Spinoza’s overarching substance monism, where the fact that all things adhere to the same rules can be attributed to the fact that all things are modifications of—and follow from—the same infinite substance: God or Nature (E1p23). This, then, not only involves singular things like people, houses, and pets but also things like affects and ideas: The Affects, therefore, of hate, anger, envy, etc., considered in themselves, follow from the same necessity and force of nature as the other singular things. And therefore they acknowledge certain causes, through which they are understood, and have certain properties, as worthy of our knowledge as the properties of any other thing, by the mere contemplation of which we are pleased. (E3pref, G II/138/19–23)

This allows Spinoza to begin to plot out the specificity of the affects in relation to one another and in relation to the universal regularities that govern them. One important consequence of this, as we will see shortly, is that debilitating (sad) passions like hatred and envy are more closely related to empowering (joyful) passions like love and compassion than we might think. Before looking into how passive and active affects are related, however, we first need to clarify what affects are. For Spinoza, affects are transitions in power, either resulting in an increase or a decrease in someone’s power of acting.6 To be a human being is to be a finite striving thing, propelled by what Spinoza calls the conatus: the striving to persevere in existence (E3p7). This striving to persevere is constantly fluctuating, now increasing in power and now diminishing, depending on the forces we encounter. It always increases when we are active—when we are expressing active 5

One of Spinoza’s main complaints against philosophical treatments of human nature and the human condition is that these tend to be infused with various unfounded prejudices, so that they end up confusing effects for causes and ‘conceive man in nature as a dominion within a dominion’ (E3pref). To rectify this mistake, Spinoza sets out to ground his description of human nature and human affects in a naturalistic framework that encompasses all of nature and that supposes that all things adhere to the same system of rules and regularities. 6 Spinoza writes: ‘By affect I understand affections of the Body by which the Body’s power of acting is increased or diminished, aided or restrained, and at the same time, the ideas of these affections’ (E3D3).

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affects—and it fluctuates when we are passively affected. Depending on if we are affected by passions of sadness or passions of joy, we will either increase or decrease in power.7 Because humans are necessarily passionate to some degree—insofar as we are always part of greater causal networks in nature—much of our ethical striving involves finding out which passions are empowering and which are debilitating, so as to seek out the former and avoid the latter. This setup introduces the overarching ethical imperative to strive to further whatever helps us increase in power (i.e. what brings us joy) and to combat or avoid whatever hinders us in this effort (i.e. what brings us sadness) (E3p28). Accordingly, Spinoza explains in perfectionist terms that ‘[j]oy is a man’s passage from a lesser to a greater perfection’ (E3DOE 2) and ‘[s]adness is a man’s passage from a greater to a lesser perfection’ (E3DOE 3). Steven Nadler summarizes this ethical setup succinctly: ‘Our pursuits and avoidances of things, our choices of action and our judgments about what is good and bad, are all moved by joy and sadness, love and hate, and pleasure and pain, by the modifications in our striving to persevere in existence’ (2014, p. 44). This may seem straightforward enough, but because humans are always determined to act by a combination of passive and active affects (E4p4; E4p4c), it is not as simple as it may seem. To simply desire to become more active is not enough. The challenge, therefore, is to understand how the passionate aspects of human nature can be made to strengthen the potential to become increasingly active, rather than stifling it. Part of this involves identifying and seeking out passionate encounters that are joyful rather than saddening. To figure out how to address this challenge practically is, in effect, one of the great educational problems. To address this challenge productively, we first need to understand how affects function and how passions and reason are related. As indicated above, to be active is to increase in one’s power of acting. We are active when we understand the causes of the changes that we undergo adequately in the sense that we then have adequate ideas of ourselves. When we have adequate ideas, we are in fact the causes of those ideas. To be active, then, is to cause our own ideas.8 This, for Spinoza, is to live according to the guidance of reason. Mostly, however, we are passive insofar as we are acted on by other things and insofar as we are not the causes of our ideas.9 The upshot of being a finite thing in nature is that our causal power is very limited and that we are constantly acted on by very many external things. Spinoza writes: ‘We are acted on, insofar as we are a part of Nature, which cannot be conceived through itself, without the others’ (E4p2). Being a part of nature means that ‘[t]he force by which a man perseveres in existing is limited, and infinitely surpassed by the power of external causes’ (E4p3), and this, in turn, entails that ‘[i]t is impossible that a man should not 7

LeBuffe explains that ‘all passions are changes the mind, or part of the mind, undergoes by which it either increases in power, in which case the passion is a form of joy, or decreases in power, in which case the passion is a form of sadness’ (2009, p. 202). 8 Spinoza’s definition of an adequate cause reads as follows: ‘I call that cause adequate whose effect can be clearly and distinctly perceived through it. But I call it partial, or inadequate, if its effect cannot be understood through it alone’ (E3D1). 9 Accordingly, Spinoza writes that ‘if we can be the adequate cause of any of these affections, I understand by the Affect an action; otherwise, a passion’ (E3D3).

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be a part of Nature, and that he should be able to undergo no changes except those which can be understood through his nature alone, and of which he is the adequate cause’ (E4p4). These, then, are the necessary constraints of being human. While we strive to become increasingly self-determined, in reality, ‘it is clear that we are driven about in many ways by external causes, and that, like waves on the sea, driven by contrary winds, we toss about, not knowing our outcome or fate’ (E3p59s). When we lack the power to act, we are affected by sadness, and sadness is a passive state that runs counter to our striving to persevere in existence. This is a natural effect of the fact that there are many other things striving to increase in power at the same time, and so we constantly find ourselves being overpowered by things that are more powerful than us: ‘Whatever one is given, there is another more powerful by which the first can be destroyed’ (E4a1). The more we can understand things adequately, however, the more power of acting we gain, and the more joy we experience as we pass from a state of relative passivity to a state of relative activity. The only way to ensure that individual humans can withstand the influence of dangerous passions, then, is by making them become more powerful. Being naturally limited as finite things, people have to join with one another in social constellations so as to stand a better chance of defeating the passions of sadness that threaten to render them inactive. Because people who are governed by sad passions are contrary to one another, the aim of social cohesion is to make people strive to live according to the guidance of reason. People who are striving in concert with one another are more powerful than people who strive in isolation. Spinoza grounds this in his account of the affects, where affects of joy are taken to be naturally designed to function as a powerful social glue: ‘Things that are said to agree in nature are understood to agree in power (by IIIP7), but not in lack of power, or negation, and consequently (see IIIP3S) not in passion either’ (E4p32d). Living according to the guidance of reason means striving for things that are not divisive—such as an increased understanding— as this will help hold a group together rather than drive the individuals of the group apart. Accordingly, ‘Insofar as men live according to the guidance of reason, they are most useful to man (by P35C1); hence (by P19), according to the guidance of reason, we necessarily strive to bring it about that men live according to reason.’ The social upshot of this is that ‘the good which everyone who seeks virtue wants for himself, he also desires for other men’ (E4p37d). People who struggle over things that are in limited supply (such as money or fame) are generally driven to compete with one another and to regard one another with suspicion and contempt. This makes them strive to increase in power at the expense of others rather than through the aid of others, and it makes them very vulnerable to the threat of outside forces. By joining with others who strive for the same thing—providing this thing is something that can be shared by all in equal measure—individuals can increase in power collectively. For Spinoza, it is ethical to strive to increase one’s power of acting. We increase in our power of acting by identifying things that are useful for us insofar as they bring us joy. To understand things adequately is guaranteed to bring us joy as it is something that can be shared by all in equal measure. And as Spinoza remarks: ‘There is no singular thing in Nature that is more useful to man than a man who lives according to the guidance of

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reason’ (E4p35c1). Conversely, as Michael LeBuffe points out: ‘What presents harm to individuals also produces social unrest’ (2018, p. 139). The educational problem alluded to above, therefore, concerns how someone would go about helping people strive for the same thing in unison when they are, in fact, dominated by passions that tend to drive them apart rather than unify them. Spinoza gives us a clue as to how this problem might be approached in a passage I quote at length: In order, therefore, that men may be able to live harmoniously and be of assistance to one another, it is necessary for them to give up their natural right and to make one another confident that they will do nothing which could harm others. How it can happen that men who are necessarily subjects to affects (by P4C), inconstant and changeable (by P33) should be able to make one another confident and have trust in one another is clear from P7 and IIIP39. No affect can be restrained except by an affect stronger than and contrary to the affect to be restrained, and everyone refrains from doing harm out of timidity regarding a greater harm. (E4p37s2)

There are a couple of key points in this passage that we should emphasize and unpack before we move on. First, because people, in general, are highly passionate, they need to adhere to social norms preventing them from striving to persevere in existence at the expense of other people. This is so not because striving to persevere in existence is in any way unethical (indeed it is the very core of Spinoza’s ethical theory insofar as power and virtue amount to the same thing [E4D8]), but because when we strive as isolated individuals, we are much more vulnerable to outside forces (and passions of sadness) than when we strive collectively. In order to ensure the success of our striving to persevere in existence, then, we ought to join with others striving for the same thing. Second, because ‘[a]n affect cannot be restrained or taken away except by an affect opposite to, and stronger than, the affect to be restrained’ (E4p7), this comes down to an affective struggle determined by the degree of power of the competing affects. The struggle between reason and passion is a play of forces where more powerful affects always defeat weaker ones. The power of an affect is not determined by the degree of truth of an idea, so there is no natural advantage for reason over passions.10 In order to support a life guided by reason, then, educational endeavors must account for the passionate nature of most people and find ways of making their imagination support reason as it were.11 This can help bridge the gap 10

In E4p14, Spinoza explains that ‘[n]o affect can be restrained by the true knowledge of good and evil insofar as it is true, but only insofar as it is considered as an affect’. 11 As an interesting sidenote, Spinoza’s insights into the dynamic role of passions in politics and education foreshadow contemporary political thinkers such as Chantal Mouffe, who have been arguing for the importance of accounting for the passionate nature of humans in studies of democratic politics. In the introduction to On the Political, Mouffe writes: The part played by ‘passions’ in politics reveals that, in order to come to terms with ‘the political’, it is not enough for liberal theory to acknowledge the existence of a plurality of values and to extol toleration. Democratic politics cannot be limited to establishing compromises among interests or values or to deliberation about the common good; it needs to have a real purchase on peoples’ desires and fantasies. (Mouffe, 2005, p. 6, emphasis added) According to Mouffe, the main reason why it is important to account for the passions in political theory is not because the liberal democratic order can somehow overcome the passions of the crowd

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between passions and reason insofar as powerful affects can be enlisted through imaginative narratives aiming to help us get on the path to a life guided by reason before we are in a position to fully appreciate the benefits of this. As LeBuffe has noted, adhering to a common narrative can help us ‘to get started on the path to knowledge without requiring impossibly that we already have benefits of having reached that point’ (2018, p. 142). This means that we need to enlist the help of joyful passions in combating passions of sadness. In order to understand how this can be done practically, we need to look closer at Spinoza’s doctrine of the imitation of affects.

1.2 The Imitation of Affects and Relational Autonomy An important aspect of Spinoza’s psychology hinges on a principle called the association of ideas. The association of ideas entails that ‘[i]f the human Body has once been affected by two or more bodies at the same time, then when the Mind subsequently imagines one of them, it will immediately recollect the others also’ (E2p18). Galen Barry illustrates how this might work using a helpful metaphor: ‘the mind represents external objects in virtue of the dents that they leave on the human body. When two objects leave simultaneous dents, they are linked together into the future such that a representation of one of the bodies activates the representation of the other’ (2016, p. 633).12 Michael Della Rocca discusses this psychological mechanism in terms of affect transition. He explains how affect transition ‘occurs when one affect A gives rise to affect B, but neither affect constitutes the other’ (1996, p. 243). Affect transition makes us experience affects that are not causally connected to the object we encounter. Because the object in question reminds us of a past experience (involving different objects), however, it brings about an affect that it is not the efficient cause of. Our previous experiences, our memories, and our imaginative associations thereby make us undergo affective transitions in different ways.13 One through its faith in public reason and deliberation, but (quite on the contrary) because ‘[i]t is part and parcel of the psychological make-up of human beings’ (p. 24). 12 As a helpful illustration, Hermann Hesse describes this psychological phenomenon vividly in his novel The Glass Bead Game. The main protagonist Joseph Knecht explains this mechanism with reference to a childhood memory where the smell of budding elderberry bushes mixed with the tones of Schubert to create a sensation that signaled to him the advent of spring. Knecht recalls, And now, on the day of that walk to the elderberry bushes or the day after, “Die linden Lüfte sind erwacht,” and the first chords of the piano accompaniment assailed me like something already familiar. Those chords had exactly the same fragrance as the sap of the young elder, just as bittersweet, just as strong and compressed, just as full of the forthcoming spring. From that time on the association of earliest spring, fragrance of elder, Schubert chords has been fixed and absolutely valid, for me. As soon as the first chord is struck I immediately smell the tartness of the sap, and both together mean to me: spring is on the way. (Hesse, 2000, p. 61) 13 In a similar vain, Mary Wollstonecraft highlights the tenacity and stubbornness of the association of ideas, noting the great challenge involved with attempting (through education) to employ reason to break the habitual bond between ideas that have become associated early in a person’s life.

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person may feel sad when the radio plays a particular tune, because this tune is associated with the passing of a dear friend. Another person may feel elated and happy when hearing the same tune played, as this person associates it with falling in love. ‘From the mere fact that we imagine a thing to have some likeness to an object that usually affects the Mind with Joy or Sadness, we love it or hate it, even though that in which the thing is like the object is not the efficient cause of these affects’ (E3p16). This way, Spinoza connects our imagination and our memories of past experiences to the way we respond differently to objects in the world. In E2p18s, he gives an example: For example, a soldier, having seen traces of a horse in the sand, will immediately pass from the thought of a horse to the thought of a horseman, and from that to the thought of war, etc. But a Farmer will pass from the thought of a horse to the thought of a plow, and then to that of a field, etc. And so each one, according as he has been accustomed to join and connect the images of things in this or that way, will pass from one thought to another.

The association of ideas opens up for a related psychological mechanism that is significant for addressing the educational problem of how to bridge the gap between passions and reason: the imitation of affects. The imitation of affects dictates that ‘[i]f we imagine a thing like us, toward which we have had no affect, to be affected with some affect, we are thereby affected with a like affect’ (E3p27). This means that our affective transitions are greatly influenced by others that we imagine to be like us. While affective imitation can be empowering, it can also be debilitating.14 It can be debilitating insofar as it motivates us to compete with others over things that we believe will bring us joy and increase our power of acting. Accordingly, ‘[i]f we imagine that someone enjoys some thing that only one can possess, we shall strive to bring it about that he does not possess it’ (E3p32). This is so because ‘we imagine his enjoyment of this thing as an obstacle to our Joy’ (E3p32d). If, on the other hand, we can bring it about that we strive for things that are not limited in this sense, we can strive for the same thing without risking disempowerment. The challenge, therefore, is to guide the passions and the imagination in a direction where we increasingly come to love and hate the same things, ensuring that the things we hate are really the things that threaten the peace and security of our community (i.e. that will disempower us), and the things we love are really the things that will empower us collectively as well as individually.15 If we can somehow manage this then we are on the path to She writes that ‘[s]o ductile is the understanding, and yet so stubborn, that the associations which depend on adventitious circumstances, during the period that the body takes to arrive at maturity, can seldom be disentangled by reason’ (Wollstonecraft, 2004, p. 145). 14 In E3p32s, Spinoza illustrates this tendency by referring to the affective composition of young children. Here, he suggests, we may observe the imitation of affects given more or less free reins, and then ‘we find from experience that children, because their bodies are continually, as it were, in a state of equilibrium, laugh or cry simply because they see others laugh or cry’ and ‘desire for themselves all those things by which they imagine others are pleased’. Education then faces the considerable challenge of directing this natural tendency toward a life guided by reason. 15 Hate is dangerous not only because it is a debilitating passion but also because it spreads easily via the imitation of affects. In the KV, Spinoza addresses the way hate travels fast within uneducated communities so as to bolster irrational prejudices and suspicion against other communities: ‘Finally,

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becoming increasingly more empowered and more autonomous in a fundamentally relational sense: The good which man wants for himself and loves, he will love more constantly if he sees that others love it (by IIIP31). So (by IIIP31C), he will strive to have the others love the same thing. And because this good is common to all (by P36), and all can enjoy it, he will therefore (by the same reason) strive that all may enjoy it. And this striving will be the greater, the more he enjoys this good (by IIIP37), q.e.d. (E4p37d2)

What all of this means, importantly, is that the flourishing of the individual is intimately bound up with the flourishing of the greater community. Besides entailing that we need one another to strive successfully for things that can help us survive and thrive, it also entails that what defines an individual—its conatus or striving to persevere in existence—is deeply connected with the striving of other individuals that we imagine to be like us. Insofar as our striving to persevere is concerned with becoming more empowered, it, therefore, becomes apparent that our autonomy, from Spinoza’s point of view, must be understood to be relationally constituted. Through the imitation of affects, Spinoza has found a powerful way of illustrating how the individual and the collective are bound together on the most fundamental level of human cognition and emotion. It is also, as Jason Read has pointed out in his introduction to a recent collection of essays by Étienne Balibar, a principle that shows how tightly connected the political and the affective dimensions are for Spinoza. Read writes that by ‘exposing the intimacy of affective life to its political and social relations, the imitation of affects inscribes a collective dimension to our most intimate experiences’ (Read, 2020, p. xix). As Matthew Kisner has argued, Spinoza’s notion of autonomy is interesting to consider in contrast with more individually oriented conceptions as ‘he offers a broad theory of autonomy that describes not only autonomous psychological processes but also the ethical significance and […] the political significance of autonomy’ (Kisner, 2011, p. 229). While autonomy is typically taken to refer to ‘an intrinsic feature of rational agents’ that exists ‘largely independently of their social and political conditions’ (ibid.), Spinoza maintains that our autonomy is a result of our engagement with external things. This is so insofar as Spinoza’s autonomy does not restrict itself to the kind of epistemic self-sufficiency of the mind that is often taken to be constitutive of human autonomy.16 That is, we cannot avoid being a part of the world that impinges on us in various ways and that pushes us to act in this way or that (by E4p4). Hate also comes from mere report—as we have seen in the Hate against the Jews and the Christians, the Jews against the Turks and the Christians, and the Christians against the Jews and Turks, etc. For how ignorant most of these are of one another’s religion and customs’ (KV 2[3], §8). 16 Andrea Sangiacomo has recently argued that Spinoza’s relational understanding of autonomy develops gradually over the course of his philosophical life, and that while in his earlier works (the TIE and the KV), he is still committed to an understanding of autonomy grounded in the epistemic self-sufficiency of the mind, in his later works (the Ethics, the TTP, and the TP), he is clearly proposing a conception of autonomy that is relational. This, Sangiacomo claims, is due to the fact that Spinoza increasingly recognizes the material and political conditions of the passions, where ‘the cause of the passions is no longer only cognitive but is also rooted in the material conditions in which individuals live and operate’ (2019, p. 93, emphasis in original).

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What this means, importantly, is that ‘the processes that make individuals relatively autonomous or separate are not themselves separate, but reciprocal or interdependent’ (Balibar, 2020, p. 44, emphasis in original).17 Reason and passions are closely related, then, insofar as our ideas are reflections of bodily states, and insofar as bodily states are inevitably conditioned by external things. Kisner continues, Spinoza holds that our adequate ideas contain the power that directs our actions, which entails that our rationality consists in our actions as much as our mental processes. Since our actions are often constrained and determined by political and social conditions, it follows that our rationality and, thus, our autonomy depend on these conditions. (Kisner, 2011, p. 230)

This natural dependency on external conditions is what gives rise to the need for a social structure powerful enough to coordinate the striving of many different people toward the same goal. And so ‘our interest in attaining the appropriate conditions for autonomy essentially provides the justification for the state, since, according to Spinoza, people agree to the social contract for the purpose of promoting their freedom and, thus, their autonomy’ (2011, p. 230). It falls upon the state to ensure that there is a sufficient degree of peace and security for citizens to strive unthreatened by one another toward a life guided by reason. And as Kisner points out, ‘the state promotes rationality by instilling particular ideas with a fixed content’ (2011, p. 231). This is all very vague, however, and we need to look closer at what it actually means for the state to instill ideas. One way of unpacking this is to start by connecting the political promotion of people’s rationality with the psychological conditions put in place by the imitation of affects. In order to figure out how to exploit the imitation of affects for pedagogical and political purposes, we need to look closer at what it is that determines what we strive for, and how we can be made to strive for things that are really good for us even if we are not in a position to recognize this yet. This entails looking closer at some of the preconditions for educational and political influence. One such precondition is the ability to reliably predict people’s affective responses.

1.3 The Importance of Understanding People Spinoza’s political theory importantly rests on his psychological insights. This is sometimes referred to as Spinoza’s political psychology (Steinberg, 2018). Spinoza’s psychology, embedded in his metaphysics, provides his political theory with a framework that sets up a tight connection between what it is to be human (a finite thing striving for empowerment), how humans can benefit from one another by exploiting inherent psychological traits, and how political and civic institutions can apply these 17

This, in effect, is what Balibar labels Spinoza’s theory of transindividuality. It hinges on the recognition that external relations are necessary and indeed constitutive for individuals, so that ‘[i]f the individual could not find other ones with which it “agrees” to regenerate it, it simply would not exist’ (2020, p. 56). Spinoza never uses the concepts transindividual or transindividuality, but Balibar borrows these terms from Gilbert Simondon to describe the ontological basis of Spinoza’s relational understanding of autonomy and its political effects.

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principles of human behavior in a practical sense. While his earlier works focus on the individual’s attainment of human flourishing, his later political texts turn to the necessary conditions for this in terms of well-functioning political and civic institutions. As Steinberg (2019) has noted, this can be taken as an attempt to honor a commitment made already in the TIE, where Spinoza proposes that he aims to flourish in unison with others like him, and ‘to form a society of the kind that is desirable, so that as many people as possible may attain it as easily and surely as possible’ (TIE §14). Spinoza’s political vision of this kind of society—and the form of government that would be most effective—entails that it rests firmly on the principle of the free exchange of ideas but that a precondition for this is the constitution of common laws that must be obeyed and respected by all.18 The fact that Spinoza’s political theory can be understood to present the practical upshots of his metaphysics, ethics, and psychology is likely to be significant for explaining the recent surge of interest in contemporary Spinoza studies.19 Spinoza’s two political treatises were both written during the latter part of his productive years. The TTP was published anonymously during Spinoza’s lifetime (in 1670), whereas the TP was unfinished at the time of his death in 1677 and was published posthumously later in that same year. The publication of the TTP was surrounded with controversy. Nadler opens his historical study of the book by dramatically suggesting that it ‘was regarded by Spinoza’s contemporaries as the most dangerous book ever published’ (2011, p. xi). He goes on to say that this was due to the fact that ‘[i]n their eyes, it threatened to undermine religious faith, social and political harmony, and even everyday morality’ (ibid.). To adequately account for the controversy surrounding the publication of the TTP would require a historical investigation beyond the scope of this book.20 One important aspect that deserves mentioning, however, is Spinoza’s take on the role of passions and superstitions in politics and religion. Religion, Spinoza argues, plays an important part in politics, but it can easily be misused so as to inflame conflict rather than to serve the purposes of the state. It can be misused because it appeals to people’s passionate responses. Because it makes use of people’s hopes and fears, and because these are inherently unstable and constantly vacillating affects, it becomes important to distinguish and weed out

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Balibar concludes that Spinoza proposes a form of government ‘in which freedom of expression plays a constitutive role, and where, more generally, the diversity of individual opinions and free communication between individuals form a necessary condition for the existence of the state’ (2020, p. 75). 19 See for example Field (2020), James (2020), Lærke (2021), Sangiacomo (2019), Steinberg (2018). 20 In the introduction to a collection of critical essays on the TTP, Melamed and Rosenthal list a few of Spinoza’s most radical ideas, causing controversy at the time of the publication of his first political treatise. Here, they include things such as the fact that ‘[h]e attacked the common understanding of prophecy as either a privileged and supernatural form of knowledge or a disguised mode of philosophizing’ as well as the fact that he ‘denied that miracles, as violations of the Laws of Nature, were possible and claimed that belief in them demonstrated ignorance and undermined any adequate conception of God’ (Melamed & Rosenthal, 2010, p. 1).

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illegitimate from legitimate uses of religion.21 People will always be in the grip of various superstitions, but the state can serve to ensure that the superstitions invoked are not detrimental to the well-being of its citizens. One might think that superstitions should have no place in politics at all, but Spinoza thinks that this would be a hasty conclusion. To be clear, superstitions are bad insofar as they rely on a confused understanding of things, but they are a necessary evil following from the affective nature of human beings. He opens the TTP with the following words: If men could manage all their affairs by a definite plan, or if fortune were always favorable to them, no one would be in the grip of superstition. But often they are in such a tight spot that they cannot decide on any plan. Then they usually vacillate wretchedly between hope and fear, desiring immoderately the uncertain goods of fortune, and ready to believe anything whatever. While the mind is in doubt, it’s easily driven this way or that—and all the more easily when, shaken by hope and fear, it comes to a standstill. At other times, it’s over-confident, boastful and presumptuous. (TTP pref[1])

This, then, is the sad state of human cognition that Spinoza posits as a starting point for his political theory. In fact, one of the main problems with most political theories, from Spinoza’s point of view, is their tendency to resort to a kind of idealism where models of politics are founded on an idealized version of how humans operate (cf. TP 1[1]). This is not helpful as it turns a blind eye to the actual state of human nature, preferring instead to stipulate a society that turns out to be impossible to realize. Steinberg summarizes the upshot of this conclusion succinctly: In an ideal society, the best way to promote true ideas might be through rational deliberation; but if one lives in a society in which reason-giving is less effective than emotional demagoguery, it is not obvious that the best thing for one to do is to approximate the ideal. (Steinberg, 2018, p. 2)

In Spinoza’s view, we do not live in ideal societies. Instead, we live in societies where reason-giving is generally less effective than emotional demagoguery as human reason is always (by necessity) vulnerable to the influence of powerful affects (by E4p3, E4p14 & E4p7). To make it more difficult, different people respond to different emotional imagery and so part of constructing a well-functioning state means finding out how to best respond to people’s emotional and affective composition. This, in turn, involves figuring out how to understand people better. Spinoza’s line of thought seems to run as follows: if we can reliably understand how people respond emotionally to different images and external impressions then we can use this insight to form civic institutions that stimulate the affective composition of people in a way that nudges them gradually toward a more rational way of living. These institutions would do this by making use of images and narratives that resonate with people’s psychological makeup, taking care to use narratives that strengthen the sense of community while avoiding imagery that augments dangerous and divisive passions like greed, jealousy, envy, and hatred. 21

Rosenthal writes that Spinoza’s reason for legitimizing religion in politics is that it holds a particular form of power of persuasion. Hence: ‘The solution is not to discard religion altogether but to harness its imaginative and affective power in service of political unity rather than discord’ (2018, p. 422).

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In the TTP, Spinoza looks closer at some examples of how this has been done historically. Spinoza’s preferred example is the Hebrew state. This, Spinoza thinks, is a good example as it tells of people governed largely by passions, and yet they were made to conform to a rational way of living by being stimulated affectively in particular ways. Spinoza looks at how Moses, as a lawgiver, manipulated the superstitions of the Hebrews in order to compel them to pledge allegiance to laws that would serve their own interests (without them understanding how or why). Because the Hebrews were unable to respond to rational arguments at the time, Moses needed to employ imaginative narratives in order to persuade them of the benefits of obeying the laws.22 The reason Moses could do this is because he was imaginatively gifted in the sense that he could correctly read and appeal to the affective constitution of the Hebrews. He was well acquainted with their traditions and their history and so he could accommodate his teachings to them by relying on imagery that was immediately recognizable and emotionally persuasive. This quality, Spinoza claims, is what characterizes the prophet, and so Spinoza suggests that prophets are especially gifted when it comes to accommodating their teachings to people who are governed by passions. Philosophers, on the other hand, are characterized by their ability to understand things adequately and by living according to the guidance of reason. Spinoza’s model of the free man may be interpreted as a depiction of the philosopher par excellence (E4p66s–E4p73). To be philosophically minded in this sense is to be unaffected by passions as a result of enjoying a perfect understanding of nature and being fully active. This is a far cry from most people, however. In fact, it is highly doubtful whether Spinoza actually believed that the model of the free man was an attainable ideal at all. It may be that it simply served to illustrate what someone unencumbered by passions would be like without assuming that anyone could ever live up to this ideal.23 To strive for an adequate understanding of things, and to aspire to live in the light of this understanding, is nevertheless the aim of the philosopher on Spinoza’s view. This, however, presupposes a sufficient degree of reason already in place. And so to assume that people are primarily guided by reason seems dangerously close to committing the idealistic fallacy that Spinoza warns against in his political philosophy. One way of confronting the seeming paradox of having people strive for an ideal that they are in no position to appreciate is by envisioning radically different paths to the same goal. 22

Spinoza explains why this is so with reference to the shared history of the Hebrews: And certainly it is not credible that uneducated men, accustomed to the superstitions of the Egyptians, and worn out by the most wretched bondage, would have understood anything sensible about God, or that Moses would have taught them anything other than a way of living—and that not as a Philosopher, so that they might eventually live well from freedom of mind, but as a Legislator, so that they were constrained to live well by the command of the Law. (TTP 2[46])

23

Kisner, for example, argues in favor of this interpretation of Spinoza’s free man (2011, Chap. 8.3). For a counter position, see Nadler (2015).

1.4 Different Ways of Understanding People …

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1.4 Different Ways of Understanding People and Different Ways of Influencing People: Prophets Versus Philosophers For a philosopher, God is understood in terms of the eternal and fully active substance that Spinoza designates natura naturans (E1p29s). God conceived in this way has few things in common with the anthropomorphic figure portrayed by the Prophets. Indeed, in a letter to Hugo Boxel, Spinoza explains how it is nothing but prejudice making people assume that God would conform to the peculiarities of human attributes (Ep. 56). While the philosophical idea of God is certainly the more adequate one, it lacks the power to persuade the masses in the way that the dramatic imagery of the Prophets can. To put it bluntly, one idea is truthful but the other packs an affective punch that surpasses the first.24 For someone who needs no persuasion, the adequate idea of God is indeed an endless source of joy, to be shared freely with others who strive for the same kind of understanding. For someone in need of persuasion, however, this idea will not stand much of a chance against more powerful affects.25 Depending on where people are situated and what they have experienced in the past, different ideas are effective for bringing them together and for making them conform to the same set of guidelines. This brings us back to LeBuffe’s (2018, p. 142) conclusion above, indicating that we may need some external assistance in getting us started on the path to knowledge and the striving for an increased understanding. To be sure, knowledge is the overarching ethical aim of all individuals and social bodies striving to persevere in existence. The highest form of understanding is an adequate understanding of God or Nature, which will result in a form of blessedness that is lasting and may be shared by all (KV 2[18]). The chances of attaining this 24

Eugene Garver argues that because philosophical truth is unlikely to persuade people to act in this way or that, Spinoza believes that it is better to aim for general agreement, where people can become reasonable enough not to threaten one another and not to disobey social mores and common laws: Knowing the truth is impractical; it produces no imperatives. Therefore aiming at agreement is a rational thing to do. We do not sacrifice our rationality in being reasonable, because obedience and sociability concern matters on which reason is silent. (Garver, 2010, p. 845)

25

The notion that because truth is necessarily self-evident, it lacks the persuasive power to entice those who do not perceive it to actually believe in it, can of course be connected back to the popular myths proposed by Plato (such as the myth of Hades) to enlist the obedience of the less-than-fully rational multitude in The Republic. Hannah Arendt comments on this: [T]ruth by its very nature is self-evident and therefore cannot be satisfactorily argued out and demonstrated. Hence, belief is necessary for those who lack the eyes for what is at the same time self-evident, invisible, and beyond argument Platonically speaking, the few cannot persuade the multitude of truth because truth cannot be the object of persuasion, and persuasion is the only way to deal with the multitude. […] [P]ersuading the citizens of the existence of hell will make them behave as though they knew the truth. (Arendt, 2006, pp. 131–132, emphasis added)

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form of understanding, however, are slim as ‘all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare’ (E5p42s). Forming a society based on reason, therefore, requires the enlistment of other instruments besides philosophical principles as these would likely be misunderstood or simply ineffective. This is where the prophet comes into the picture. The prophet has the ability to translate philosophical teachings into emotionally powerful narratives, and to persuade people to comply with rules that they fail to appreciate the true meaning of.26 Accordingly, in his analysis of the narrative function of miracles, Spinoza maintains that while the events portrayed are really natural events, the purpose of Scripture is not to teach things through their natural causes, but only to relate those things which fill the imagination, and to do this by that Method and style which serves best to increase wonder at things, and consequently to impress devotion in the hearts of the common people. (TTP 6[44])

How the striving for an adequate understanding of nature relates to the use of narratives describing miracles and other things of the imagination is at bottom a question of political governance. The overarching aim of the state is to promote freedom, which amounts to the promotion of reason in Spinoza’s terminology. Fostering rationality in people, Spinoza argues, is connected with three principal things: [i] [ii] [iii]

understanding things through their first causes; gaining control over the passions, or acquiring the habit of virtue; and finally; living securely and healthily. (TTP 3[12])

The first and second things are part of human nature and so they are beyond the direct influence of politics. The third thing, however, is precisely not a part of human nature, but rather ‘the means which lead to living securely and preserving the body are chiefly placed in external things, and for that reason, they are called gifts of fortune, because they depend for the most part on the governance of external causes of which we are ignorant’ (TTP 3[13]). In order to provide the necessary conditions for the first two things, then, circumstances need to be arranged so that people can be made to co-exist peacefully.27 This, however, requires a political intervention geared at the external regulation of human behavior: ‘To this end reason and experience have taught no more certain means than to form a social order with definite laws, to occupy a definite area of the world, and to reduce the powers of all, as it were, into one body, the body of the social order’ (TTP 3[14]). While the ethical and political aim is kept firmly locked on the improvement of the understanding, the degree to which this striving can be successful depends largely on the degree to which people are made to obey common laws. If people where already governed by reason, then all they would need would be philosophical principles to follow willingly. As they are not, however, ‘no society can continue in existence without authority and force, and hence, laws 26

In the opening of Chapter 1 of the TTP, Spinoza defines a prophet as ‘one who interprets God’s revelations to those who cannot have certain knowledge of them, and who therefore can only embrace what has been revealed by simple faith’ (TTP 1[1]). 27 Accordingly, as Mogens Lærke notes: ‘Teaching citizens a common sense of civic duty is where the freedom of any republic begins’ (2021, p. 167).

1.4 Different Ways of Understanding People …

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which moderate and restrain men’s immoderate desires and unchecked impulses’ (TTP 5[22]). And because people are prone to succumb to debilitating passions like hatred and greed when they are ruled by force and when made to comply from fear of consequences, ‘the laws must be so instituted that men are checked not so much by fear as by the hope of some good they desire very much’ (TTP 5[24]). Spinoza applies this logic to the political role of the prophet, suggesting that ‘Moses, by divine power and command, introduced religion into the Republic, so that the people would do their duty not so much from fear as from devotion’ (TTP 5[29]).28 In order to know what people respond to, the prophet needs to be well acquainted with their affective makeup and with their history and culture. The prophet also needs to be able to use this information when giving shape to particular narratives and images that can appeal to the people addressed. This, in fact, is the particular skill of the prophet, being gifted with a powerful imagination.29 Philosophers, on the other hand, are well ahead of most people when it comes to understanding things adequately, being equipped with ‘brilliant intellects capable of understanding the essence of things’ (James, 2012, p. 55). Since the philosopher relies on reason, the understanding and teaching of different philosophers will remain largely invariable (providing, of course, that they live up to Spinoza’s requirements of a true philosophical understanding). The prophet, on the other hand, relies chiefly on the imagination, which varies according to external circumstances, and therefore ‘[t]he style and clarity of a prophecy, be it cultured, compressed, stern, or prolix, varies with the learning and temperament of the prophet in question’ (2012, p. 56). While philosophers can appeal to anyone with a sufficient degree of adequate knowledge (regardless of place and time), the prophet’s appeal will differ according to external circumstances. Because the prophet’s teachings are ‘the fruit of a particular prophet’s imagination, we should expect them to be consonant with that individual’s beliefs, temperament, and education […]’ (ibid.). This means that the influence of a prophet depends to a great extent on various circumstances, such as the temperament of the prophet, the temperament of the people appealed to, and the situation that they find themselves in. While Moses’ role as a prophet and lawgiver governing the Hebrew people may seem an odd example in the context of political theory, it serves to illustrate something that goes beyond its historical bounds. Rosenthal addresses Spinoza’s reasons for singling out this particular historical episode in a treatise on political philosophy, suggesting that it serves a dual purpose:

28

This is also mirrored in Moses’ style of teaching, being adjusted to the people’s general lack of reason. Spinoza writes of Moses that ‘he taught them [the Hebrew people] in the same way parents usually do children who are lacking in all reason’ (TTP 2[47]). Moses’ style of teaching follows from the fact that prophecy is not geared at increasing the understanding but at promoting obedience (which, in Spinoza’s view, is a precondition for increasing the understanding). As such, prophetic knowledge is of a moral rather than a philosophical kind and, hence, Spinoza concludes that ‘Prophetic certainty was not mathematical, but only moral’ (TTP 2[6]). 29 In Chap. 2 of the TTP, Spinoza explains that ‘the Prophets were not endowed with a more perfect mind, but rather with a power of imagining unusually vividly’ (TTP 2[1], emphasis added).

18

1 Spinoza’s Political Theory and Its Consequences … I think that what makes the Hebrews exemplary in this broader sense is the function of prophetic language, which appeals to an imaginative narrative that claims universal authority in order to justify a particular set of institutions. That is, when the prophets called the Hebrews ‘chosen’, they were performing a function essential to any society: using the imagination to transcend individual interests and create a common standard of judgment and behavior. When Spinoza and Bol chose the Hebrews as their subjects, they were performing a function analogous to that of the prophets, appealing to and interpreting the collective imagination of a people in order to exhort them to right public conduct. (Rosenthal, 2002, p. 227)

On Rosenthal’s interpretation, Spinoza relates the story of Moses in order to offer an historical example of a prophet who successfully appeals to a people using imaginative rather than rational means. He also, however, uses the story as an exemplary narrative in another sense, serving to appeal to his contemporary readers’ sense of imagination while teaching them the importance of adhering to common laws. This is where we find a strong connection to civic education. The importance that Spinoza places on relating the function of prophets for social and political governance tells us something important about how he conceives of the potential and limitations of civic education. If civic education where to focus primarily on promoting the understanding of things ‘through their first causes’ and on promoting ‘the habit of virtue’ (TTP 3[12]), it would only ever appeal to those who were already well on their way to living a life according to reason. This, in reality, would mean that very few people would ever stand to benefit from civic education. If, however, civic education was to focus on appealing to the imagination of most people, so as to establish a sense of devotion to ideals that they have yet to fully appreciate the true meaning of, then it would likely impact people’s lives on a much broader scale. A surprising effect of this would seem to be that good educators (in the context of civic education) are more like prophets than they are like philosophers. The reason for this, as we have seen, is that people, in general, are much more prone to act on passions than according to reason. Therefore, it would make little sense to set up a political structure with civic institutions that assume that people are capable of acting in ways that cannot be convincingly backed up by experience. Toward the end of the first chapter of the TP, Spinoza addresses this: So, a state whose well-being depends on someone’s good faith, and whose affairs can’t be properly looked after unless people who handle them are willing to act on good faith, won’t be stable at all. For it to be able to last, its affairs must be so ordered that, whether the people who administer them are led by reason or by an affect, they can’t be induced to be disloyal or to act badly. It doesn’t make any difference to the security of the state in what spirit men are led to administer matters properly, provided they do administer them properly. For freedom of mind, or strength of character, is a private virtue. But the virtue of the state is security. (TP 1[6])

Because people ‘are led more by blind desire than by reason’ (TP 2[5]), the starting point of a civic institution must be to ensure that they can live ‘securely and healthily’ (TTP 3[12]). This way they at least stand a chance of cultivating the habit of virtue and enriching their understanding of things. Unless this can be guaranteed by the state, no one can pursue these goals safely, neither philosophers nor ordinary people. Because all people are under the influence of passions to some degree—insofar as

1.4 Different Ways of Understanding People …

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no one lives up to the ideal of the free man—everyone benefits from what might be termed the education of the emotions (Ravven, 2017). The civil order, from this point of view, is a necessary precondition for enjoying the freedom of philosophizing and for maintaining the stability required for the individual and collective striving for a life guided by reason: Men, we’ve said, are guided more by affects than by reason. So a multitude naturally agrees, and wishes to be led, as if by one mind, not because reason is guiding them, but because of some common affect. As we said in iii, 9, they have a common hope, or fear, or a common desire to avenge some harm. Moreover, all men fear being alone, because no one alone has the strength to defend himself, and no one alone can provide the things necessary for life. So by nature men desire a civil order. It can’t happen by nature that they’ll ever completely dissolve it. (TP 6[1])

This brings us to an important distinction between civic education and liberal arts education that will be crucial to keep in mind for the overarching argumentation of this book to make sense. The focus of this book is on Spinoza’s conception of civic education and on the importance of setting up a reliable public framework for civic formation. It is not on the educational ideals embedded in Spinoza’s notion of the freedom of philosophizing. As I see it, the kind of education entailed by the freedom of philosophizing is preconditioned by a reliable system of civic formation being already in place.30 As such, this study is primarily concerned with the processes of civic formation that necessarily precedes a kind of egalitarian education closely associated with the liberal arts tradition.31 While these two conceptions of education differ markedly—one is primarily conceived as vertical and the other as horizontal—public civic education is conceived by Spinoza as a necessary precondition for the more egalitarian form of education that he associates with an apostolic style of teaching and the mutual giving of ‘brotherly advice’ (discussed in TTP 11).32 Importantly, the two notions of education are complementary in the sense that basic civic education functions as a kind of necessary external support system to the kind of liberal arts education that relies on a well-functioning sense of self-government. Once the external guidance of civic education has been successfully internalized, there can

30

This is in line with one of the central claims of Field’s reading of Spinoza’s political philosophy, arguing that ‘[a] good and strong horizontal multitude needs to be constituted, not merely through removing the obstacles of oppressive institutions, but also through positive structuring of good civic institutions’ (Field, 2020, p. 201, emphasis added). 31 For an in-depth discussion of Spinoza’s conception of how this egalitarian tradition frames Spinoza’s political theory in important ways, see Lærke’s recent Spinoza and the Freedom of Philosophizing (2021). 32 The two conceptions of education may even be conceived in terms of a relation of opposites, where the preceding part consists of an education promoting obedience which is later to be counteracted by the emancipatory potential of a more egalitarian form of education. In a recent piece on Spinoza and education, Pascal Sévérac labels the latter form of education a ‘counter-education’ or ‘re-education.’ Importantly, this ‘counter-education’ is conceived in terms of ‘the transformation of the self that is always first educated for the purposes of obedience’ (2021, p. 192, emphasis added).

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follow an egalitarian form of education that is kept in check by the participants themselves, following the guidance of reason of their own accord.33

1.5 Upshots for Civic Education To conclude the first chapter, I would like to highlight some important consequences of Spinoza’s political theory for civic education, to be unpacked and dealt with in greater detail in the remaining chapters of this book. These consequences are clearly connected to one another, and one seems to follow quite naturally from the other. The first consequence of Spinoza’s political theory is that narratives and fictional accounts seem to be of particular importance insofar as civic education must find ways of appealing to people’s imagination. This, of course, raises questions concerning what this means in terms of deception and in terms of the relation between truth and fiction. It also raises questions about what kinds of narratives we are talking about, and what their purpose would be in relation to Spinoza’s overarching ethical aim of the improvement of the understanding. These are aspects that we will look closer at in the next chapter specifically. Because fictions and narratives are selected based on their appeal to the imagination, the next consequence for civic education concerns how these narratives can be accommodated to the affective makeup of different people. Spinoza uses the concept of ingenium to describe the unique affective composition of different individuals and groups of people. In doing so, he connects with a pedagogical tradition where the malleability of human temperaments and dispositions are being studied. In the third chapter, we will look into this, relating Spinoza’s use of the concept of ingenium to the pedagogical writings of Spanish humanist Juan Luis Vives (1492/93–1540). This also entails looking closer at the role of the exemplar in Spinoza’s philosophy, and it involves teasing out some pedagogical principles for exemplarism in civic education. The accommodation of fictions and narratives to the ingenium of the student leads us to a third consequence for civic education. Insofar as civic education concerns influencing the imagination, this appears to leave students wide open to all manner of manipulation. Where does Spinoza actually stand on this question? Does he allow for indoctrination in civic education, and if so, how does he defend this view? These 33

All other differences aside, this is reminiscent of how Jonas, Nakasawa, and Braun conceive of education in Socrates’ First City as a system composed of two different but mutually strengthening dimensions, one external and the other internal. They describe this set-up as follows: All individuals must be moderated by an internal rational rule. For those whose natures are not the best, their internal rational rule does not originate with themselves, and necessitates an education of a kind that inculcates and propagates the wisdom of the few. Thus, in a sense, the internal control of the inhabitants of the First City has an external dimension. (Jonas et al., 2012, p. 354, emphasis in original)

For Spinoza, however, since all people inevitably fall short of being perfectly rational, all people (to varying degrees) are in need of some kind of external support in order to follow the guidance of reason.

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are questions that we will focus on in the fourth chapter, where Spinoza’s views on manipulation and indoctrination are studied in some detail. These, then, are three important consequences of Spinoza’s political theory and together they highlight the originality and the controversial nature of Spinoza’s conception of civic education.

References Arendt, H. (2006). Between past and future: Eight exercises in political thought. Penguin Books. Balibar, E. (2020). Spinoza, the transindividual (trans. M. G. E. Kelly). Edinburgh University Press. Barry, G. (2016). Spinoza and the feeling of freedom. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 94(4), 631–645. Della Rocca, M. (1996). Spinoza’s metaphysical psychology. In D. Garrett (Ed.), The Cambridge companion to Spinoza. Cambridge University Press. Della Rocca, M. (2008). Spinoza. Routledge. Field, S. L. (2020). Potentia: Hobbes and Spinoza on power and popular politics. Oxford University Press. Garver, E. (2010). Why can’t we all just get along: The reasonable vs. the rational according to Spinoza. Political Theory, 38(6), 838–858. Hesse, H. (2000). The glass bead game (trans. R. Winston & C. Winston). Vintage. James, S. (2012). Spinoza on philosophy, religion, and politics: The Theologico-Political Treatise. Oxford University Press. James, S. (2020). Spinoza on learning to live together. Oxford University Press. Jonas, M. E., Nakasawa, Y. M., & Braun, J. (2012). Appetite, reason, and education in Socrates’ ‘City of Pigs.’ Phronesis, 57(4), 332–357. Kisner, M. J. (2011). Spinoza on human freedom: Reason, autonomy and the good life. Cambridge University Press. Lærke, M. (2021). Spinoza and the freedom of philosophizing. Oxford University Press. LeBuffe, M. (2009). The anatomy of the passions. In O. Koistinen (Ed.), The Cambridge companion to Spinoza’s Ethics. Cambridge University Press. LeBuffe, M. (2018). Spinoza on reason. Oxford University Press. Melamed, Y. Y., & Rosenthal, M. A. (2010). Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise: A critical guide. Cambridge University Press. Melamed, Y. Y. (2011). Spinoza’s anti-humanism: an outline. In: C. Fraenkel, D. Perinetti, & J. E. H. Smith (Eds.), The rationalists: Between tradition and innovation. Springer. Mouffe, C. (2005). On the political. Routledge. Nadler, S. (1999). Spinoza: A life. Cambridge University Press. Nadler, S. (2014). The lives of others: Spinoza on benevolence as a rational virtue. In M. J. Kisner & A. Youpa (Eds.), Essays on Spinoza’s ethical theory. Oxford University Press. Nadler, S. (2015). On Spinoza’s ‘free man.’ Journal of the American Philosophical Association, 1(1), 103–120. Ravven, H. M. (2017). Spinoza on education of the emotions. In: M. Peters (Ed.), Encyclopedia of educational philosophy and theory. Springer. Read, J. (2020). The unity of transindividuality: An examination of Balibar’s philosophical practice. In: E. Balibar & M. G. E. Kelly (Trans.), Spinoza, the transindividual. Edinburgh University Press. Rosenthal, M. A. (2002). Why Spinoza chose the Hebrews: The exemplary function of prophecy in the Theological-Political Treatise. In: H. M. Ravven & L. E. Goodman (Eds.), Jewish themes in Spinoza’s philosophy. SUNY Press. Rosenthal, M. A. (2018). Spinoza’s political philosophy. In: M. Della Rocca (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of Spinoza. Oxford University Press. Russell, B. (2004). History of western philosophy (new ed.). Routledge.

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Sangiacomo, A. (2019). Spinoza on reason, passions, and the supreme good. Oxford University Press. Sévérac, P. (2021). A materialist education: Thinking with Spinoza. In B. Bianchi, E. Filion-Donato, M. Miguel, & A. Yuva (Eds.), Materialism and politics. ICI Berlin Press. Steinberg, J. (2018). Spinoza’s political psychology: The taming of fortune and fear. Cambridge University Press. Steinberg, J. (2019). Spinoza’s political philosophy. In: E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (Summer 2019 Edition). https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2019/entries/spi noza-political/. Wollstonecraft, M. (2004). A vindication of the rights of woman (rev). Penguin Books.

Chapter 2

Illusions and Fictions: Educating the Imagination

We should treat children as God treats us, and He makes us happiest when He lets us trotter along in benign illusions.—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther By making a falsehood as much like the truth as we can, don’t we also make it useful?—Plato, Republic II, 382d The masterpiece of a good education is to make a reasonable man, and they claim they raise a child by reason! This is to begin with the end, to want to make the product the instrument.—Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile or On Education, Book II

It is not immediately clear how civic education would benefit from the use of fictional narratives. One might think that a more robust foundation would be to introduce students to sound principles of political philosophy, conveyed in a transparent and easy-to-grasp manner. While authors such as Nussbaum (1997) has argued forcibly for the importance of stimulating what she terms the narrative imagination, this does not appear to be conceived as a way of fostering civic unity in Spinoza’s sense so much as it is a way of reflecting the rich diversity of human experience. According to Nussbaum, there is considerable educational value in having students attempt to identify with what strikes them as distant and unrecognizable. She claims that this makes for an important aspect of the cultivation of the narrative imagination. She writes: ‘The moral imagination can often become lazy, according sympathy to the near and the familiar, but refusing it to people who look different. Enlisting students’ sympathy for distant lives is thus a way of training, so to speak, the muscles of the imagination’ (Nussbaum, 2002, p. 300). This would be one way of enlisting fictional narratives for the purpose of educating the imagination in civic education. It is markedly different from Spinoza’s preferred method, however. In a sense, Spinoza seems to move in the opposite direction of Nussbaum. Instead of using fictions to draw people out from themselves and toward those that they imagine that they are radically different from, Spinoza uses fictions to help people recognize others who resemble them closely and that they can benefit the most from being with. The desired result may not be that different, however. For Nussbaum, by seeking out that which appears to be radically different, people are believed to end up finding underlying commonalities that can broaden their understanding of themselves © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 J. Dahlbeck, Spinoza, SpringerBriefs on Key Thinkers in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-7125-8_2

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and others. For Spinoza, by appealing to the imagination and leading people toward recognizing what they have in common with others, people are believed to find that most perceived differences are really only imagined and superficial. The routes that they take for achieving this are not the same, however. In order to see how Spinoza’s use of fictional narratives differs from other versions (such as Nussbaum’s) in greater detail, we need to address two interrelated questions: (1) what is the purpose of using fictions in civic education from Spinoza’s point of view? and (2) what is Spinoza’s understanding of fiction? In order to get a better grasp on the former question, we first need to tackle the latter. This involves distinguishing between illusions and fictions, and between what Spinoza would consider good (or educationally valuable) and bad (or educationally non-productive) fictions. First, however, we need to remind ourselves of Spinoza’s conception of the dual purpose of education. Education, for Spinoza, ultimately serves to promote the enriched understanding of nature as this is concomitant with the path to human flourishing. For this to be possible, however, civic education needs to promote peace and security in the state so that people can cultivate their understanding without risking undesirable interference from external forces. As discussed in the previous chapter, Spinoza envisions a political life where people abide by rational principles both because this serves their striving for selfpreservation, and because this protects and sustains the greater community. If people were fully rational, there would be no need for a state (or laws) to begin with (TTP 5[20]).1 Because people are not fully rational, legal and social restraints and regulations need to be put in place so that people are compelled to do what is really in their own self-interest to do. Because, as we saw in the previous chapter, Spinoza assumes that a successful (as in a sustainable) state needs to be founded on the principle of civic cooperation rather than on force and violence (which is inherently unstable), it is not enough to simply stipulate rules in accordance with the common good. Instead, people need to be assisted in identifying their own personal good with the common good. The pedagogical correlate of this is that people need help in aligning the two goods. As Susan James has pointed out: ‘If we are unable to see how we could, or why we should, conform to the demands of what Spinoza describes as a rational life, an image of such a life will be of no use to us’ (2010, p. 267). This, in effect, is why civic education cannot simply be concerned with the transmission of sound principles of political philosophy. Instead, images and narratives that appeal to the imagination must be used in order to construct a cognitive bridge between the two seemingly conflicting aims of self-preservation and social cohesion. This, in turn,

1

Here, of course, Spinoza echoes Hobbes: For if we could suppose a great multitude of men to consent in their observation of justice and other laws of nature without a common power to keep them all in awe, we might as well suppose all mankind to do the same; and then there neither would be, nor need to be, any civil government or commonwealth at all, because there would be peace without subjection. (Hobbes, 1994, p. 107)

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means that fictions will come to play an important role in the education of the political imagination. Drawing on Spinoza’s discussion on the role of fictions for social stability and in the acquisition of knowledge, this chapter argues that the freedom of philosophizing hinges on the safety of the moral community from irrational attacks, and that the use of valuable fictions can provide an educational bridge between an unreflective reliance on false beliefs and the critical inquiry of unconvincing metaphysical presuppositions. Spinoza is of particular interest here because while he espouses a strong defense of the ethical value of seeking the truth in all educational endeavors, he also allows for a realistic conception of the limitations of human cognition. I conclude that these limitations entail that fictions are necessary as they compensate for an innate privation of knowledge and that they can in fact be valuable insofar as they stimulate the imagination to strive for things that are intellectually difficult to grasp yet clearly beneficial for the striving for self-preservation.

2.1 The Educational Promise of Spinoza’s Use of Fictions While the imagination, taken in isolation, is certainly a flawed form of cognition— insofar as it does not adequately grasp the full nature of things (E2p29c; E2p40s2)—it is necessary and useful for compensating for cognitive limitations that are innate. Spinoza is particularly helpful here as he offers a way of explaining how the imagination works in dynamic ways and that depending on the forces that take hold of it, the imagination can inflame prejudice and foster irrationality but it can also provide a passage from irrationality to a more adequate understanding of the world. This is where civic education becomes important as a way of harnessing the forces of the imagination and using it for the dual purposes of creating moral stability and preparing the ground for the promotion of the intellectual freedom of the individual. Moving from the concept of illusion to the concept of fiction has the benefit of shifting focus from false beliefs (and the telling of lies) to the educational navigation of the gradual spectrum from imaginative yet incomplete understandings to a more adequate understanding of the world. In this sense, fiction seems intuitively more educationally valuable than false beliefs or illusions, even if there is no guarantee that the use of fiction enables students to gain reliable knowledge of the world. Before looking closer at the role fiction might play in the educational pursuit of truth, however, we should look into Spinoza’s conception of how the imagination can benefit from fiction as a means for bridging between a confused understanding of the world to a more adequate understanding, and how this relates to the educational process of becoming ethical. In a recent article on Spinoza’s conception of civic education, Christophe Miqueu comments on the importance Spinoza places on maintaining a stable political community as a measure to protect the right of the individual to strive for an increased understanding. He writes: ‘The political dimension of education is central here. The freedom to philosophize can only exist if the republic itself is reformed.

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This is undoubtedly one of the central points of Spinoza’s republicanism’ (Miqueu, 2018, p. 5). While the true purpose of the state is freedom (TTP 20[12]) (translating into the practical freedom of philosophizing), there is always a price to pay for this freedom in terms of mitigating the irrational impulses of human beings. This plays into the role of fiction insofar as there is always a risk that a fiction can turn out to be precisely the kind of unattainable ideal that feeds into the myth of unconstrained personal freedom rather than providing realistic, and contextually varied, images of how freedom and virtue are best pursued in different circumstances and depending on a person’s level of understanding. That being said, there appear to be two different kinds of fiction in Spinoza’s writings. There are fictions intended to bind together a moral and political community through shared narratives that appeal to the imagination of as many people as possible (in a given context), and there are fictions intended to further the striving of the individual for self-preservation and enhanced power of acting. The first kind of fiction is found in Spinoza’s political writings and the second kind (primarily) in the Ethics. What is interesting to note, however, is that the two kinds of fiction are complementary insofar as they both serve the purpose of enabling a more adequate understanding of the world, albeit from two different points of view. Before looking closer at Spinoza’s different conceptions of fiction, it is helpful to start with unpacking his understanding of what constitutes a fiction in the first place. From Spinoza’s perspective, all fictions depend on a privation of knowledge. If the idea feigned was to be adequately understood, it would no longer be a fiction. For something to be adequately understood means that we have access to its full causal history. If we understand how a thing has been caused, we automatically understand it to be necessarily existing. If we lack this knowledge, however, we may entertain fictions. To understand something as being possible, then, is equivalent to feigning: I call a thing impossible whose nature implies that it would be contradictory for it to exist; necessary whose nature implies that it would be contradictory for it not to exist; and possible whose existence, by its very nature, does not imply a contradiction—either for it to exist or for it not to exist—but whose necessity or impossibility of existence depends on causes unknown to us, so long as we feign in existence. So if its necessity or impossibility, which depends on external causes, were known to us, we would be able to feign nothing concerning it. (TIE §53, emphasis added)

Fictions are not the same as illusions, however, as fictions do not have to be believed to be entertained.2 In fact, for Spinoza, there is an ethical value in entertaining fictions. So long as we do not have perfect knowledge of natural causation (something that we will never have), it is sometimes better to entertain fictions (that 2

I am relying here on a conception of illusion in line with Saul Smilansky’s understanding. Whereas a fiction, for Smilansky, denotes ‘an idea which is false […], is typically known to be false, is focused upon guiding us towards a particular goal, and generally disappears in time as our needs change or as our logical capacity increases’ (2000, p. 147), illusions have a greater sense of permanence and a broader scope in terms of being false beliefs that inform our understanding of the world in a very basic sense. Smilansky’s preferred example of an illusion, deemed necessary despite its falsity, is the illusion of a libertarian free will. It is a metaphysically incoherent belief, he argues, but one that is crucial for the maintenance of a functioning moral community.

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are recognized as fictions) than to maintain indefinite illusions insofar as illusions are inimical to truth-seeking whereas fictions (as we will see) can be used to further the understanding by compensating for knowledge that we lack. Accordingly, Spinoza explains that we ought to define and explain things through their proximate causes. That universal consideration concerning fate and the connection of causes cannot help us to form and order our thoughts concerning particular things. Furthermore, we are completely ignorant of the order and connection of things itself, i.e., of how things are really ordered and connected. So for practical purposes it is better, indeed necessary, to consider things as possible. (TTP 4[4], G III/58/20–27, emphasis added)

While the notion that things are possible is to be regarded as a fiction for Spinoza, it is better—for ethical purposes—to entertain this fiction and to allow it to guide one’s actions than to be left without reliable guiding principles. We should be careful, however, when we pick the fictions that we allow ourselves to be guided by. As Steinberg notes, ‘[f]ictions, like the idea of gaining eternal love of God, the idea of an open future, or the representation of moral exemplars, might stimulate us to act in ways that are more consistent with our aims than if we acted just on our beliefs’ (2018, p. 266). These fictions are not substitutes for the truth, but they can affect us in ways that are beneficial for us even if we do not see precisely why that is. So, for example, maintaining the fiction that the future is open-ended may be a better way of guiding our actions than being led by beliefs that are not aligned with our aims. If a fiction can stimulate us in this way it constitutes a particularly valuable fiction. While there are obviously fictions that will not have this desired effect (some fictions will rather bolster prejudice and help breed harmful superstitions), some will and these are the ones that will make for valuable educational fictions. In an educational context, fictions can span from the ones that are practical insofar as they help compensate for an innate privation of knowledge to the fictions that are more valuable insofar as they also offer helpful images facilitating the ethical striving for an improved understanding. These different fictions may have quite different— and even seemingly contradictory—purposes. Some fictions are mainly useful for adjusting information so that it is more readily available for the uneducated, whereas some fictions can function to support the person already on the path to a life guided by reason. Accordingly, some fictions are particularly well adjusted for promoting security and peace in the context of civic education and other fictions may be helpful for promoting the freedom of philosophizing in the context of liberal arts education. It is important to note, however, that Spinoza is not propagating the spreading of lies through fiction, but that he proposes the use of fiction that takes into account the different levels of understanding of different people. For some people, the constant vacillation between hope and fear may need to be regulated through imaginative narratives that can establish ‘a standard of conduct that all can be expected to, and indeed do, imitate’ (Rosenthal, 2002, p. 235). These fictions need to speak to the experience of the people addressed in order to be persuasive. As Rosenthal argues, Spinoza’s sophisticated understanding of the interplay between the imagination and reason led him to suggest the use of ‘imaginative universals that function to create a standard on the basis of which values can be defined and right conduct urged’

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(2002, p. 248). Because people are always influenced by their imagination, it makes little sense to disregard this powerful influence in the context of civic education.3 The first kind of fiction, then, is especially designed to speak to the imagination of the uneducated, whereas the second kind is specifically designed to facilitate the pursuit of truth of the educated. The first kind also serves as an effective instrument for governing people by curbing dangerous passions that threaten the stability of the common moral community (by offering deterring images and the promise of rewards), whereas the latter kind serves as a tool for supporting the ability to understand more. As Moira Gatens remarks, ‘[w]hereas the philosopher uses the imagination as an aid to reason, in the case of religion it functions as a substitute for reason’ (2012, p. 78). As I will argue in more detail below, education can be conceived to serve both ends. It is reasonable to assume that civic education is necessary for governing the passive responses of the uneducated, making sure that the community is kept safe from dangerous disruptions and the general spread of dangerous passions. But there is another, perhaps more important, aim that parallels the first; that of promoting the freedom of the student through truth-seeking and the emendation of the intellect. Whereas the first aim can surely be attained with the help of ‘necessary’ illusions, the rationalistic character of the second aim appears to be much more difficult to reconcile with the position of Illusionism.4 Some false beliefs can be treated in terms of desirable illusions, functioning mainly to uphold the collective illusions of moral responsibility and just desert, thereby curbing irrational desires that threaten the stability of the common moral community. Illusions are problematic, however, insofar as they are not susceptible to reason. Because illusions hinge on their being sustained indefinitely, they lack the flexibility of fictions that can be altered according to the demands of the particular situation and the persons involved. A fiction can be made to serve reason, and this is its great advantage over an illusion. Not all fictions will do this, however, and they will not do so automatically. For a fiction to support reason rather than inflame irrational fears and superstitions, it needs to be made into a tool easing the passage from ignorance to an increased understanding. James (2010) relates Spinoza’s endeavors to render 3

While Spinoza is clear about the fact that belief in narratives cannot support our striving for the highest good—the intellectual love of God—in any direct sense, he does think that they serve an important purpose with regard to civic education. He writes the following on the use of historical narratives: Nevertheless, though faith in historical narratives cannot give us the knowledge and love of God, we do not deny that reading them is very useful in relation to civil life. For the more we have observed and the better we know the customs and character of men—which can best be known from their actions—the more cautiously we will be able to live among them and the better we will be able to accommodate our actions and lives to their mentality, as much as reason allows. (TTP 4[19], G III/61–62)

4

Illusionism here refers to Smilansky’s (2000) position stating that some illusions (such as the libertarian conception of free will) are important to maintain as they help safeguard the moral community despite their falsity.

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specific fictions valuable for the ethical striving for intellectual freedom in a way that speaks directly to the refinement of fictions in education. James sets out to trace Spinoza’s investigation of how narratives can be used to further the ethico-political striving to persevere in existence throughout his philosophical work. As we have already seen in Chap. 1, Spinoza argues that the best way for people to truly perceive the benefits of peaceful coexistence is for them to arrive at a philosophically sound understanding of themselves and nature. Because this understanding is exceedingly difficult to attain, Spinoza concludes that it is advisable to employ imaginative narratives that can persuade as many people as possible of following simple rules of living, aiming at the goal of a flourishing community. The problem with some narratives is that while they may do the job as effective tools of governance for a time, they can also backfire insofar as the demand for total subordination can give rise to widespread feelings of disempowerment and anxiety, thus revealing their inherent limitations. While other narratives are more easily adaptable to different interpretations and to individual motivations, they may lack the general appeal that ensures the stability of the greater community. Spinoza’s endeavor to sketch out a fictitious model of human nature—via the free man who amounts to a fully rational person (E4p66s–E4p77)—may be interpreted as an attempt to construe a narrative that is appealing to the imagination without sacrificing the philosophical search for truth and understanding. In James’s reading, Spinoza’s fiction of the free man offers his readers ‘a model of a life organized around the pursuit of philosophical understanding, and invites us, his readers, to use it to give meaning and value to what we do’ (2010, pp. 265–266). The idea is that this fiction would give expression to sustainable philosophical principles in a way that can be approached in different ways depending on our level of understanding. Offering philosophical lessons without underestimating the ever-present influence of the imagination is what would make this fiction valuable from Spinoza’s point of view. In conclusion, James suggests that the way of life endorsed by reason needs to be brought within imaginative reach if it is to mold our desires and actions. The general principles around which it is organized must be made liveable by being embedded in the narratives that give meaning to what we do and shape our aspirations. (James, 2010, p. 267)

According to this conception of how to make fictions educationally valuable, the content of the fiction is less important than the extent to which that fiction can be used to illustrate the (personal and collective) benefits of living guided by reason. From Spinoza’s point of view, all humans strive for an increased understanding. Being limited cognitively, however, we rely upon our imagination to fill in the blanks so to speak. The full picture of what the world is like will likely never be within our grasp and so we depend on external aids to help us. Valuable fictions—such as Spinoza’s fiction of the free man—can serve this purpose by offering exemplars to strive for and to be imaginatively captivated by. From the point of view of civic education, the weakness of Spinoza’s account of valuable fictions is precisely that fictions appear to require a measure of rationality to be effective as an aid to reason. In the context of civic education, one cannot simply

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assume that students are already motivated by a rational desire for an increased understanding. A big part of education concerns awakening this slumbering desire to learn, and this may take a long time. In addition, as I have already suggested, civic education is also entrusted with the task of tempering irrational desires so as to protect the common moral world from various internal and external threats. Insofar as this may require different kinds of fiction that are more concerned with mitigating dangerous passions than facilitating truth-seeking, it begs the question of how the protection of the common moral world can be reconciled with the promotion of the desire to understand oneself and the world better in one and the same educational setting.

2.2 On False Beliefs and Illusions in Education In a general sense, educational practices (like most any practices) rely on tacit theoretical presuppositions of various kinds. What sets educational practices apart from most other practices is that, arguably, educators traditionally have a specific relationship to the notions of knowledge and truth and that, perhaps more importantly, they have a responsibility for ensuring the validity of the knowledge and truth-claims they introduce their students to. The problem, of course, is that few of us can adequately account for our tacit theoretical presuppositions, even when they turn out to be pivotal for the general worldview we present to others. Educators, like most anybody, reinforce certain ill-conceived notions because they are not generally well trained in the critical analysis of the everyday language of their practice. Part of the reason for this is that some powerful yet tacit theoretical assumptions correspond with an overall phenomenological experience of being in the world that would make it seem counterintuitive to question them. The pervasive idea of a libertarian free will is an example of a commonly assumed capacity that corresponds with a powerful phenomenological experience of being an agent in the world, even though, at a fundamental level, it turns out to be a highly contested assumption in a philosophical context. It is important to scrutinize this tension since our understanding of agency and personal autonomy is clearly very significant for how we conceive of the limits and scope of educational influence and educational transformation.5 Perhaps it is not so surprising, then, that some false beliefs (beliefs that may have been convincingly debunked by philosophers or other specialists) linger on in educational practice. There is an important distinction to be made, however, between false beliefs that are unreflective and false beliefs that are recognized and indefinitely entertained. It is the latter kind of false beliefs that Smilansky (2000, 2001) refers to as illusions. Whereas many false beliefs are simply misconceptions or misgivings that are perpetuated through practices that are unfortunately out of touch with recent scientific and/or philosophical advancements, some false beliefs are connected with 5

See Dahlbeck (2018) for an in-depth treatment of the question of education and free will from a Spinozist point of view.

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deep-rooted moral convictions that are deemed too important to protect for metaphysical nit-picking to interfere. Just desert and moral responsibility are good examples of moral and legal notions that in a fundamental sense hinge on the efficacy of human decision-making. If the libertarian idea of free will, necessary for grounding these notions, is irrevocably debunked, then this will no doubt have serious repercussions for our shared moral world. This is where Smilansky proposes that Illusionism is not only to be preferred but indeed necessary for sustaining a meaningful sense of morality and for protecting the human social world from the dangers of disillusion and value relativism. Education presents an interesting challenge in this context because education, as indicated above, has a particular role to play with regard to truth-seeking, the striving for reliable knowledge, and for the introduction of young people to a scientifically up-to-date understanding of the world. It is important to distinguish the search for truth—through critical inquiry—from a routine reliance on generally held assumptions about the truth. The search for truth is driven by doubt—where even our most fundamental preconceptions about ourselves are allowed to be critically interrogated—whereas assumptions about certainty are generally hinged on a reluctance to venture beyond preconceived ideas. Education, from this perspective, might be said to be caught between the task of maintaining the stability of the moral community through the perpetuation of certain agreed upon preconceptions (however metaphysically incoherent) and the task of supporting the critical inquiry of the doubting student. As such, part of education strives for stability and comfort and part of it strives for (moderate) discomfort and the improvement of understanding. Peter Roberts describes education in terms of a sometimes painful revaluation of preconceived ideas: Education promotes not greater certainty but greater doubt—and with doubt can come despair. Education, it is often believed, is a process through which we subject our ideas to critical scrutiny. In becoming educated, it is expected that we will come to question much that was hitherto taken for granted, such that we will never be the same again. (Roberts, 2016, p. 16)

To the extent that education ‘can and should promote doubt and questioning’, it will also seek to ‘unsettle, disturb, or disrupt the status quo’ (Roberts, 2016, p. 17). At the same time as the promotion of doubt holds an intuitive appeal, it would be odd to assert that the aim of civic education is to disrupt and overturn the core assumptions in which the common moral community is grounded. If nothing else, the current rise in the debate concerning moral education speaks to the important role of civic education in maintaining the stability of the moral community. As has recently been pointed out by Michael Hand: ‘Moral education matters because each new generation must be taught the difference between right and wrong’ and it follows from this that ‘[t]he crucial educational task is the formation of responsible moral agents’ (2018, pp. 5–6). While we might wish for a complete correspondence between ‘right and wrong’ and ‘true and false’, the many empirical differences in how different moral communities construe their moral codes tell us that this is not the case. One way of understanding this is to make a distinction between the role of civic education in establishing and

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maintaining a functioning moral community and the role of education writ large in promoting the search for truth. Herein lies one of the most pervasive and difficult to solve paradoxes of education. It asks: is it ever defensible to perpetuate false beliefs in education? The flip side of this question is just as relevant, however. It asks: how much should we be willing to pay for the intellectual spoils of our unrelenting quest for the truth? The benefit of turning to Spinoza’s understanding of the use of fiction is that it disrupts the seeming dichotomy—asserted by Smilansky—between maintaining the stability of the moral community and the pursuit of truth. This is so as it denies any direct value of maintaining false beliefs, while being realistic about the challenges involved in balancing between ensuring social stability and promoting moral and intellectual flourishing. Civic education, on Spinoza’s account, is never about telling lies (knowingly or unknowingly) but about protecting the right of the individual to pursue the truth while being weary of the threats to this endeavor by people who are moved to act more by passions than by reason. As already mentioned, the power of fiction can be very effective in its appeal to the imagination, and for this reason, the use of fiction is educationally valuable. In an educational context, much has been written about the use of fiction. In what follows, I will briefly outline two different approaches to the use of fiction in education. First, I will look into fiction in terms of its role in moral education, as a means for engaging the narrative imagination of students. Second, I will look briefly at the contested relationship between the use of fiction and the striving for reliable knowledge about the world in an educational context. Against this background of the role of fictions in education, this chapter closes by arguing for the educational value of Spinoza’s conception of fiction as offering a different route from that of Smilansky’s Illusionism.

2.3 The Use of Fictions in Education As we have seen, Spinoza’s understanding of a fiction is broad insofar as a fiction denotes any idea that is feigned (meaning that we lack the causal history to explain it). This sets it apart from a more narrow understanding where fictions represent entities that do not exist (at least in the sense of ordinary physical objects) (Kroon & Voltolini, 2016). As Amie Thomasson notes: ‘In our everyday discussions of literature we treat fictional characters as created entities brought into existence at a certain time through the acts of an author’ (1999, p. 5). Educators use this kind of fiction in education all the time. Educators use fictions (novels, films etc.) as works of art to study in their own right and they use fictions as resources for studying and discussing things that exist outside of the fictional work in question (such as moral questions about right and wrong, justice and injustice, or courage and cowardice). But fictions may also be used by educators in a less formal sense. From Spinoza’s perspective, a helpful way of describing a fiction is to compare it with a belief. Whereas beliefs are supported by other ideas (in a system of beliefs), a fiction is

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suspended by other ideas that do not support it. Steinberg, drawing on Spinoza’s distinction between fictions and beliefs, explains that fictions, unlike beliefs, are ‘joined to ideas that either positively exclude the existence of the feigned idea or at least render it dubious by neutralizing its power’ (2018, p. 265). Some fictions make for powerful educational tools precisely because while they can engage us emotionally, they do not lead us into the indefinite perpetuation of illusions. According to Steinberg, this is because powerful fictions are quite isolated—quarantined, as it were—from one’s other potent ideas. When one leaves the movie theater and the immediate stimulus for the fiction is lost, there is no network of ideas that will bolster these fictions. This is true for other fictions that one knows to be false: one can feign them, and thereby temporarily (and perhaps potently) affirm them, without worrying that they will undermine one’s (opposing) commitments, because, provided that no further compensatory adjustment are made that enable such ideas to gain a greater foothold in one’s belief-system, there is a firm doxatic buffer that prevents them from exerting a steady influence. So, fictions, as isolated ideas, can be profoundly affirmed without being believed; unfortunately, so can rogue desires or representations of goodness. (Steinberg, 2018, p. 275, emphasis in original)

The combination of being effective means for arousing emotions and being acknowledged as feigned, make fictions well suited for certain educational purposes. In terms of providing a safe yet intellectually and emotionally stimulating setting for discussing difficult moral concerns, fictions can function by divorcing a particularly sensitive subject from its real-life context and by doing so can alleviate the personal engagement of the students without subjecting them to unnecessary emotional pain. For example, a fictional account can provide an emotionally engaging example for talking about bullying without situating the problem in the actual lifeworld of the students. This may help them engage with the problem intellectually, and it can keep them from being carried away by powerful passions such as moral indignation and vengeance. In a recent article, David Carr has explored the educational promise of moral exemplification of literature and art. Unlike the emulation of real-life exemplars or role models, characters drawn from literature and art can have the benefit of allowing for a critical distance between the one admiring and the one admired. On Carr’s account, this can offer a way of avoiding unreflective admiration of people who are ‘admired for less than morally admirable qualities’ (2019, p. 358). The problem with exemplification and role-modeling is that imitation may not latch on to specifically moral qualities as these are not always deemed immediately attractive. In short, ‘what is morally good may not be attractive and what is naturally attractive may often be far from good’ (ibid.). Because of this, there is no guarantee that moral exemplars are emulated in ways that reflect the aspects that are deemed morally exemplary. In response to this problem, Carr suggests that literature and art can offer an opportunity for ‘critical exploration of good and bad human character’ (2019, p. 366) in a way that not only serves to illustrate exemplary ways of being but also, just as importantly, opens up avenues for critical self-reflection and understanding others. The benefit of working with literary and artistic exemplars, on Carr’s account, is that these narratives

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can be adjusted to the tendencies of human imagination, and so they are taken to be less vulnerable to distortions. As already mentioned, another illuminating exploration of the moral impact of narratives and the narrative imagination may be found in Chap. 3 of Nussbaum’s Cultivating Humanity (1997). Here, Nussbaum argues for the educational and moral importance of cultivating the imagination via different, culturally diverse, narratives that will allow us to explore various perspectives beyond our own narrow scope. This, she claims, is important as it will help equip young people for a more dynamic form of democratic citizenship where the ability to empathize with, and better understand, those that are construed as different from us is deemed essential. In this way, fiction may be used to reach beyond superficial differences, often blocking our view in everyday life, in order to get to the deeper truth of our fundamental similarities as human beings as well as unveiling real differences that result from our various experiences and cultural backgrounds (1997, pp. 111–112). Fictional narratives, in this setup, become a crucial vehicle for expanding our horizons, and in extension, for combating prejudice and small-mindedness. Narratives function by allowing us to explore different experiences of the world (not readily available to us) while at the same time providing a means for inner self-cultivation through the education of the imagination. Both Carr and Nussbaum argue, in different ways, for the benefits of turning to fictional narratives in moral education. The fictions that are deemed especially valuable, in this context, are fictions that can be employed to educate the imagination in ways that curb irrationality and fear and that promote human freedom through a better understanding of the human condition. Because good fictional narratives engage our imagination, they may tap into our psychological makeup in ways that allow us to critically judge the behavior of others as well as to reflect on our emotional response to others. Ideally, this may help us shed distorted and stereotypical understandings of those different from us as well as focus on cultivating our self-understanding so as to arrive at a more realistic conception of ourselves. Besides functioning as an aid to the moral imagination, fictional accounts can also be used to represent historical events in a way that engages the imagination and forges strong emotional links between the past and the present. Fictional representations of history can function as placeholders of knowledge that we lack, adding emotional depth to the inherent dryness of archival knowledge. Knowing that the story is feigned does not take away the sense that history can be represented in ways that are exciting and that can hold great appeal to the imagination. Being initially grasped by the story-arc, the students can then go on to find out more about the factual knowledge that was being used as building blocks of the narrative. This, of course, assumes that the use of fiction is a reliable way of instigating the quest for knowledge about the world. A relevant problem raised in a recent article by Jones (2019) concerns the gap between the assumption that good fiction will allow students a unique window into deep moral truths and the degree to which fiction can be said to adequately portray the world so as to enable the forming of reliable knowledge about it. This gap is relevant to address here as it connects with Spinoza’s concerns about the ability of

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the human imagination to bridge between inadequate and adequate ideas. Generally, we might want to make a distinction between fictional accounts that are presented as trustworthy portrayals of the world and fictional portrayals that are claimed to be morally poignant. There is, however, a clear connection between the degree of trustworthiness and the degree of moral value of a fictional narrative. For a fictional account to have moral value for us, it would seem that we would need to be justified in believing in it. If someone successfully debunked my belief that bullies are deeply insecure (an example given by Jones), it would not seem morally defensible for me to continue to attribute a bully’s behavior to his or her insecurity, and to treat him or her accordingly. Insofar as justified beliefs correspond with reliable knowledge about the world, moral formation seems to require a degree of reliable knowledge about the world. However, Jones claims that knowledge about the world cannot be reliably gained by simply reading fiction. Instead, reading fiction must be supplemented by activities specifically designed to ‘turn ideas suggested in fiction into justified knowledge’ (2019, p. 10). There is a sense then that reading fiction might be a starting point for beginning to understand something better, but that in order for this understanding to develop, students cannot simply be consumers of fiction. Accordingly, Jones suggests that ‘[f]iction could easily make people interested in and curious about things that they had never been before, had they not read the fiction. They could then come to have justified beliefs about these matters if, with their curiosity thus aroused, they are inspired to do some further investigation’ (2019, p. 3). Spinoza regards fiction as a way of activating the imagination to start making connections between different affective states and things and events that were previously not connected. These connections, in turn, can be calibrated and enforced by a more adequate understanding of the world. It is not that fiction can render our understanding of the world more adequate, but that fiction can appeal to our imagination in a way that makes us want to understand the world better. Not all fiction will do this, however, and not all ways of employing fiction are equally productive. Spinoza’s distinction between the fictions that can be used to curb irrational responses and the fictions that can be used to promote human flourishing is helpful in this context as it offers a conception of how different educational situations call for different fictions. Above are just a few examples of how fictions are and can be used in an educational setting. Admittedly, we will now move on to a domain where it is much less clear that we are dealing with fictions at all. This is partly because some fictions are so deeply engrained in our common sense that they turn into false beliefs and are no longer immediately recognizable as fictions. Partly it is because the representational content is less likely to be categorized as a conventional fiction in the sense that it does not represent non-existent physical objects (c.f. Kroon & Voltolini, 2016), but rather an idea about something whose existence we have good reasons to doubt.

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2.4 Necessary Illusions or Valuable Fictions? Spinoza’s understanding of the use of valuable fictions is especially attuned to the educational challenge posed by Smilansky’s Illusionism. Even if we, for the sake of the argument, grant that the ordinary belief in free will qualify as a false belief, Spinoza’s understanding of a valuable fiction allows the social benefits of this belief to be reaped without subscribing to indefinite Illusionism. Illusionism, at bottom, requires that part of our knowledge about the world is kept in the dark. Smilansky is adamant that Illusionism is not about flat-out lying to people, but at the same time, as we have seen, a precondition for the continued currency of illusions is that they are not debunked or explicitly called out as illusions. Spinoza’s fictions, however, can be employed as provisional placeholders for knowledge that we lack and they can be acknowledged as fictions without losing purchase in the sense that illusions will. Where illusions automatically lose their purchase when they are called out as illusions, fictions can be recognized as fictions and still be educationally valuable. Whether or not the ordinary belief in free will is to be considered a genuine false belief, we might see how certain aspects of our everyday behavior and reactive attitudes (that are ultimately grounded in the idea of free will) are helpful in terms of maintaining a stable moral community. Whereas Smilansky assumes that this requires the existence of necessary illusions, Spinoza’s reasoning seems to offer us a different path. Spinoza assumes that much of our understanding of the world is flawed and that a central part of becoming educated (as well as becoming ethical) is to become aware of this and to try to gradually amend it. This does not mean remaining in a state of acting ‘as if’ we understood things that we do not, but it means taking into account the fact that we are not perfectly rational beings, but beings who need to make use of our imagination in order to compensate for innate cognitive limitations. Fictions can allow us to affirm ideas provisionally, but they do not hinge on the assumption that these ideas must be entertained indefinitely. As we saw earlier, many fictions are useful mainly insofar as they engage our imagination. They can help us act in accordance with ideals even when we do not fully understand why we should do this. So long as doing so keeps us from causing one another harm everything is well and good. What it does not do, however, is help us understand more about ourselves and the world. They help compensate for a privation of knowledge without being able to replace it. They may even be dangerous insofar as they can be joined with established prejudices such as the notion that certain groups of people have a natural disposition to morality whereas others do not. This is where the distinction between ordinary and valuable fictions becomes important. Ordinary fictions can serve as temporary placeholders for reason (allowing the imagination to gain the upper hand) whereas valuable fictions can be employed as tools for furthering our understanding while acknowledging our natural limitations as cognizant beings. Both, then, are means toward the same goal, but their utility differs depending on the level of the student’s understanding. Following Smilansky, civic educators can make use of existing illusions in order to instill a moral code in the young and uneducated. This moral code does not

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help them further their understanding of the world but it can help establish certain robust moral ground rules that are important for the stability of the common moral community. On the other hand, if these allegedly necessary illusions are treated in terms of fictions they will take on a decidedly different appearance. They will lose some of their seeming inviolability and gain a sense of variability. It is precisely the variability of fictions that make them educationally powerful. Insofar as people are different from one another, people respond differently to different narratives. Because fictions are temporary placeholders of truth (and not necessary illusions), they can be substituted by other fictions over time: fictions that are deemed more meaningful and more appropriate for shaping our aspirations and desires (as Susan James would have it). It is not that safeguarding our common moral world is not important, but that the things we do to safeguard it cannot be allowed to counter the educational aim of pursuing the truth. This hinges, of course, on the ability of the educator to judge between fictions that are manipulative in a dangerous sense, fictions that are mainly beneficial for the safeguarding of the common moral world, and fictions that are particularly useful as imaginative tools for facilitating truth-seeking. As Moira Gatens and Genevieve Lloyd have pointed out, The fictions which bind together communities are not always deliberately fabricated falsehoods propagated by those who stand to gain by them. Rather, social fictions may be distorted or imaginative but genuine attempts to grasp the complex relations within and between collective bodies, and between the present and past history of those collective bodies. (Gatens & Lloyd, 1999, p. 90)

Appreciating the educational value of social fictions can introduce a viable bridge between the two seemingly contradictory aims of education. Instead of conceiving of two separate aims, we might see how different social fictions can be employed in education to satisfy different demands. Assuming that there are illusions that must be indefinitely preserved is decidedly different insofar as it introduces an element foreign to education: it creates an unbridgeable chasm between the socio-political needs of a society and the individual’s desire to learn more about the world.

2.5 Reconciling the Two Seemingly Contradictory Aims of Education Spinoza’s use of fiction allows for metaphysical questions to be investigated in education, whereas Smilansky’s Illusionism appears to obstruct truth-seeking where truth-seeking and necessary illusions collide. From Spinoza’s perspective, there are certainly false beliefs, and many of these are troubling insofar as they bring about social practices that are troubling. At the same time, a basic tenet of Spinoza’s understanding of what it is to be human is that we are severely limited cognitively and that we are therefore always more or less stumbling in the dark. To strive to understand things better does not mean that we are automatically enlightened, and it is not self-evident that those who claim the title of philosopher are automatically more

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enlightened than other people. In fact, part of the problem for Spinoza is that many philosophers tend to establish an idealized image of what it is to be human and continue to construct political ideals from the basis of such an idealized image (TP 1[1]). Striving for a more realistic conception of what it is to be human means taking into consideration the innate limitations of human cognition. It means understanding that humans are neither fully rational nor fully irrational. The purpose of using fictions in education is not to suppress truth-seeking, but to acknowledge the interdependency of reason and the imagination and to offer ways of communication between these two aspects of human cognition. Insofar as Illusionism is asserting the benefits of maintaining some illusions it also (albeit inadvertently) ends up celebrating ignorance. While maintaining illusions may appear necessary from a particular philosophical and political standpoint, it assumes that some philosophers have the prerogative of identifying false beliefs that others should either accept as true or simply remain oblivious of. If education is oriented toward truth-seeking, where do we draw the line between the kinds of metaphysical queries that are safe to investigate and the ones that are not? It seems to me that Spinoza’s use of fictions offers a more productive—and educationally apt—approach. It admits that there are many things of which we know very little, but that we may need to accept provisionally in order to maintain social stability. It also assumes, however, that fictions are provisional and that they can be adjusted to our level of understanding. No fiction, in this sense, is a permanent placeholder for the truth, but a temporary vehicle for the imagination to make use of in order for the intellect to grasp that which is slightly beyond its reach. In order to see how the two seemingly contradictory aims of education suggested in this chapter can be reconciled it helps to conceive of education not in terms of two conflicting practices but in terms of a complex process where seemingly different ideals are brought together. On the one hand, civic education concerns the protection of the overall well-being of the collective. From this perspective, education helps ensure the relative stability and peace of the common moral community. Part of this involves engaging the imagination of students by fictions that help express simple moral rules in a forceful way. These fictions are problematic to sustain indefinitely to the extent that they demand that we suspend difficult metaphysical questions, making them seemingly inimical to the critical inquiry of our common-sense beliefs. At the same time, education also concerns the individual’s striving for an improved understanding of the world. This educational practice goes beyond civic education as it is directed at the flourishing of the individual guided by reason. The driving force behind this practice is to cultivate the understanding through the process of doubt. By subjecting ideas to critical doubt, false beliefs may be rejected and some fictions can be revealed to harbor elements that are not as innocent as we may have believed them to be. Persons guided by reason are not, however, insulated from the influence of the imagination. On the contrary, the imagination is necessary in order to create a meaningful context wherein ideas can be critically evaluated and reformed. Valuable fictions are fictions that can help alleviate this process by supplying a meaningful narrative allowing us to make sense of the personal striving for an increased understanding in relation to the striving of others.

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Those who strive for an increased understanding through the critical re-evaluation of common-sense beliefs need protection from irrational attacks on their right to pursue their intellectual labor. One way of securing this right is by making sure that the majority abides by the principles of the common moral community. Because the majority are not likely to do this unless persuaded by means other than those of philosophical reasoning, civic education needs to engage imaginative means to illustrate the importance of abiding by stipulated moral principles even when these moral principles are poorly understood. This is a starting point for all education insofar as no educational endeavor can start in abstract philosophical reasoning, but it is also a way of protecting those who strive for a better understanding of themselves and the world so that they can pursue these ends unthreatened by the rest. This also seems to be the premise for Smilansky’s Illusionism. What Spinoza’s understanding of fiction has to offer, however, is a viable passage between maintaining social stability and truth-seeking. This is important as it can help raze the barrier between those who recognize illusions as false beliefs and those who do not. Assuming that the powerful grasp of false beliefs can (and should) be broken through education would be to underestimate the power of the emotions and the creative input of the imagination. At the same time, supposing that education must respect existing illusions would be to violate the natural striving for an increased understanding of the world. This leaves civic education with the difficult task of balancing between maintaining practices deemed important for social stability and impelling students to make use of their imagination to challenge their preconceived notions about the world. Because of the tension inherent to this setup, it is useful to assume that the critical endeavor to re-evaluate common-sense beliefs can only be realized once the basic ground rules of a common moral community are in place. If this is so, then ordinary beliefs (such as the folk-psychological belief in free will) can be used to secure social stability, ensuring that valuable fictions can be employed to safely challenge the rigidity of our pre-theoretical assumptions so that they do not stagnate and become a threat to the same moral community that they are set up to protect. This, however, can never be done if education is forced to turn a blind eye toward some beliefs because debunking them is deemed morally damaging.

2.6 Identifying Valuable Fictions and Accommodating Them to Ordinary People: Engaging the Prophetic Teacher To conclude this chapter, I would like to return briefly to Spinoza’s example concerning Moses and the Hebrew people. What made Moses exemplary, in Spinoza’s view, is the fact that he could employ his extraordinary imagination in the education and governance of his people. The reason he could do this is because he was well acquainted with their history and with their customs, and so he could accommodate the narratives he employed to their affective constitution. Moses could

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succeed in establishing a stable republic precisely because he took as his starting point the actual condition and affective makeup of the Hebrews. And so, ‘[b]y exploiting the motivational force of passions such as wonder and devotion, Moses successfully established a stable political organization’ (Sangiacomo, 2019, p. 97). Because he took care to enlist affects that were already in circulation he could lead ‘a disperse multitude of irrational individuals to form a more stable society in which cooperation was enhanced through the virtuous circle of affects’ (ibid., emphasis in original). Rather than using force, and thereby feeding dangerous passions such as hatred and envy, Moses sought to encourage cooperation amongst people. Accordingly, So through a divine power in which he was preeminent, he [Moses] established legislation and prescribed it to the people. But in these matters he took the greatest care that the people should do their duty, not so much from fear, as voluntarily. (TTP 5[28], G III/75/11–14)

On Sangiacomo’s reading of Spinoza, prophets like Moses are eminently equipped to introduce people to a way of life that they are not in a position to fully appreciate the benefits of yet. Prophets are ‘truly virtuous because their way of conditioning people through an apt use of passions is able to foster cooperation and sociability, which in turn create the general external conditions to face bad fortune and allow for a flourishing of human intellect’ (Sangiacomo, 2019, p. 98). This, then, is where the somewhat unexpected connection between obedience and human flourishing is found. Prophets like Moses are therefore not merely master manipulators who can make people act in this way or that by nudging them with the help of various persuasive images and fictions. They are educators, of sorts, as they are proficient at selecting fictions that appeal to the imagination of many people at once, and that can make them want to cooperate and live in peace, which is a precondition for exchanging ideas and striving for intellectual flourishing. As such, ‘the virtue of the prophets is instrumental to the acquisition of knowledge’ (2019, p. 98, emphasis in original). This appears paradoxical insofar as the path to knowledge and understanding is laid out along the imagination—which in Spinoza’s conception is always an inadequate form of knowledge (E2p29c; E2p40s2). To see how this can make sense, we need to remember that the affective power of an idea is not grounded in its truthfulness (E4p14), and so in order to influence people, we need to pay attention to how different fictions and imaginations can influence the way we are affected (to become either more empowered or disempowered). What becomes important, then, is to figure out what kinds of fictions can be used to stimulate the imagination so that students are encouraged to become more agreeable and more prone to cooperate with one another (so as to become more empowered) and not the other way around. The trouble here, of course, is that fictions can easily be used for both purposes. Eugene Garver calls the kinds of fictions that are educationally valuable true imaginations and he traces them to Spinoza’s political treatises: True imaginations are not quite a paradox. We are passive towards them, since we don’t understand them. Yet they, like the passive pleasures of the Ethics, can increase our power to act. The true imaginations on which we can agree are the subject of the TTP. In religion, since obedience to God is identical with love of one’s neighbor, obedience produces agreement,

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as it makes us agreeable to each other. In politics, agreement to the social contract produces obedience. Democratic politics lets agreement lead to increased rationality. (Garver, 2010, p. 840)

While philosophy is always concerned with the truth, religion and politics (in different ways) are concerned with making people agreeable (which is a precondition for truth-seeking but not dependent on it). Because philosophy requires peace and stability, it needs to enlist politics and religion to provide persuasive reasons for people to remain obedient enough not to violate laws and regulations put in place to protect them from one another and from various external threats. On Garver’s reading, politics and religion—when set up in a sustainable way—are complementary insofar as ‘[r]eligion makes us obedient without being obedient to anyone or in particular; politics makes our obedience determinate. Religion makes us agreeable, while politics ensures that we in fact agree’ (2010, p. 850). Civic education, then, seems to be placed in the gap between these different institutions, providing a passageway between providing true imaginations/valuable fictions that can help promote agreement and cooperation among students and preparing the way for a truth-seeking endeavor that can occupy people who are being kept safe and protected by the state and its institutions.6 It is important to stress, however, that the latter part of this project importantly hinges on the former. Teachers in civic education may not act in the role of prophets, strictly speaking. They are not typically conceived as interpreters of Scripture whose task it is to translate the word of God into practical social mores and legislations. But they are also not philosophers, at least not in Spinoza’s sense. True philosophers, for Spinoza, are people who enjoy an adequate understanding of themselves and nature and who can live in the light of this understanding. To demand this of teachers in civic education would be to drastically diminish the number of possible teachers. Besides the fact that it appears impractical to demand that teachers be philosophers, there is another, more acute problem. Philosophers are not particularly well equipped to communicate with people who are not philosophers themselves. To understand the philosopher, one needs to already be well on the way to living according to reason, and this is not something that civic education can ever assume. The educator in civic education, then, must navigate the same treacherous landscape as the prophet, using imaginative means to draw out their students’ willingness to cooperate. For this to be possible, however, they first need to understand the affective makeup—the ingenium—of the student. The ability to accommodate their message to the ingenia of those addressed is something that the Prophets exhibited when they conjured up powerful images and fictions. It is also something that the Apostles made use of when they were teaching different people in different ways (TTP 11[19–24]). In the next chapter, we will conduct a closer investigation of the pedagogical concept of 6

Striving for agreement, in this context, should not be taken to exclude the ability or the freedom to disagree, which is a fundamental aspect of the freedom of philosophizing. The crucial difference here hinges on the distinction between voicing a disagreement that is conducive to rational discussion among equals and inflaming dissent by spreading debilitating prejudices and superstitions so as to manipulate and dominate vulnerable groups. For an informed discussion on the possible tension between allowing for disagreement and promoting uniformity, see Lærke (2021, pp. 167–170).

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ingenium, such as this is employed by Spinoza (informed by Vives), and we will relate this to the question of exemplarity in civic education. This will bring us one step closer to addressing the looming question of manipulation in civic education.

References Carr, D. (2019). Moral exemplification in narrative literature and art. Journal of Moral Education, 48(3), 358–368. Dahlbeck, J. (2018). Education and free will: Spinoza, causal determinism and moral formation. Routledge. Garver, E. (2010). Why can’t we all just get along: The reasonable vs. the rational according to Spinoza. Political Theory, 38(6), 838–858. Gatens, M. (2012). Compelling fictions: Spinoza and George Eliot on imagination and belief. European Journal of Philosophy, 20(1), 74–90. Gatens, M., & Lloyd, G. (1999). Collective imaginings: Spinoza, past and present. Routledge. Hand, M. (2018). A theory of moral education. Routledge. Hobbes, T. (1994). Leviathan: With selected variants from the Latin edition of 1668 (ed. E. Curley). Hackett. James, S. (2010). Narrative as the means to freedom: Spinoza on the uses of imagination. In: Y. Y. Melamed & M. A. Rosenthal (Eds.), Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise: A critical guide. Cambridge University Press. Jones, T. (2019). Will students gain knowledge of the world by reading fiction? Theory and Research in Education, 17(1), 3–18. Kroon, F., & Voltolini, A. (2016). Fiction. In: E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2016 Edition). https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/fiction/. Lærke, M. (2021). Spinoza and the freedom of philosophizing. Oxford University Press. Miqueu, C. (2018). Spinoza on civic education. In: M. A. Peters (Ed.), Encyclopedia of educational philosophy and theory. Springer. Nussbaum, M. (1997). Cultivating humanity: A classical defense of reform in liberal education. Harvard University Press. Nussbaum, M. (2002). Education for citizenship in an era of global connection. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 21(4–5), 289–303. Roberts, P. (2016). Happiness, hope, and despair: Rethinking the role of education. Peter Lang. Rosenthal, M. A. (2002). Why Spinoza chose the Hebrews: The exemplary function of prophecy in the Theological-Political Treatise. In: H. M. Ravven & L. E. Goodman (Eds.), Jewish themes in Spinoza’s philosophy. SUNY Press. Sangiacomo, A. (2019). Spinoza on reason, passions, and the supreme good. Oxford University Press. Smilansky, S. (2000). Free will and illusion. Oxford University Press. Smilansky, S. (2001). Free will: From nature to illusion. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 101, 71–95. Steinberg, J. (2018). Two puzzles concerning Spinoza’s conception of belief. European Journal of Philosophy, 26(1), 261–282. Thomasson, A. L. (1999). Fiction and metaphysics. Cambridge University Press.

Chapter 3

The Pedagogical Importance of Ingenium: Exemplarism and Popular Narratives

One must know well the particular genius of the child in order to know what moral diet suits him. Each mind has its own form, according to which it needs to be governed; the success of one’s care depends on governing it by this form and not by another.—Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile or On Education, Book II

If teachers in civic education are to employ narratives and fictions that can appeal to the imagination of students and that can entice students to become more cooperative so as to become more autonomous, then it begs the question of how they would go about selecting these narratives in the first place. A necessary starting point seems to be that the teacher is sufficiently acquainted with his or her students to know what they would respond to, and, at least roughly, how they would respond. This brings us to the concept of ingenium and the pedagogical question of how the educator can go about accommodating his or her teachings to a student’s affective composition. In the TTP, Spinoza dedicates Chap. 11 to the Apostles, and to whether the Apostles were prophesizing or teaching. Apostles are prophets of sorts, Spinoza suggests, but ones who do not speak from revelation (TTP 11[1]). Instead, he argues, the Apostles spoke as teachers, and as such they were teaching people rather than prophesizing to them. Speaking as teachers means that they reasoned with people rather than conveyed the word of God as laws to be obeyed without question: For the Apostles are always reasoning, with the result that they seem to debate, not to prophecy. Prophecies, on the other hand, contain only bare authoritative judgments and decrees, because in them God is introduced as speaking, and he does not reason, but decides in accordance with the absolute sovereignty of his nature, and also because the authority of the Prophet is not subject to reasoning. (TTP 11[4], G III/152/7–13)

Prophets (when prophesizing) are not subject to reason because they rely on the imagination to construe images that are persuasive to people in an affective sense. These images and narratives are not based on philosophical arguments as ‘they [the Prophets] did not perceive them by reasoning’ (TTP 11[4], G III/152/17–18). Moses’ imagery was not intended to spark debate but to induce the Hebrew people to obey commands so as to enable them to form a peaceful and stable community. Accordingly, Moses’ arguments were ‘not taken from the storehouse of reason, but © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 J. Dahlbeck, Spinoza, SpringerBriefs on Key Thinkers in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-7125-8_3

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are only ways of speaking he used to express God’s decrees more effectively and imagine them vividly’ (TTP 11[7], G III/153/6–8). The Letters of an Apostle like Paul, on the other hand, ‘contain nothing but brotherly advice, mixed with a politeness which Prophetic authority is completely opposed to’ (TTP 11[8], G III/153/21–22). From this, Spinoza concludes that ‘the Apostles preached as teachers, and not as Prophets’ (TTP 11[11], G III/154/23–24). In order to resonate with the people they addressed, the Apostles had to adjust their teachings to their mentality. And so while Apostles and Prophets differ insofar as one appeals to reason and the other to the imagination, both need to adapt the way they express themselves to the ingenia of the recipients in order to be effective: Lest the novelty of its doctrine greatly offended men’s ears, they accommodated it as much as they could to their contemporaries’ mentalities [ingenio] […] and constructed it on the foundations which were most familiar and accepted at the time. That’s why none of the Apostles philosophized more than Paul, who was called to preach to the nations. But the others, preaching to the Jews, who disdained Philosophy, also accommodated themselves to the mentality [ingenio] of their audience […] and taught religion devoid of philosophic speculation. (TTP 11[23–24], G III/158/4–12, emphasis added)

The ability to accommodate teachings to the ingenia of one’s students becomes key for communicating with people of different backgrounds and different dispositions. Whether the idea is to appeal to their imagination so as to induce them to abide by common rules or to appeal to reason so as to persuade them of the validity of one’s arguments, the fact that effective teaching entails accommodation remains largely the same. While civic education is not a matter of prophesizing, it is (as we have seen) also not a matter of simply presenting students with philosophical arguments. Since the reason for establishing a state in the first place is to compensate for the fact that people are always less than fully rational (c.f. TTP 5[20]), educating for a life within this political structure requires being ever mindful of this limitation. This means that the civic educator will need to exploit the imagination of students (to some degree), using popular narratives that can appeal to their affective makeup while also helping them get started along the path to a life guided by reason. In this chapter, we will focus on better understanding this process of accommodation. Another way of putting it would be to say that this investigation concerns becoming clearer about what we might call the starting point of civic education. Arriving at some clarity of the starting point of civic education would have the benefit of preventing us from confusing its starting point with its end. The following part of this chapter serves two interrelated purposes. First, it serves to introduce the pedagogical concept of ingenium (employed by Spinoza in the setting of his political theory) via the work of early modern humanist Juan Luis Vives. What is particularly important here is the focus Vives places on properly understanding the teacher–student relation and on appreciating the exemplary function of the teacher (and not just the subject matter studied or the thing/idea pointed to by the teacher). Second, it serves as a prelude of sorts to the subsequent sections on Spinoza, as Vives figures as a pedagogical and philosophical precursor to Spinoza in his work on the importance of accounting for the ingenium of a people in a political context (see Steinberg, 2018). In order to properly gauge Spinoza’s contribution to a theory of civic

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education (by translating his psychological and political insights into pedagogical insights), then, we must first investigate the legacy of Vives’ pedagogical thought for Spinoza’s political philosophy.

3.1 Reconnecting with a Lost Pedagogical Tradition: Diagnosing and Accounting for the Student’s Ingenium and Understanding the Role of the Teacher Qua Exemplar In an early modern pedagogical setting, the concept of ingenium is typically contrasted with, and intimately related to, the acquisition of a virtuous character. Ingenium is the raw material (the innate talent or natural predisposition) from which a virtuous character must be arduously carved. Virtue will not come easily, however, as a person’s ingenium will not yield readily to the instruments and skills of even the most competent artisan.1 Historian of ideas Andreas Hellerstedt explains the complex relation between virtue and ingenium: Virtue was those character traits or dispositions which we acquire, and thus represent our potential for improvement, or even an ideal humanity. It is the optimistic side of seventeenth century anthropology. Ingenium, on the other hand, was that which we cannot change, our natural predisposition. In that sense it was more negative, as it represented the limitations of mankind, and of the individual. (Hellerstedt, 2019, p. 78)

In order to properly gauge the adequate means by which to cultivate virtue, then, the student’s ingenium would need to be carefully assessed and taken into account for pedagogy to become truly efficient. Hellerstedt likens the process to that of the medical doctor diagnosing the patient before giving proper treatment: The teacher is advised to first examine the ‘disease’ and its causes before he administers his medication, just like a physician: the teacher should examine the ingenia of his students and entice the power of their talent before he begins teaching them. (Hellerstedt, 2019, p. 80)

One of the more prominent advocators of grounding pedagogy in a careful diagnosis of the ingenia of students in the early modern period is Juan Luis Vives. In his De Tradendis Disciplinis (1913), Vives discusses this in some detail. The parallel to medical science and to the treatment of physical ailments, identified by Hellerstedt above, is notably present in Vives’ account: And all these things are judged by each person according to his own intellect; for some things suit some minds, and some things others, just as certain foods suit certain palates and 1

There are variations regarding to what extent the ingenium of a person was believed to be malleable. Vives’ account, which will be the focus of the first part of this chapter, tends toward an understanding where a person’s ingenium can, in fact, be shaped through habituation and education. As Steinberg notes, ‘Vives stresses the malleability of one’s physiology and, in turn, ingenium, through habituation’ (2020, p. 160). The relation Vives sets up between the formation of the body and of ingenium is something that we will have good reason to return to.

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3 The Pedagogical Importance of Ingenium … stomachs. For there is no knowledge so good that we cannot corrupt it, just as there is no food so healthy that it cannot become unhealthy, if it gets infected with disease. (De Tradendis 1.4, p. 33)2

Diagnosing the mental condition of the student, the teacher is cast in the role of the equivalent to a skilled physician, working meticulously on assessing and treating the minds of students (rather than the bodies of the sick).3 The challenge facing the teacher is much the same as the challenge facing the physician. Just as each individual body requires a slightly different approach, so each mind requires its individually calibrated treatment to fit with its temperament: Different subjects of study require, in each case, a distinct type of natural mental ability for its successful pursuance. It is possible, however, to obtain a judgment as to which studies a particular person would wisely refrain from undertaking. Just as a skillful medical man can pronounce with regard to the bodies of men after he has had them under his examination, so the man of practical wisdom (vir prudens) can form a judgment as to the special excellencies of mind, judgment and learning of a particular person, if he be called in, to act in this so important a function. (De Tradendis 1.4, pp. 33–34)

While a virtuous character can be made to manifest in the inhospitable terrain of a person’s natural predisposition, the terrain itself—the ingenium—cannot be completely transformed (but only refined through habituation and education). Instead, it must be disclosed, accepted, and prepared for a pedagogical intervention, and so ‘[t]o this end we must partly learn and accept what has been handed down to us, and partly think it out for ourselves and learn it by practicing it’ (De Tradendis 1.4, p. 36). While education can influence the ingenium, it needs to pay close attention to its particularities so as to be suitably adapted to the natural disposition of the student’s mind. Accordingly, Vives concludes that ‘[s]ome minds are sensible, sober and temperate; others insane and furious, and this either habitually or at intervals. Some are gentle, others fierce and eager; some even are of an unbridled nature’ (De Tradendis 2.3, p. 80). Making things more difficult, a person’s disposition is prone to changes over time and in response to the surrounding environment, much like a body reacts in different ways to the different foods it ingests: Variations of mind arise from the different nature of each person, i.e. of the constitution and temperament of their bodies. The consequence is, that a man one moment may be great and keen-witted, and the next moment may no longer remain so. (De Tradendis 2.3, pp. 76–77)

The variations of students’ ingenia, and the many changes of any one student’s disposition in response to varying external circumstances, make the teacher’s task exceedingly difficult. As such, Vives recognizes that not only does the teacher need to 2

References to De Tradendis Disciplinis (De Tradendis) are to book, chapter, and page number of Vives (1913). 3 Much like the adept physician can be indispensable for alerting the patient to the best-suited cure for his or her ailment, the teacher’s careful examination of the student’s ingenium is construed by Vives as being indispensable for the success of education. As Hidalgo-Serna puts it: ‘Hence the success or failure of intellectual cultivation or education which young minds will experience depends on how correct or faulty the teacher’s psychological-pedagogical examination of ingenium is’ (1983, p. 234).

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be knowledgeable in the subjects taught but the teacher must also be a certain kind of person so as to appear as an exemplar for the student. A good teacher must behave in a way that corresponds with the teaching offered and so, on Vives’ account, ‘[t]eaching with which the life does not correspond is harmful and disgraceful’ (De Tradendis 2.1, p. 59). In order to ensure that the teacher’s character is suitably aligned with his/her teaching, the teacher’s own ingenium needs to be mapped out and understood. Self-examination thereby becomes an integral part of teaching, much like the careful examination of the students’ character and ingenium is a precondition for successful education.4 Interestingly, this indicates the exemplary role of the teacher in a way that goes to illustrate how the practices of self-examination and of properly diagnosing the ingenium of the student function as two preconditions for establishing a pedagogical relation where the teacher becomes exemplary in two parallel yet distinct senses. The teacher is exemplary in a pedagogical sense insofar as he or she lives in a way that corresponds with his or her teachings (that is, he or she displays an ethical way of life that corresponds with the lessons taught while also being suitably adjusted to the ingenia of the students), and the teacher is exemplary in a didactical sense insofar as he or she can identify things and ideas that will function as valuable representations of the world given the students’ ingenia. Balancing between pedagogical and didactical exemplarism requires a teacher that is exemplary insofar as he or she has carried out a degree of self-examination sufficient for engaging in a pedagogical relation that balances successfully between accommodating students’ ingenia and influencing them to strive to become more ethical (through a combination of pedagogical and didactical exemplarism). It is important to note that the parallels Vives draws to physiology are not strictly metaphorical, however. Indeed, the ingenium of a person is believed to be closely related to the constitution of the body, and so changes in the body entail changes in one’s disposition and character. A person’s ingenium, Vives speculates, is rooted in the constitution of the body, which means that it is susceptible to both training and habit (much like the body is). To the extent that a teacher succeeds in adapting a student’s education to his or her ingenium, the powers of the mind can be productively put to use in the striving for virtue. As such, Vives made two basic assumptions [about ingenium]: first, that the physiological features of the individual are a decisive ingredient of his temperament and character; second, that temperamental dispositions are of paramount importance in regulating man’s intellectual powers. (Noreña, 1970, p. 268)

The idea that the predisposition of students and teacher matters for pedagogy is of course still present in contemporary educational theory, even if it is hardly ever 4 Steinberg talks about the two-fold role of ingenium in the humanist pedagogy of Vives as a dynamic and reciprocal process. On the one hand, the teacher must endeavor to assess the ingenium of the student, but on the other hand, ‘the ingenium of the teacher enabled him to discover effective modes of instruction’ (2020, p. 159). I take this to mean that while great importance is placed on the teacher’s ability to correctly diagnose the ingenium of the student, a precondition for the teacher being able to do this is that the teacher’s own ingenium is made to resonate with the student’s. This is an important aspect that is made more pronounced in Spinoza’s adoption of the concept.

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discussed in terms of ingenium.5 For example, in his discussions on the relation between role and person in teaching (and of the importance of infusing the role with an actual person), David Hansen especially notes the demand on teachers’ moral sensibility. As such, he is highlighting the importance of ‘the disposition, the knowledge, and the practical wisdom that an individual brings to life in the role of teacher’ (Hansen, 2001, p. 39). Rather than focusing solely on the teacher being attuned to the character of the students, however, Hansen stresses the importance of the teacher continuously ‘pondering who one is in relation to students’ (2001, p. 11). This indicates that the relative proximity between teacher and student (or between moral exemplar and agent) plays an important role in the success of the pedagogical transformation toward a more ethical life. In addition, it allows us a glimpse of a contemporary version of the teacher qua exemplar insofar as it echoes Vives’ insight of the importance of a teacher being willing to submit to self-examination in order to be able to engage in a dynamic pedagogical relation with students. This invites a broader conception of exemplarism than the one offered by Linda Zagzebski’s (2017) admiration-emulation model where the relation being focused on concerns that between the novice and the admired exemplar. The teacher, in Zagzebski’s model, is simply a person pointing to an existing exemplar; it is the exemplar doing the actual work in terms of ethical transformation. The teacher’s exemplarity, in a Vivesian sense, is visible both in the sense that the teacher must be sufficiently attuned to the ingenia of the students in order to be able to influence them ethically, and in the sense that the teacher must be able to identify exemplary things and ideas that speak to the ingenia of the students. This understanding of exemplarism is broad as it points in two directions simultaneously, one pedagogical and the other didactical (see Korsgaard, 2019). The exemplary teacher is, thus, no longer solely concerned with identifying morally exemplary narratives that may influence the behavior of admiring novices, but with setting up a dynamic pedagogical relation where the teacher inhabits the role of the exemplar, not only in the sense of being a moral exemplar to emulate but also in the sense of finding useful examples that can speak to the ingenia of students while also opening up their views to the world. This should not be confused, however, with the way in which most modern theories or methods of student-centered education are geared at adjusting the learning environment so as to meet the specific demands posed by the predisposition of the student. There is a clear difference between adjusting education according to the expressed wants and needs of the student and stressing

5

Hidalgo-Serna notes this trend in a broader context, but as I take philosophy of education/educational theory to be part of a wider Humanistic tradition, I think it applies here as well. Hidalgo-Serna writes: ‘There is a fundamental problem in philosophy and the Humanistic tradition that has not been dealt with sufficiently. The philosophical significance of ingenium is no more acknowledged today than in earlier times’ (1983, p. 228). While Hidalgo-Serna’s text is now a few decades old, there are no indications of any major changes as to his conclusion about the unfortunate neglect of ingenium. In the context of this chapter, I am less concerned with determining the more general appeal of ingenium as a pedagogical concept and more interested in discussing the educational consequences of Spinoza’s use of the concept of ingenium.

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the importance of understanding the ingenia of students and teachers so as to identify what particular students truly need (but may not be aware of and therefore not explicitly want), and how a particular teacher may work to satisfy that need. LeBuffe (2010) calls this kind of teacher figure ‘the optimistic nutritionist’, and it describes a person who is proficient at distinguishing the seemingly good from the truly good, and at learning to identify and strive for those things that are in agreement with one’s ingenium while also being conceived in terms of sustainable (or true) rather than temporary goods. While LeBuffe does not focus on the educational implications of ‘the optimistic nutritionist’ (he does not explicitly conceive of ‘the optimistic nutritionist’ in terms of a teacher) I have attempted to do so in previous studies (see Dahlbeck, 2016, 2017). Spinoza’s use of the concept of ingenium is particularly enlightening as it clearly warns against the pedagogical and political dangers of disregarding a person’s or a people’s predisposition when seeking to influence and improve their behavior by way of exemplars. Before looking into some preliminary consequences for civic education, I would, therefore, like to look closer at what Spinoza’s political theory (set up against the background of his naturalistic psychology) can add to the pedagogical discussion of moral improvement via exemplars.

3.2 Spinoza on the Ingenia of Individuals and Collectives According to Steinberg (2020), Spinoza’s understanding of the concept of ingenium differs in some important aspects from the dominant understanding found in an early modern pedagogical context.6 First, it veers away from the connotation to innate genius and highlights instead the sociocultural and sociopolitical frameworks of a person’s affective composition. A person’s ingenium, for Spinoza, is less a question of innate talent (insofar as this is believed to exist independent of external influences) and more a question of a person’s overall mentality or temperament7 (being always bound up with external affects and social emotions). A person’s disposition, on Spinoza’s account, is always in part a social question as emotions are always in part socially constituted. Second, while humanist pedagogues such as Vives focused almost exclusively on the importance of diagnosing the ingenium of the student (so that it may be manipulated to the benefit of ethical and pedagogical transformation), Spinoza’s use of the concept points to a more fundamentally relational

6

Steinberg notes that the use of the term ingenium is complicated by the fact that it has several possible meanings in an early modern context: ‘It can denote wit, intelligence, cleverness, spirit, mentality, temper, and character, among other things. Ingenium was also closely linked to the concept of ingeniosus, conjuring up notions of inventiveness, resourcefulness, and even genius’ (2020, p. 159). 7 In Curley’s translation of Spinoza ingenium is sometimes translated as temperament and sometimes as mentality.

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understanding. For Spinoza, the predispositions of teachers and students (or exemplar and agent) need to be gauged in relation to one another rather than treated as isolated or independent mental entities. An interesting consequence of this, that we will return to in the next part of this chapter, is that an exemplary teacher is only an efficient exemplar to the extent that he or she is properly attuned to the ingenium of the student. The teacher may not be an exemplar in the strict sense of the admiration-emulation model proposed by Zagzebski (2017), but rather in the sense of constantly striving to balance between living in a way that accords with his or her teachings (i.e. exhibiting exemplary behavior) and selecting examples and exemplary narratives that excite the imagination and that allow students to become better acquainted with the world they inhabit. There is of course still a sense in which the teacher may need to be judged admirable in order to be truly exemplary, but it is a kind of admirability that is always restricted by a sense of approachability. That is, if the teacher is no longer deemed approachable by the students, then the admirability displayed is no longer efficacious as it cannot offer a realistic or persuasive image of how to act morally from the point of view of the students’ ingenia. Remember that the persuasive capacity of an idea is dependent on its affective power rather than its degree of truth (E4p14). Spinoza shares with Vives, however, an understanding of the importance of carefully assessing the ingenium of the student or subject before working to improve his or her character. They also share the conviction that this process must be willingly participated in (which is why the student or subject must be able to identify with the ingenium of the teacher or political leader) (Steinberg, 2020, p. 167). While Spinoza’s context is that of political philosophy and ethics, his method corresponds to some extent with Vives’ pedagogical ideas. This, in turn, is why it is useful to engage with Spinoza’s application of the concept of ingenium in the context of educational theory. Steinberg argues that Spinoza’s political philosophy—being firmly grounded in his naturalistic account of human psychology—hinges in important ways on what he labels Spinoza’s ‘Principle of Accommodation’ (2018, pp. 115–117). The concept of ingenium is central for this thesis as a crucial aspect of efficient politics is taken to be that ‘commands and teachings should be accommodated to the ingenia of affected parties, such that these commands and teachings elicit optimal (epistemic and affective) responses’ (2018, p. 115). Accommodation, on this account, ‘aims not merely at meeting people where they are, but to help reform their ingenia, so that their affective state is characterized more by hope and security than by fear’ (Steinberg, 2020, p. 167). As we saw in the previous chapter, a powerful way of connecting with people affectively—either in politics or in pedagogy—is through the use of collective narratives. By being able to identify narratives that speak to people’s ingenia, a political leader or exemplar can draw on people’s imagination to elicit their motivation to learn and act via the principle of accommodation. This indicates a different way of approaching the use of narratives from that of Zagzebski’s admiration-emulation model, however. Whereas for Zagzebski, narratives are tools allowing novices to get acquainted with an exemplar’s deeds, for Spinoza, narratives are tools used by the exemplar to actively foster the motivation and imagination of the people.

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In light of the above, one might legitimately wonder whether Spinoza makes any distinction at all between pedagogy and politics, and between political theory and social psychology. As Steinberg notes, the line Spinoza draws between pedagogy and politics is indeed blurred insofar as ‘his account of the method and aims of politics resembles Renaissance humanist rhetorical approaches to pedagogy […] so strongly that it is hardly an exaggeration [to] conclude that, for him, politics is education writ large’ (Steinberg, 2020, p. 158). This is not to say that there is no such distinction to be made, however. I believe that one may propose such a distinction while keeping in mind that (a) it must be carefully reconstructed from the broader picture of Spinoza’s overall philosophical project (as Spinoza never wrote a treatise on education) and (b) that the close ties between social psychology, politics, and pedagogy in Spinoza are not accidental, but an integral part of his naturalistic conception of the ethical formation of human beings in society. If humans were naturally equipped for ethical flourishing on their own, they would not need laws and they would not need society to begin with (TTP 5 [18–22]). As they are not sufficiently equipped, however, they need powerful collective narratives that can help keep them together under the auspices of a peaceful commonwealth, capable of protecting them from one another and from various external threats. Civic education, then, is an effective way of uniting people through collective narratives while also ensuring that these narratives are not enflaming dangerous superstitions and fear but rather working to promote peace and security. Peace and security, as we have seen, is necessary for the individual’s striving for ethical flourishing. This is so as humans are naturally sociable and because cooperation is absolutely necessary for human flourishing. Indeed, for Spinoza, a stable social order is a precondition for the ethical well-being of the individual: A social order is very useful, and even most necessary, not only for living securely from enemies, but also for doing many things more easily. For if men were not willing to give mutual assistance to one another, they would lack both skill and time to sustain and preserve themselves as far as possible. (TTP 5[18])

Civic education, from Spinoza’s point of view, thereby serves the broader political purpose of ensuring peace and security for all by utilizing psychological insights that can be transformed into a concrete pedagogical method serving to accommodate exemplary narratives to the ingenia of novices. I am proposing that such a method can be recreated by investigating Spinoza’s use of the concept of ingenium as this indicates how Spinoza would approach the educational project of ethical formation of novices. Placing focus on the relation between teacher and student, and on how the teacher can accommodate lessons in a way that speaks to the student’s ingenium, Spinoza’s conception of civic education is concerned with utilizing the resources of the imagination in order to gradually strengthen the power of reason over dangerous affects like hatred and fear. Let us look closer at this key aspect that functions by connecting Spinoza’s naturalistic psychology with his political theory in a decidedly educational manner. As looked into in the previous chapter, Susan James (2010) has studied the relation between emotional engagement and the possibility of developing practical and

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ethical knowledge through the frameworks of Spinoza’s psychological theory and his political philosophy. It is important to note that rather than understanding the imagination and human affects as obstacles to conquer in our striving for true knowledge, Spinoza maps out the relation between rationality, imagination, and emotions in order to better understand the dynamic interaction between them. We are not either rational or irrational on Spinoza’s account. We are caught between, on the one hand, always striving for reliable knowledge (as reliable knowledge will help us strive for realistic ethical aims that in turn help us persevere in existence), and on the other hand, always being cognitively limited, which is why we need to compensate for this innate limitation by drawing on our imagination (which often deceives us). This is inevitable and it would, therefore, be very unfortunate if we were to idealize a form of pure reason that antagonizes the impact of emotions in a way that flies in the face of our passionate nature. Spinoza’s major complaint against political philosophers is precisely that they tend to ground their theories in a highly idealized understanding of human nature (TP 1[1]). Accordingly, it would not be rational to act as if we were fully rational when we are in fact not.8 James claims that this goes to illustrate how philosophical principles must be made to fall within the reach of the imagination in order to be able to shape people’s desires and actions (2010, p. 267). James (2010) starts out from Spinoza’s metaphysical supposition about our limited ability to understand the world adequately and applies his ideas about how the imagination can be made to support reason on the example of how different narrative representations of the world can provoke different emotional responses (and how these can be used for ethical and political purposes). Spinoza argues that the best way for humans to begin to perceive the benefits of peaceful coexistence is to arrive at a philosophically sound understanding of themselves and of nature. Because this understanding is exceedingly difficult to attain (due to our innate cognitive limitations), Spinoza proposes the use of collective narratives that can capture the imagination while at the same time leading people toward a relatively stable understanding of how the individual’s striving for well-being is conditioned by the stability of the collective (TTP 6[49–50]). 8

Spinoza addresses this important concern in the TTP, arguing that the reason we need laws and moral standards to begin with is to compensate for the fact that we are not—nor will we ever be—fully rational: Now if nature had so constituted men that they desired nothing except what true reason teaches them to desire, then of course a society could exist without laws; in that case it would be completely sufficient to teach men true moral lessons, so that they would do voluntarily, wholeheartedly, and in a manner of a free man, what is really useful. But human nature is not constituted like that at all. It’s true that everyone seeks his own advantage—but people want things and judge them useful, not by the dictate of sound reason, but for the most part only from immoderate desire and because they are carried away by affects of mind which take no account of the future and of other things. That’s why no society can continue in existence without authority and force, and hence, laws which moderate and restrain men’s immoderate desires and unchecked impulses. (TTP 5[20–22], G III/73/27–74) For further references to places where Spinoza establishes that human nature is not naturally inclined toward reason, see TTP 16[7] and the preface to Part 4 of the Ethics.

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Spinoza uses different examples of narratives to illustrate this. These examples span from narratives that may be used for the purposes of political and social governance to fictions that may offer a framework for developing the ethical understanding of the individual by establishing connections between personal experiences and collective narratives. There are powerful narratives (such as the stories in the Bible) that can captivate many people at once and that can enable them to strive for similar things as a group. These narratives, however, can be exploited for the purpose of passivating vulnerable groups in society; groups that may come to harbor mistrust and unrest, which may lead to social and political instability over time.9 Other narratives may be easier to mold in accordance with the needs of the individual, but these narratives often lack the ability to capture the imagination of many so as to stabilize the collective. The task of identifying collective narratives that can speak to many different people in many different contexts is challenged by the fact that each person is differently constituted affectively. Each person, that is, has a different ingenium (E3p31c). What a person strives for may be understood in terms of a reflection of her affective composition, which, in extension, means that a person’s moral motivation is also determined by her ingenium (Steinberg, 2018, pp. 19–23). This entails that different narratives affect different people in different ways, and that different narratives will affect the same people in different ways depending on the situation. At the same time, there is a collective aspect to people’s affective composition explained by the fact that people are influenced by one another to the extent that they benefit from similar things, such as friendship and knowledge, and to the extent that they have had common experiences. This entails that not only individuals but also groups have an ingenium insofar as they share a common history and experience similar living conditions. It is no surprise, therefore, that Spinoza’s use of the concept of ingenium in his works on political theory focuses largely on how to understand, account for, and respond to the ingenium of groups and people. One of the consequences that Spinoza draws from his conclusion that people’s general understanding of the world is bound up with their affective experiences (as individuals and as groups) rather than determined solely by reason, is that these experiences need to be addressed and used for pedagogical purposes: It follows that if someone wants to teach a doctrine to a whole nation—not to mention the whole human race—and wants everyone to understand him in every respect, he is bound to prove his doctrine solely by experience, and for the most part to accommodate his arguments and the definitions of his teachings to the power of understanding of ordinary people, who form the greatest part of the human race. (TTP 5[37]) 9

Rosenthal comments on this tension between universality and particularity in exemplary narratives: What appears to be universal actually reflects some more particular interpretation of experience. The idea that scripture is “revealed” hides its human origins, the source of an exemplar’s strength but also of its weakness. It can appeal to a large group of people of diverse interests and ideas. But it can also be placed in service of those divergent interests. (Rosenthal, 2002, p. 244)

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A major challenge in this is that, as indicated earlier, people’s affects are generally not restrained ‘by the true knowledge of good and evil insofar as it is true but only insofar as it is considered as an affect’ (E4p14). That is, on Spinoza’s account, a person’s understanding and behavior is shaped by her affective composition—her ingenium—which, in turn, is externally determined insofar as all people are highly susceptible to external influences. Since an ‘affect cannot be restrained or taken away except by an affect opposite to, and stronger than, the affect to be restrained’ (E4p7), the imagination needs to be enlisted so that people’s experiences and memories can be made to connect with, and strengthen, the power of reason (TTP 5[35–37]).

3.3 Exemplarity in Spinoza: Ethics, Politics, and Education Returning to the admiration-emulation model of moral education, we are now in a position to see more clearly how Spinoza’s use of the concept of ingenium can be a valuable theoretical resource for addressing problems connected with the unattainability of moral exemplars. My hypothesis is that a model of virtuous behavior would tend to fail to act as an effective exemplar because he or she would not be sufficiently attuned to the ingenia of the people addressed. Spinoza can help us explain this in terms of the dynamics of people’s affective constitution. If we recall that a person’s affects will not be restrained ‘by the true knowledge of good and evil insofar as it is true but only insofar as it is considered as an affect’ (E4p14), we see that while someone may be argued to exhibit morally exemplary behavior, he or she would be ineffective as an exemplar insofar as he or she fails to attract people’s imagination. In order to understand what an effective exemplar would look like, it is useful to turn to Spinoza’s use of exemplars in his political works. In this context, Spinoza is concerned with exemplars that can appeal to people who are not already on the path to virtue, but whose affective constitution is determined largely by passions. In an educational context, it seems reasonable to assume that—to varying degrees—students are not necessarily attracted to what may be described as supremely admirable people. The reason for this being that the identification of morally admirable behavior presupposes a substantial understanding of what is to be judged morally exemplary (Szutta, 2019). This kind of judgment is, arguably, the result rather than the starting point of good moral education. In the absence of a developed moral judgment, students may need to become imaginatively engaged with narratives that can enlist their admiration without being perceived as being too far removed from the sociocultural and sociopolitical contexts in which the students operate. This conception of students approximates Spinoza’s understanding of ‘ordinary people’ and so it would seem that Spinoza’s conception of how fallible or imperfect exemplars can be used to appeal to the ingenium of groups of people can be productively applied to an educational context (Dahlbeck & De Lucia Dahlbeck, 2020). The connection Spinoza establishes between ethics, politics, and education corresponds with the tight relation he sets up between the striving for the supreme good of

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the individual and the purpose of social organization writ large. As sketched out in the previous section, Spinoza appears to blur the distinction between these domains to the degree where it becomes difficult to see exactly where one domain ends and the other begins. This is not done by accident, however, but it is a systematic way of illustrating how ethical well-being is the summum bonum of human existence, and where politics and civic education—in different ways—are necessary instruments for the attainment of this supreme good. While this may seem overly abstract, it is important to pause a moment to consider what the blurring of these distinctions might mean for civic education in a more contemporary sense. I propose that what Spinoza stands to offer is a more dynamic and less idealistic concept of politics that involves educational endeavors to the extent that civic education becomes a—broadly conceived—political instrument, geared for refocusing attention on the ethical dimensions of education. That is, education for Spinoza is always (directly or indirectly) aimed at human flourishing (and ethical well-being), but a precondition for human flourishing is political stability, and therefore civic education must enlist powerful exemplary narratives (such as the narrative of the social contract) that can help secure the peace and stability of the state by appealing to the imagination of the students. The peace and stability of the state is not an end in itself, however, but a means to the end of facilitating the individual’s striving for a more sustainable form of ethical well-being.10 It falls upon the civic educator to relate these narratives in a way that is attuned to the ingenia of the novices of education. The starting point for Spinoza’s account of exemplarism in a political setting is that people, in general (i.e. ‘ordinary people’), are far less rationally oriented than they tend to think that they are. That is, we do not exert the kind of control over our emotional responses to forces around us in the world that we often like to think. Also, as we saw in Chap. 1, emotions and affects are highly contagious and so we are much more prone to be influenced by each other (for good or for bad) than we tend to acknowledge. The upshot of this for an exemplarist moral theory is that the cognitive capacities of an individual will not make for a terribly reliable instrument for securing the emulation of admirable behavior. Instead, exemplarism must account for the human tendency to be moved by passions and to harness the productive aspects of the naturally occurring imitation of affects. While the fact that emotions and affects are highly contagious can often be a problem—as it explains why negative emotions like fear, suspicion, and hatred spread easily—it is also the very thing that enables the efficacy of exemplarism. Insofar as the exemplar (in the form of the teacher and the content related) is attuned to the ingenium of the group addressed, the people of the group will be more readily affected by the emotions displayed. We can never share another person’s ingenium fully. We can only ever approximate it insofar as we share common experiences and insofar as we adhere to similar social norms and traditions. Common experiences and common sociopolitical and sociocultural 10

Spinoza’s thesis that the stability of the state is a necessary precondition for individual ethical flourishing is one of the central starting points of the TTP. The reason for safeguarding the stability of the state vigilantly is quite simply that ‘if the state is destroyed, nothing good can remain, but everything is at risk. Only anger and impiety rule, and everyone lives in the greatest possible fear’ (TTP 19[22], G III/232/10–12).

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frameworks, therefore, play an important role for how Spinoza conceives of the effective political exemplar. In the TTP, Spinoza turns to Moses as an illustration of how an effective exemplar operates in situ.11 As we have seen, Spinoza’s understanding of Moses is not that of a perfect moral exemplar. It is not on account of his perfect moral wisdom and behavior that Moses can appeal to and successfully govern the Hebrews. It is because he is perfectly attuned to the ingenium of the Hebrew people that he can do this.12 As we saw in Chap. 1, this ability to adapt to the ingenium of the Hebrew people is due to Moses’ powerful imagination rather than to his moral superiority or his power of reasoning. He also perceived the way that people could best be compelled to obedience. But he did not perceive, and it was not revealed to him, that that way is best—or even that the goal they were aiming at would necessarily follow from the general obedience of the people in such a region of the world. So he perceived all these things, not as eternal truths, but as precepts and institutions and he prescribed them as laws of God. That’s why he imagined God as a ruler, a lawgiver, a king, as compassionate, just, etc., when all these things are attributes only of human nature, and ought to be removed entirely from the divine nature. (TTP 4[29–30], G III/64/6–15)

From Spinoza’s perspective, Moses’ understanding of God (and of the laws of God) is clearly not perfect but severely distorted by the limitations of human imagination. This may prevent him from perceiving ethics in terms of eternal philosophical truths, but it enables him to conceive of ethics in terms of moral commands to be obeyed. This, however, is not just a reflection of the fallibility of Moses. It indicates something important that he shares with the ingenium of the majority of the Hebrew people, or so Spinoza claims. Moses’ way of leading the Hebrews is perfectly aligned with their past experiences and so it speaks to what is well known and familiar: [H]e did not permit these men, accustomed as they were to bondage, to act just as they pleased. For the people could do nothing without being bound at the same time to remember the law, and to carry out commands which depended only on the will of the ruler. For it was not at their own pleasure, but according to a fixed and determinate command of the law, that they were permitted to plow, to sow, to reap. (TTP 5[30], G III/75/27–31)

Insofar as this seems to lead us away from, rather than closer to, the question of moral exemplarism, it is important to remind that for Spinoza, as we have seen, political stability is an absolute precondition for ethics.13 The past experiences of 11

For an insightful take on the exemplarity of Moses in Spinoza’s political writings, see Rosenthal (2002). 12 A consequence of this is that Moses is not conceived as an ethical exemplar to emulate, but rather as a pedagogical exemplar illustrating the importance of a teacher being attuned to the ingenia of his or her students. 13 In the TP, Spinoza explains the tight connection and reciprocity between the right of the individual to strive for a virtuous life (which for Spinoza is the same as a life guided by reason) and the need for stability and security in civic life. He writes: [R]eason teaches us without qualification to seek peace, which certainly can’t be obtained unless the common laws of the Commonwealth are observed without violation. So, the more

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the Hebrews had made it so that ‘[a]lmost all of them were unsophisticated in their mentality and weakened by wretched bondage’ and because of this, Spinoza asserts, ‘the sovereignty had to remain in the hands of one person only, who could command the others, compel them by force, and finally, who would prescribe laws and afterward interpret them’ (TTP 5[27]). Had their past experiences been different, however, they would respond better to a different kind of leadership. And so, good governance is always relative to the ingenia of particular collectives. And a good leader—much like a good teacher—is characterized by the ability to correctly read (and adapt his or her teachings to) the ingenium of the subjects. Reconfiguring the political leader of Moses into a Spinozistically conceived teacher, then, we find that a teacher that is equipped with a powerful imagination—and that is thereby able to adjust collective narratives so as to appeal to the ingenia of the students—is perhaps more adept at teaching than a supremely wise teacher (who may be too far removed from the ingenia of his or her students to be able to influence them). Unsurprisingly, then, a stable and secure political community is also a necessary precondition for good civic education. To sum up Spinoza’s views on the efficacy of exemplars (whether they be conceived in terms of political leaders or teachers of children and students), we may conclude that in order to be of practical relevance exemplars should: (1) be attuned to the ingenium of the subjects; (2) make use of collective narratives that appeal to the imagination of the subjects; and (3) not focus narrowly on the acquisitions of virtues without attending first to the sociopolitical stability of the collective. The role of the teacher in this setup is to navigate in the pedagogical triangle between the student and the content, acting at once as a pedagogical and ethical exemplar (by living in a way that accords with his or her teachings) and as a person in charge of the didactical exemplarity necessary for being able to identify and relate narratives that are attuned to the ingenia of the students, while leading them into the world and thus broadening the scope of their affective composition.

a man is led by reason, i.e. (by ii, 11), the more free he is, the more steadfastly he will observe the laws of the Commonwealth and carry out the commands of the supreme power to which he is subject. (TP 3[6], G III/286/17–25) As early as in the TIE, Spinoza affirms the importance of adapting teachings of ethics to ‘the power of understanding of ordinary people’ so as to ensure that the striving for virtue is not hampered by civil unrest. Accordingly, he writes that ‘we can gain a considerable advantage, if we yield as much to their understanding as we can. In this way, they will give a favorable hearing to the truth’ (TIE §17). According to Andrea Sangiacomo (2019), Spinoza did not, however, assign the positive role to social cooperation in the TIE that he would come to do in his later texts. Sangiacomo helpfully sketches Spinoza’s development from his early endorsement of what Sangiacomo calls ‘the epistemic self-sufficiency of the mind’ in the TIE to his later acceptance of the importance of enlisting sociopolitical forces for the purpose of ethical and rational fostering in his political works. Spinoza’s use of the concept of ingenium may be taken to reflect this gradual turn toward a more positive understanding of the role of social cooperation as a crucial mechanism for working toward the strengthening of collective forms of use of reason.

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3.4 The Paradox of Civic Education: Gaining Autonomy by Losing Oneself in a Crowd? An interesting tension seems to result from the fact that while the purpose of civic education is to strengthen the freedom and autonomy of students, the means by which this is largely done is by forging strong social bonds (through the manipulation of emotions) so as to make students appreciate that they are parts of a greater whole. Engaging popular narratives that can appeal to people’s imagination in a way that sparks their desire to cooperate and to strengthen their sense of community is a central part of civic education from the point of view of Spinoza’s political theory. The foremost purpose of using popular narratives that resonate with students’ ingenia would be to assist them in bridging the perceived gap between striving for selfpreservation and helping others strive for the same thing. As we will see in the next chapter, Spinoza thinks that this can be done by relating collective narratives that are not strictly speaking true, but that are still sufficiently compatible with an adequate understanding of the world to not become corruptive and spiral down into a vicious circle of affects. As such they make for valuable steppingstones in the education of the imagination, geared at strengthening social bonds and increasing security and stability in the state. Two examples that we will turn to in the next chapter are the doctrines of universal faith (TTP 14) and the doctrine of the social contract (TTP 16). The paradox of civic education, then, is that in order to become more autonomous—in Spinoza’s sense—students need to become less individualistically, and more collectivistically, minded. While this certainly seems paradoxical it is quite straightforward on Spinoza’s account. What it means is that the striving to persevere in existence, which is what defines us as individuals, is conditioned by our ability to strive in concert with others whose nature agrees with us. In Chap. 1, we saw how Spinoza’s doctrine of the imitation of affects (E3p27) entails that if we can identify things that are good for us (and that are not connected to things that only some may possess) then we will benefit from others striving for the same thing. Indeed, to the extent that more people strive for the same good, this striving will be all the more powerful and the love for it will grow stronger (and more resilient) the more people join together (E4p37d2). Because our degree of individual freedom and autonomy is relative to our degree of understanding, and because knowledge is available to all (and not something that only a few may possess), we will be more autonomous and more free if we join together with others who strive alongside us for a more adequate understanding of themselves and the world. Correspondingly, the greatest threat to our freedom and autonomy is to exist in isolation or to live in an unstable community dominated by dangerous and divisive passions like hatred and fear. Our striving to persevere in existence will then be relatively weak and easily conquered by external powers and passions of sadness. Our only way of strengthening ourselves reliably, then, is by joining forces with others who strive for similar things. A precondition for this, as we have seen, is that the state is rendered relatively secure and peaceful so that we do not need to dedicate

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all our time and energy to protecting ourselves and ensuring our own survival. This is how, at a fundamental level, the freedom of the individual is absolutely conditioned by the stability of the community for Spinoza. Because people are always passionate to some degree, they need help in coming to see that the things that are truly good for them are things that are common to all. This raises questions about how people can be made to understand this. We have already seen how fictions can play an important part in this educational scheme insofar as valuable fictions can be used to educate the imagination without completely derailing the striving for an adequate understanding (as discussed in Chap. 2). We have also seen (in this chapter) how the efficacy of valuable fictions and popular narratives hinges on to what extent they are successfully accommodated to the ingenia of students, and to what extent teachers and students are attuned to one another affectively. What remains to be investigated is the more problematic aspect of manipulation in civic education. It is to this matter that we will now turn.

References Dahlbeck, J. (2016). Spinoza and education: Freedom, understanding and empowerment. Routledge. Dahlbeck, J. (2017). A Spinozistic model of moral education. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 36(5), 533–550. Dahlbeck, J., & De Lucia Dahlbeck, M. (2020). The moral fallibility of Spinoza’s exemplars: Exploring the educational value of imperfect models of human behavior. Ethics and Education, 15(2), 260–274. Hansen, D. T. (2001). Exploring the moral heart of teaching: Toward a teacher’s creed. Teachers College Press. Hellerstedt, A. (2019). From ingenium to virtus: The cultivation of talent in seventeenth century dissertations from Uppsala University. Nordic Journal of Educational History, 6(1), 71–93. Hidalgo-Serna, E. (1983). ‘Ingenium’ and rhetoric in the work of Vives (trans. L. Ballew & H. Wilson). Philosophy & Rhetoric, 16(4), 228–241. James, S. (2010). Narrative as the means to freedom: Spinoza on the uses of imagination. In Y. Y. Melamed & M. A. Rosenthal (Eds.), Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise: A critical guide. Cambridge University Press. Korsgaard, M. T. (2019). Exploring the role of exemplarity in education: Two dimensions of the teacher’s task. Ethics and Education, 14(3), 271–284. LeBuffe, M. (2010). From bondage to freedom: Spinoza on human excellence. Oxford University Press. Noreña, C. G. (1970). Juan Luis Vives. Springer. Rosenthal, M. A. (2002). Why Spinoza chose the Hebrews: The exemplary function of prophecy in the Theological-Political Treatise. In H. M. Ravven & L. E. Goodman (Eds.), Jewish themes in Spinoza’s philosophy. SUNY Press. Sangiacomo, A. (2019). Spinoza on reason, passions, and the supreme good. Oxford University Press. Steinberg, J. (2018). Spinoza’s political psychology: The taming of fortune and fear. Cambridge University Press. Steinberg, J. (2020). Politics as a model of pedagogy in Spinoza. Ethics and Education, 15(2), 158–172.

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Szutta, N. (2019). Exemplarist moral theory—Some pros and cons. Journal of Moral Education, 48(3), 280–290. Vives, J. L. (1913). Vives: On education [De Tradendis Disciplinis] (trans. F. Watson). Cambridge University Press. Zagzebski, L. T. (2017). Exemplarist moral theory. Oxford University Press.

Chapter 4

Teaching Doctrines to People: Manipulation and Civic Education

How, then, could we devise one of those useful falsehoods we were talking about a while ago, one noble falsehood that would, in the best case, persuade even the rulers, but if that’s not possible, then the others in the city?—Plato, Republic III, 414b ‘You said that you know ways to make me happier and more serene. But you don’t ask whether that is what I really want.’ ‘Well,’ Joseph Knecht said, laughing, ‘if we can make a person happier and more serene, we should do it in any case, whether or not he asks us to. And how could you not want that and not be seeking it?’—Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game.

The connection made between educating the imagination through valuable fictions (in the guise of popular narratives) and accommodating teachings to the ingenia of students (so as to render this education more effective) invites relevant questions concerning emotional manipulation and civic education. According to John Tillson (2021), manipulation is an attitude whereby someone seeks to influence someone else using the most effective means for doing so. We might add here that manipulation seems to entail that someone is seeking to influence someone else into doing something without that person being aware of it. Indoctrination is one such method for manipulating where students are made to form lasting emotional attachments to beliefs without relying on reason and rational arguments. Spinoza’s arguments for appealing to the imagination of students are, as we have seen, grounded in the assumption that most people tend to be governed far more by passions than by reason. This obviously begs the question of when and to what extent this kind of emotional manipulation is permissible in civic education and, in extension, how one is to determine when it is permissible and when it is not. In this chapter, we will investigate Spinoza’s conception of indoctrination, and we will attempt to answer the two important questions raised above. Let us, therefore, begin by looking closer at the concept of indoctrination in a more general educational context, before focusing on unpacking Spinoza’s theory of indoctrination such as this is laid out in his political works.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 J. Dahlbeck, Spinoza, SpringerBriefs on Key Thinkers in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-7125-8_4

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4.1 Indoctrination in Education A useful way of beginning to survey the conceptual landscape of indoctrination in education is to make a first preliminary distinction between a pejorative use of the term and a more descriptive or literal use (Callan & Arena, 2009).1 Typically, indoctrination is interpreted in a strictly negative sense (not least in ordinary language), where the concept denotes someone’s insidious restriction of someone else’s mental ability and personal autonomy. Indoctrination, understood in this sense, is never a good thing.2 As David Copp remarks, ‘where it [i.e. the term indoctrination] is so understood, no-one would condone indoctrination in the schools—it would be strange to do so’ (2016, p. 149, emphasis in original). A more descriptive approach might, however, turn to an older usage and interpret indoctrination—more neutrally or literally—in terms of the general teaching of doctrine,3 which in a sense risks leading to a notion of indoctrination broad enough to potentially encompass most, if not all, cases of teaching.4 From this standpoint, it appears as if the pejorative use may be too narrow (in the sense that it hardly allows for any debate regarding the positive aspects of indoctrination at all), and the historically informed descriptive use is far too broad (in the sense that it does not seem to allow for any meaningful distinction between teaching and indoctrination). 1

Rather than two parallel tracks for interpreting the concept of indoctrination, Callan and Arena (2009, p. 104) argue for ‘a linguistic shift’ where the pejorative use has gradually overtaken the older and more descriptive use. 2 Callan and Arena label indoctrination, understood in the pejorative sense, a form of moral wrongdoing. They describe it as ‘some intellectual distortion in the presentation of subject matter that elicits a corresponding distortion in the minds of students’, where this distortion ‘is not to be explained by intellectual laziness or indifference, but by an ill-considered or overzealous concern to inculcate particular beliefs’ (2009, p. 115). 3 I understand the term doctrine to refer broadly to any set of beliefs taught and accepted by a particular group (which corresponds with the definition given in the Cambridge Dictionary, see https:// dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/doctrine). As we will see, however, Spinoza uses the term doctrine in a more specific sense in his political texts. Lærke explains that, In the TTP, Spinoza thus describes ‘doctrines’ as the best available tool for structuring the collective imagination of people and making them act in accordance with their own rational self-interest even when they have no genuine knowledge of what that might consist in. (Lærke, 2021, p. 48) 4

A common strategy for refuting a conception of indoctrination that appeals to its etymological origin (where indoctrination is taken to be more or less the equivalent of teaching) is to argue that it amounts to committing a naturalistic fallacy, where an ‘ought’ is illegitimately extrapolated from an ‘is’. Robin Barrow argues accordingly in a recent paper (Barrow, 2020, p. 718), adding that an undue broadening of the interpretation of normative concepts such as indoctrination risks hampering analytical work to the extent that it blurs useful conceptual boundaries. He writes, ‘Insofar as I use the word “education” interchangeably with “training,” “socialization,” “upbringing,” “rearing,” and “indoctrination,” I deny myself the possibility of making some useful distinctions, and will necessarily be entertaining thoughts of a relatively crude and general kind’ (Barrow, 2020, p. 719). I am indebted to Christian Norefalk for alerting me to the relevant passage in Barrow’s paper.

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The latter approach has, for obvious reasons, not been very prominently featured in the contemporary debate on indoctrination in education.5 While the pejorative use is, in its simplest form, mostly noticeable in everyday conversation, I would argue that the debate on indoctrination in education still veers toward a more negative understanding in general. Indeed, as a rule, indoctrination is seen as a potential threat to human autonomy and critical thinking, and it is primarily on these terms that the debate has been set up and carried out. The most pressing problem facing philosophers of education from this standpoint has often been taken to concern the working out of different viable strategies for avoiding indoctrination in education (i.e. strategies for saving education from the ever-present threat of indoctrination). Various positions have been staked out in this debate, but they all seem to share certain presuppositions vis-à-vis the assumed human capacity for autonomous thought and ability to follow the guidance of reason.6 This is where Spinoza offers a different route into the debate on indoctrination. His position is conditioned by his understanding of autonomy as fundamentally relational. As such, Spinoza proposes an account of autonomy that is always in part constituted by outside forces, and that therefore always has to account for these and make practical use of them rather than attempt—in vain—to block them out entirely. Spinoza’s theory of indoctrination (such as this may be gleaned from his thoughts on good governance in his political treatises) hinges on a few central premises, firmly grounded in his overarching metaphysics and his ethics. As we have seen, Spinoza proposes that the supreme ethical goal (summum bonum) for humans is the attainment of freedom and autonomy, which is tantamount to increasing our rational understanding of God or Nature (E4p28; E4p28d). We face a considerable challenge in this, however, as we are naturally limited as finite beings endowed with limited cognition. This, of course, means that we are all naturally limited in our 5

While not exactly contemporary, a notable exception to the modern dismissal of indoctrination in educational theory would be George Counts’ description of indoctrination in Dare the School Build a New Social Order? Renouncing education that resorts to the deliberate distortion of facts, Counts maintains that he would still be prepared to defend the thesis that all education contains a large element of imposition, that in the very nature of the case this is inevitable, that the existence and evaluation of society depends upon it, that it is consequently eminently desirable, and that the frank acceptance of this fact by the educator is a major professional obligation. (Counts, 1932, p. 9)

Accordingly, Counts suggests that progressive educational thinkers should be less frightened ‘of imposition and indoctrination’ (1932, p. 7, emphasis in original), and so he proposes the following conclusion: ‘My thesis is that complete impartiality is utterly impossible, that the school must shape attitudes, develop tastes, and even impose ideas’ (1932, p. 16). 6 For example, the contradiction between indoctrination and the assumed capacity for autonomous thought and rationality is reiterated in a recent article by Ruth Wareham where she describes indoctrination as a predominantly liberal concern insofar as it denotes ‘the idea of inculcating beliefs and values in a way that is inimical to freedom, autonomy and rationality’ (Wareham, 2019, p. 57n). As is implied in this brief quote, it is typically assumed that indoctrination is inimical to the educational ideal of personal autonomy, where autonomy is taken to refer to the epistemic self-sufficiency of the mind.

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understanding. We are nevertheless defined by reason insofar as our mind’s striving to persevere in existence (our conatus) is the same as our striving to understand things adequately (E3p9). Freedom and autonomy, then, hinge on us being able to understand things adequately as opposed to us being passively affected by them (Spinoza’s conception of autonomy is, therefore, not tantamount to self-direction in the usual sense of following our will), meaning that ‘autonomy consists in having adequate ideas’ (Kisner, 2011, p. 59). However, because we are cognitively limited beings with a limited understanding, we are also naturally limited in our autonomy. The upshot of this for Spinoza is that autonomy is an inherently relational affair (as discussed in Chap. 1). We need each other for two main reasons: to help protect one another from external threats and to help compensate for our natural limitations. In order to do this, people must ensure that others abide by the same rules so that they can promote their increased understanding without external threats and so that people can be made to trust one another enough to help advance collectively toward the longterm goal of ethical freedom and autonomy. The important thing, for Spinoza, is that people approximate the aim of understanding things adequately, not how they come to do this. To address the first challenge, Spinoza proposes the institution of common laws aimed at moderating dangerous passions and securing the peace and security of the state (TTP 5[18–25]). To address the second challenge, Spinoza elaborates a strategy for how the imagination (inadequate ideas) can help strengthen our collective striving for an increased understanding by taking advantage of our natural tendency to be affected by one another (as described in Chap. 1). Spinoza writes, ‘If we imagine a thing like us, toward which we have had no affect, to be affected with some affect, we are thereby affected with a like affect’ (E3p27). This opens up an affective avenue for influence via the imagination, where people can be moved to become more autonomous by striving to act in accordance with others who act rationally. Autonomy, then, is at bottom a social and political affair. The measure of autonomy is not the degree to which an individual can rise above their circumstances, but the degree to which social and political structures can help promote a life guided by reason. As Kisner has pointed out, ‘For Spinoza, irrational preferences cannot be autonomous, even if they have been chosen without any obvious manipulation or coercion’, and so it is perfectly conceivable that ‘we can promote the autonomy of others by “making” them be rational’ (2011, pp. 61–62).

4.2 Idealism and Realism in Education and Politics: Spinoza’s Warning in the Political Treatise In the introduction to his unfinished Political Treatise, Spinoza issues a warning against the all-too-common tendency to overestimate reason as the primary motivator of human actions. Human affects—and particularly the passions—are often treated in terms of mere obstacles to be overcome by rational means in the political construction

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of a rational society. This, Spinoza warns, leads to a brand of political idealism that is actually counterproductive with regard to the joint striving for a more ethical and rationally constituted community: Philosophers conceive the affects by which we’re torn as vices, which men fall into by their own fault. That’s why they usually laugh at them, weep over them, censure them, or (if they want to seem particularly holy) curse them. They believe they perform a godly act and reach the pinnacle of wisdom when they’ve learned how to bewail the way men really are. They conceive of men not as they are, but as they want them to be. That’s why for the most part they’ve written Satire instead of Ethics, and why they’ve never conceived a Politics which could be put to any practical application, but only one which would be thought a Fantasy, possible only in Utopia, or in the golden age of the Poets, where there’d be absolutely no need for it. (TP 1[1], G III/273/4–17)

Against this idealistic fallacy committed by political thinkers, Spinoza proposes a method for grounding political theory in a more realistic conception of human nature, one where passions are conceived as an integral and necessary part of the human experience. This is certainly not to say that Spinoza scorns the life guided by reason, but that he is utterly realistic about the limited potential for individual humans to reach this goal without a secure and peaceful community acting as a foundation. As such, this appears to introduce a remarkable tension between Spinoza’s conception of the summum bonum of human existence as the intellectual love of God (TTP 4[10]; E5p20d; E4p28d) and the political aim of promoting the peace and security of the state (TP 5[2]; TP 5[5]; TTP 3[20]). This tension is only apparent, however. Upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that Spinoza understands the peace and security of the state to make for an indispensable foundation for the individual’s ability to strive for intellectual autonomy and ethical freedom. In short, there would be no way of protecting the supreme right to the freedom of philosophizing had it not been for the power of the state to counteract dangerous passions such as hatred, greed, envy, and pride. Because people are always passionate to some degree, the state needs to combat passions with passions so as to compensate for most people’s inability to be guided by reason. The reason passions cannot be assumed to be automatically restrained or conquered by reason is, as we have seen, that affects can only be countered by more powerful affects (E4p7), and the power of an affect cannot be nullified by the truth of an idea (E4p14). On Spinoza’s view, this natural deficit on the part of human rationality is the main reason for why we need the protective measures of the state to begin with (TTP 5[20–22]). This is not simply an expression of a paternalistic disdain of the inability of the uneducated masses to restrain passions, however. Later in the TTP, Spinoza explains how this tendency applies to all people (to varying degrees), ‘whether they rule or are ruled’ (TTP 17[14], G III/203/16). People, Spinoza asserts, tend to be ‘governed only by affects, not by reason’ (TTP 17[14], G III/203/19), and the problem of politics is deeply psychological in that [e]veryone thinks that he alone knows everything, and wants everything to be done according to his mentality. He thinks a thing fair or unfair, permissible or impermissible, just to the extent that he judges it brings him profit or loss. (TTP 17[15], G III/203/21–24)

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This, then, sets the stage for Spinoza’s conception of indoctrination as a political tool necessary for compensating for the general inability of people to refrain from acting on debilitating passions rather than reason. Indoctrination, from this point of view, is an affective instrument for countering dangerous passions that individuals are incapable of restraining when left to their own devices. My account of Spinoza’s notion of indoctrination differs from Tapio Puolimatka’s (2001) treatment, which represents a rare discussion of Spinoza and indoctrination in the context of contemporary philosophy of education. Puolimatka asserts an understanding of Spinoza’s theory of indoctrination where some people, being naturally dominated by passions, require indoctrination in order to gain an increased understanding, whereas others, who are led by reason, can naturally do without. He writes, Insofar as students are willing to be rationally activated, it is possible to teach them without indoctrination. If, on the other hand, they are rationally passive and controlled by imagination, the educator is forced to resort to indoctrination. The crucial criticism that can be raised against Spinoza’s theory is that people cannot be neatly categorised into these two groups without a paternalising attitude. (Puolimatka, 2001, p. 397)

On my view, the problem with Puolimatka’s appraisal of Spinoza’s conception of indoctrination is that it severely underestimates Spinoza’s relational understanding of autonomy (see, for example, Sangiacomo, 2019) as well as the productive role Spinoza assigns to the imagination and to passions in terms of how they condition the collective formation of knowledge (see, for example, Gatens & Lloyd, 1999). As I mean to show, the conception of two distinct categories of people—one rational and the other passionate or irrational—is inherently false and it invites the kind of idealistic understanding of human nature that Spinoza explicitly warns against. On the contrary, we have already seen how Spinoza conceives of all people as more or less passionate and as governed largely by imaginative thinking (while naturally striving towards increased rationality). This includes all students to varying degrees and, importantly, it includes their teachers as well (insofar as it applies to all, ‘whether they rule or are ruled’ [TTP 17[14], G III/203/16]). In addition, and following from this, I will argue that even if we grant that people are rational to varying degrees, Spinoza’s political philosophy prescribes passionate means of governance for all, as the individual is unable to flourish without sufficient degrees of social and political stability. In order to perceive the problem more clearly, we need to start with Spinoza’s views on human rationality as being severely limited by a fragmented cognitive capacity preventing people in general from understanding nature adequately. To be sure, this makes for a highly skeptical perspective on the human capacity to become rationally autonomous, and this skepticism is precisely what informs Spinoza’s warning in the introduction to the TP (quoted at the beginning of this section). Autonomy, for Spinoza, is inherently relational insofar as humans, qua finite beings, are inevitably dependent on other finite things and beings for their survival and flourishing. That is, we cannot survive without the aid of external things such as food and shelter, and we cannot flourish without the aid of friends and allies. Because we are limited in

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our power to survive and to flourish individually, we must endeavor to understand and account for this natural limitation when we strive to become more empowered through collective measures. Accordingly, Spinoza explains, ‘it is necessary to come to know both our nature’s power and its lack of power, so that we can determine what reason can do in moderating the affects, and what it cannot do’ (E4p17s). My argument, then, is that since reason cannot conquer dangerous affects in education on its own, it must—based on a realistic assessment of human nature—enlist instruments that can make deliberate use of passions, not in order to counter reason but in order to counter more powerful and dangerous passions. I propose that indoctrination is an instrument of precisely this sort. Puolimatka (2001) departs from Spinoza’s three kinds of knowledge or cognition [cognitio]—imaginatio, ratio, and scientia intuitiva—when stipulating three distinct categories of students: (1) those who live at the first level and who are guided by their imagination; (2) those who live at the second level and who are guided by reason; and (3) those who live at the third and highest level and who are completely free by virtue of an intuitive understanding of the essence of things. The problem with this categorization is that it assumes that the three kinds of cognition that Spinoza stipulates in Part 2 of the Ethics would correspond with different kinds of people. While there is certainly a normative aspect to the three kinds of cognition insofar as a life guided more by reason and/or intuitive knowledge is certainly more virtuous than a life guided more by imagination, it is important to note that these kinds of cognition are not mutually exclusive for Spinoza. That is, we can very well be guided by our imagination in one situation and be guided by reason in another. We also have access to more than one kind of cognition at the same time. Because we are affected by things through our bodies, our understanding of external things is always in part a reflection of how we are affected by them. Reason complements the imagination, but it does not replace it. Spinoza gives the example of how we can understand the sun in parallel ways. While we may rely on reason to give us a scientifically reliable understanding of the sun’s actual distance from us, we will also always be simultaneously influenced by how our bodies are affected by it. He writes, For even if we later come to know that it is more than 600 diameters of the earth away from us, we nevertheless imagine it as near. For we imagine the sun so near not because we do not know its true distance, but because an affection of our body involves the essence of the sun insofar as our body is affected by the sun. (E2p35s)

While I am sympathetic to Puolimatka’s general description of Spinoza’s ethical theory as stipulating that human flourishing ‘consists in the effort and determination to liberate oneself from the domination of imagination and to become ever more completely guided by reason’ (2001, p. 400), I do not think that this is a matter of moving completely from one level of cognition to another, and I do not believe that this gradual evolution is a matter of an individual project as much as it is a necessarily collective endeavor always constrained by the power of affects. That is, Spinoza’s example of the sun can be translated into any other example we can think of insofar as our rational understanding of something will always be influenced by how we are

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moved affectively. To assume that we can conquer affects by reason is—as we saw above—not aligned with Spinoza’s understanding (see E4p7 and E4p14). The above categorization of different kinds of students is set up by Puolimatka as a starting point for his appraisal of Spinoza’s notion of indoctrination. It relies on the neat compartmentalization of people, where some are irrational and others are rational, and where the irrational ones (students) are guided by the rational ones (teachers). Accordingly, the true educator, according to Puolimatka’s reading of Spinoza, is one who can act as a catalyst that can ‘activate an autonomous process in the one being educated’ (2001, p. 401). On Puolimakta’s account, Spinoza’s educational ideal is tightly connected with what he takes to be his practical exemplar: the model of the free man (E4p66s–E4p77). As we have seen, this ideal amounts to a completely self-determined individual who is fully rational and therefore also fully active. The problem with using the model of the free man as a practical exemplar in education, however, is that it is in fact an unattainable ideal (see Dahlbeck & De Lucia Dahlbeck, 2020). A different and to my mind more productive way of approaching the model of the free man is in terms of a fiction that can be useful for illustrating what a supremely rational person would be like if such a person existed (Kisner, 2011, p. 176). This way of understanding the model of the free man helps explain why it can serve as an illustrative thought experiment without necessarily providing a useful exemplar to emulate. This does not mean, of course, that becoming more rational is not an educational ideal for Spinoza, or that the relatively more rational should not help the relatively less rational improve their understanding. It simply means that there is no sharp distinction between those who are rational and those who are not. While it is certainly true that the supreme good, in Spinoza’s view, is to be understood in terms of a fully rational understanding, it is also true that a fully rational human does not, and cannot, exist (E4p4c and E4p6). Since humans are always vulnerable to external affects, their actions will always be impacted by the affective power of an idea rather than its degree of truth (E4p7 and E4p17c). This much we already know from TTP 5[20–22]. In fact, in order to make people adhere to ‘what true reason teaches them’, everyone (to different degrees) needs to rely on the existence of external ‘authority and force, and hence, laws which moderate and restrain men’s immoderate desires and unchecked impulses’ (TTP 5[22], G III/74/1–2). Puolimatka’s conclusion is that Spinoza’s pessimistic evaluation of irrationally inclined students prevents him from defending ‘open rational dialogue in an ordinary classroom setting’ in a way that ultimately ‘undermines his educational project’ (2001, p. 403). Against this, I would argue that by acknowledging the limited rationality of all people, Spinoza offers a much more realistic framework for the potential of this kind of dialogue in the first place. To be sure, Spinoza is pessimistic about the potential of human reason—insofar as he acknowledges its necessary limitations— but this pessimism is directed at human nature as a whole and not at individual human beings (who somehow fail to live up to the ideals postulated by philosophers). I would argue that the educational ideal of ‘open rational dialogue’ is informed by the ideal of epistemic self-sufficiency, which, in turn, is precisely the kind of prejudice that Spinoza criticizes in the introduction to the TP when he laments that philosophers

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tend to ‘conceive of men not as they are, but as they want them to be’ (TP 1[1], G III/273/11–12). Accordingly, he writes that ‘people who persuade themselves that a multitude [...] can be induced to live only according to the prescription of reason, those people are dreaming of the golden age of the Poets. They’re captive to a Myth’ (TP 1[1], G III/275/23–25). What Spinoza offers the debate on indoctrination in education is an epistemological perspective on indoctrination that does not assume that the teacher is placed beyond the influence of indoctrination, but that suggests that indoctrination is necessary for all people who fall short of being completely rational beings. Acknowledging this shortcoming on behalf of human rationality means that we can look into indoctrination not in terms of a threat to be avoided but in terms of a necessary component compensating for a deficit in knowledge. The important question, then, is how can indoctrination be made to function so as to bolster and promote a life guided by reason rather than a life determined by dangerous passions such as hatred, greed, envy, and pride? In a recent study on Spinoza’s ethical theory, Andrew Youpa (2020) deals with precisely this question. He concludes that passions in Spinoza can be roughly divided into two categories: indefeasibly and defeasibly bad emotions. Indefeasibly bad emotions are passions that threaten the stability of the social world by turning people against each other and leading them down a spiral of negativity. Youpa writes, Nothing about indefeasibly bad emotions, such as melancholy and hatred, can compensate for their badness and make them good, not bad, or less bad. […] This is because there is never any compensatory advantage to be gained from melancholy or hatred. They are indefeasibly bad. (2020, p. 96)

Defeasibly bad emotions, on the other hand, can be made to play a productive role with regard to ethical flourishing insofar as they can act as conduits leading people into the kind of social stability that is necessary for reason to act as a guiding light. These emotions are not good in themselves, but they can be used so as to enable something better—given than all human coexistence is passionate to some degree— than their indefeasibly bad counterparts. Accordingly, ‘[h]umility, repentance, hope, and fear have a comparative advantage over pride, shamelessness, and fearlessness in that the former are more conducive, or less unconducive, to social bonds than the latter’ (2020, p. 96). Recall that Sangiacomo describes the process whereby passions are used to stabilize a society and serve rational ends as a virtuous circle (as opposed to a vicious circle that will lead to instability and war) (2019, pp. 33–39). The virtuous circle benefits from the natural sociability of human affects and takes advantage of the fact that a political constitution can be set up in a way that compensates for people’s innate passionate tendencies. As Sangiacomo points out, The rationality of the political constitution does not presuppose the rationality of the individuals living within it as already acquired, but rather is designed to foster their rationality and educate them to cooperate in the best and most effective way. (2019, p. 191)

Ultimately, it does not matter whether some people are more rationally inclined than others, however, as the peace and security of the state is a necessary precondition

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for the freedom of philosophizing of all individuals. Indoctrination, from the point of view of Spinoza’s political theory, is a necessary instrument for promoting peace and security, which, in turn, is a prerequisite for cultivating the autonomy of the individual. As none of us has what is required for surviving and flourishing on our own, we are all determined to live collectively and to find ways of flourishing collectively. Because most people are dominated by passions, this means that political life must be grounded in powerful collective narratives that can appeal to the imagination of the multitude and that can prevent people from succumbing to the many perils brought about by the passions of hatred, greed, envy, and pride. A society dominated by hatred, greed, envy, and pride is just as dangerous for the enlightened philosopher as it is for the uneducated masses, which is why peace and security is beneficial, and indeed necessary, for all. The question that arises, then, is how can peace and security be promoted in a society governed by dangerous passions? In order to address this important question, we need to revisit some of the conceptual terrain of Spinoza’s social epistemology that we have already covered in earlier chapters.

4.3 Accommodation, Ingenium, and the Power of Collective Narratives At this point, I would like to, very briefly, contextualize Spinoza’s theory of indoctrination by placing it in the framework of his political psychology and social epistemology (as looked at earlier). There are three tightly interconnected components that serve to set up a background for Spinoza’s theory of indoctrination. The first is the principle of accommodation, the second is the importance of understanding people’s ingenium, and the third component is the matter of finding narratives that fit well with the other two components. On closer inspection, the two latter are, in fact, integral parts of the former. As we have seen, the principle of accommodation is the practical political consequence of Spinoza’s skeptical account of human nature (Steinberg, 2018). Because humans are naturally affective, and because most people tend to be moved more by passive affects than by reason, any effective politics needs to accommodate its means to the way that people are affectively constituted (rather than be designed to fit an idealistic model of human nature). Accordingly, ‘commands and teachings should be accommodated to the ingenia of affected parties, such that these commands and teachings elicit optimal (epistemic and affective) responses’ (Steinberg, 2018, p. 115). There are two basic aspects to this process of accommodation. First, it involves adjusting political messages so that they appeal to the affective constitution of a people. Second, it involves reforming people ‘so that their affective state is characterized more by hope than by fear’ (Steinberg, 2020, p. 167). The first of these aspects hinges importantly on correctly diagnosing people’s ingenium, and the second aspect involves using powerful narratives to bring people together in a virtuous circle. Insofar as this process entails the manipulation of emotions in order to make people think and behave in certain ways (and not in

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other ways), it should be quite obvious that it can qualify as a form of indoctrination. That is, we are dealing with a form of teaching that can be said to result in closed-mindedness (insofar as people are being manipulated emotionally by external forces rather than being guided by their own reason), but where this kind of closedmindedness is specifically designed to be the starting point of a virtuous rather than a vicious circle. Again, the underlying assumption is that a system of governance based on reason alone will be unable to conquer dangerous passions. Indoctrination, then, may not be ideal, but given the circumstances, it is the only viable option for moving a people gradually toward a life guided by reason. From this, we see that Spinoza’s conception of indoctrination allows for a kind of positive manipulation of people’s emotions. Closed-mindedness, in this context, is deemed an unfortunate but natural state of mind that can be taken advantage of by education in order to prepare the way for a collective life guided more by reason than by passions. It does not, however, allow for insidious forms of manipulation, where people are made to behave in ways that are detrimental to their well-being. As discussed in the previous chapter, a person’s ingenium corresponds with her affective constitution, and it indicates her particular composition of passive and active affects. Insofar as passive affects result from external influences, a person’s ingenium is always in part socially constituted. In one sense, then, a person’s ingenium is unique to that person, but at the same time, a person’s ingenium is also part of the ingenium of a greater social collective. Because emotions are in part socially constituted, the traditions, cultural habits, and memories that we share with people around us are an important part of who we are and of how we respond to things emotionally. This is also why Spinoza believes that collective narratives are powerful political tools. Narratives are powerful political tools specifically when they manage to draw on people’s joint experiences and appeal to their collective imagination (TTP 5[35– 37]). When these preconditions are in place, narratives can be used to manipulate people’s emotions so that they are moved in a certain way as a collective. This ability can be (and is regularly) exploited in politics, but it can go in either direction. Narratives can be used to make people more afraid and suspicious of one another or narratives can be used to bring people together so that they may grow powerful and more autonomous. Depending on how these collective narratives are put to use, then, we end up with cases of indoctrination that are either good or bad. My argument for Spinoza’s distinction between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ indoctrination in part maps onto Gatens’ (2012) argument for Spinoza’s distinction between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ fictions. In effect, good indoctrination makes use of good fictions, and these fictions are good insofar as they function to ‘guide human striving to live an ethical life’ (2012, p. 85).7 Conversely, 7 Gatens’ notion of ‘good’ fictions corresponds with what I have termed valuable fictions in Chap. 2. This can be compared with what Lærke calls ‘useful fictions’. He suggests that these are

useful fictions devised to channel citizens’ sense of religious obligation and civic duty in a free republic, narratives that people, absent perfect knowledge of their own rational selfinterest, must believe in order to be constantly motivated to act in view of piety and security. (2012, p. 194)

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bad indoctrination makes use of bad fictions, leading people away from what is truly good for them and, instead, instilling dangerous passions like hatred and fear in them. Rosenthal explains how this relates to understanding the limits of what a fiction can achieve. He connects it with Spinoza’s views on the use of exemplary stories, conceived as beneficial when used wisely, but harmful when abused. Rosenthal writes that Spinoza warns against imagining that exemplars and the values attendant on them are found in, or products of, nature itself. They are just human constructs made in order to compare things, to judge relative value, and to emulate in one’s actions. As soon as those who use an exemplar violate its intrinsic epistemological and practical limitations—using it to explain nature itself, rather than simply as a guide to conduct—it tends to fail in its original purpose. Moreover, certain people, realizing that the masses are ignorant and easily manipulated, eagerly misuse these exemplars to gain power for themselves. (Rosenthal, 2002, pp. 236–237)

The same could be said for indoctrination. When indoctrination is used for the personal gain of those who educate (at the expense of those who are being taught), and when indoctrination is geared at a long-term goal that is not aligned with living under the guidance of reason, it is bad. When its limits are clearly acknowledged and respected, however, it can be productively used to guide people’s conduct in a way that is beneficial for them even if they are unaware of this. Let us look into a couple of illuminating examples from the TTP, illustrating how Spinoza conceives of this indoctrinatory process.

4.4 Spinoza on the Teaching of Doctrines in the Theological-Political Treatise Spinoza proposes two different ways of establishing peace and security among people torn by passions through the teaching of doctrines—one theological and the other political. In Chap. 14 of the TTP, Spinoza introduces the seven doctrines of universal faith, seeking to construct a way through which religion can foster obedience and peace without leading to conflict between different traditions and schools of interpretation of Scripture.8 While religion and philosophy should be kept strictly apart, Lærke is here specifically speaking of Spinoza’s use of the doctrines of universal faith and the doctrine of the social contract (discussed in greater detail immediately below). These narratives serve the function of good social fictions as described by Gatens and Lloyd (1999, p. 90). 8 Rosenthal explains it thus: It is just this defect in outer religion [the fact that conflicts arise from disputes over different interpretations of Scripture] that the universal dogmas are supposed to remedy. The point, then, of the dogmas is to state the essential lessons of Scripture, and in doing so also set the parameters of interpretation in order to ease the problem of dispute inherent in external religion. (2001, p. 61) Rosenthal’s use of the term ‘outer religion’ refers to the political function of religion as a means for establishing peace and security within the state, as opposed to the ‘inner religion’, which

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Spinoza turns to religion for providing effective means for educating people’s imagination and for setting them on the path to a peaceful coexistence through the cultivation of obedience. This, in turn, is deemed necessary as a precondition for the freedom of philosophizing. The fifth doctrine of universal faith is a good case in point. It reads, ‘The worship of God and obedience to him consists only in Justice and Loving-kindness, or in love toward one’s neighbor’ (TTP 14[27], G III/177/35–36, emphasis in original). While the first part of the doctrine evokes familiar religious imagery, the second part spells out its practical consequences in a way that accords with the guidance of reason. The doctrines of universal faith are specifically designed not to conflict with the dictates of reason (stipulated in Part 4 of the Ethics), rendering them the kind of doctrines that anyone should be able to subscribe to, while still being cloaked in the familiar language of religious dogma. As such, they can be read as religious dogmas prescribing just and merciful behavior as an expression of the obedience to God, but they can also be read as prescribing rational behavior serving the promotion of peace and unity in the republic. The way this is being communicated, however, is not in the philosophical language of reason, but in a language that is meant to appeal to the imagination of passionate people.9 For, as Spinoza points out, The person who displays the best arguments is not necessarily the one who displays the best faith; instead it’s the one who displays the best works of Justice and Loving-kindness. How salutary this Doctrine is, how necessary in the republic, if people are to live peacefully and harmoniously, how many, and how great, are the causes of disturbance and wickedness it prevents—these things I leave everyone to judge for himself. (TTP 14[33–34], G III/179/7– 13)

Ultimately, the doctrines of universal faith are construed as ways of preparing for a social life that is peaceful and stable enough to afford the freedom of philosophizing to anyone who wishes to aspire for that kind of understanding. Indeed, while faith and philosophy are clearly separated for Spinoza,10 the doctrines of universal faith are still the kind of imaginative social factors that make philosophical freedom possible in the first place: Faith, therefore, grants everyone the greatest freedom to philosophize, so that without wickedness he can think whatever he wishes about anything. Faith condemns as heretics and schismatics only those who teach opinions which encourage obstinacy, hatred, quarrels and anger. On the other hand, it considers faithful only those who encourage Justice and Lovingkindness as far as the powers of their reason and their faculties permit. (TTP 14[39], G III/179–180/1–6) corresponds with the ethical purpose of guiding individuals toward ‘peace and tranquility of mind’ (2001, p. 59). 9 In a similar vain, Hobbes models the public teaching of his doctrines of civil duties on the Ten Commandments (Hobbes, 1994, pp. 222–225) so as to ‘tap into deeper-rooted moral commitments and habits of thought of subjects of the commonwealth’ (Field, 2020, p. 118). 10 While philosophy is geared at increasing the understanding, ‘revealed knowledge has no object but obedience.’ As such, ‘[r]evealed knowledge has nothing in common with natural knowledge, but each is in charge of its own domain, without any conflict with the other’ (TTP pref[27]). Spinoza dedicates Chap. 15 of the TTP to explicating and motivating the sharp distinction he draws between faith and reason.

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In this way, religion can serve to facilitate a kind of collective life that is beneficial to those who wish to live according to the guidance of reason (and to everyone else). And, as Rosenthal points out, ‘although each proposition by itself is false in light of natural reason, it can be translated, with the proper philosophical understanding, into a point that is theoretically true’ (2001, p. 67). However, it is important to point out that ‘the translation of the dogma into meaningful language is irrelevant to its practical function’, and that, therefore, ‘[t]he dogma can be salutary regardless of its metaphysical interpretation’ (ibid.).11 This, then, is a good example of how Spinoza applies his theory of indoctrination in a theological context. The doctrines of universal faith serve an important sociopolitical function, and while ‘they are only apparently true in a metaphysical sense, they are really true only practically’, meaning that ‘they state ideas, which though derived immediately from the imagination, are nonetheless justified through a broader conception of human life and flourishing, which can be understood through reason’ (2001, pp. 67–68). This dialectics—set up between securing social stability and promoting a life guided by reason—is fundamentally what motivates Spinoza’s positive attitude toward indoctrination. In Chap.16 of the TTP, Spinoza offers another illuminating example. This time the context is more obviously political and the doctrine that Spinoza discusses is that of the social contract. Spinoza’s version of the doctrine of the social contract entails that the social contract was formed when individuals transferred their natural right to the sovereign in exchange for protection. In the state of nature, the only right that is applicable is that which corresponds with someone’s actual power to act. Anything that is within someone’s power to do is therefore permissible. The social contract describes the mythic event whereby people gave up their natural right for the privilege of living together in communities protected by common law. Again, we are dealing with a doctrine that is not strictly speaking true in the sense that the social contract was never actually formed and in the sense that it is impossible to pinpoint the exact point in time when humans became self-regulated social animals. It is, however, a doctrine that is useful for people to imagine and to believe in insofar as it helps them see how their sacrifice of individual freedom is only apparent, and that what actually benefits them is to live protected by a state that deserves their obedience. This, Spinoza explains, hinges on the fact that freedom is concomitant with living guided by reason and bondage with living a life dictated by passions. What is important is, therefore, not whether people are allowed to do what they want, but whether what they want is aligned with reason or not. Hence, 11

Because philosophy and religion have radically different aims—where one is aimed at increasing the understanding via reason and the other at directing people’s behavior via the imagination—they can be made to support one another. Garver explains how this setup works: Philosophy and religion do not compete. Nor do philosophy and politics. In different ways, religion and politics, prophets and sovereigns, provide true imaginations that tell us how to preserve ourselves and increase our powers without the adequate knowledge of first causes that could not help anyway. By recognizing its own nature as impractical, philosophy allows a correct formulation of the relation between theory and practice. (Garver, 2010, p. 845)

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An action done on a command—obedience—does, in some measure, take away freedom. But that isn’t what makes the slave. It’s the reason for the action. If the end of the action is not the advantage of the agent himself, but of the person who issues the command, then the agent is a slave, useless to himself. (TTP 16[33], G III/194/33–37)

If we connect this to the question of indoctrination, we see that Spinoza’s position allows that what matters is not whether or not someone is acting and thinking at the behest of others, but that the doctrines they follow are in their best interest (regardless of if they understand this or not). He compares the relation of subject and sovereign with the relation between parents and children: ‘Similarly, even though children are bound to obey all the commands of their parents, they are still not slaves. For their parents’ commands are primarily concerned with the advantage of the children’ (TTP 16[35], G III/195/5–8). The difference between the child and the subject is that the subject serves him- or herself by doing ‘what is advantageous for the collective body—and hence, also for himself—in accordance with the command of the supreme power’ (TTP 16[35], G III/195/13–14). The doctrine of the social contract thereby becomes an imaginative way of persuading people that the most effective way of looking out for themselves is to look out for the common good of the community.

4.5 Civic Education and Emotional Manipulation From the above discussion, we are now in a position to draw some preliminary conclusions about Spinoza’s notion of what is permissible and what is not permissible when it comes to emotional manipulation in civic education. Returning to the two questions raised at the beginning of this chapter, we may conclude that emotional manipulation—such that it qualifies as a form of indoctrination—is permissible for Spinoza to the extent that it counters passions that threaten the stability of the community and that are detrimental to the student’s striving to persevere in existence. For Spinoza, it is quite simply a matter of opting for the lesser of two evils. In fact, one of Spinoza’s dictates of reason—proposed in Part 4 of the Ethics—states that ‘[f]rom the guidance of reason we want a greater future good in preference to a lesser present one, and a lesser present evil in preference to a greater future one’ (E4p66). The answer to the first question, then, is that emotional manipulation is permissible whenever it can be reliably deemed a lesser present evil in relation to a greater future one. The second question seems decidedly trickier to answer. How is the teacher in civic education to determine when indoctrination is in fact the lesser of two evils? If the teacher could always be relied on in terms of being a person living according to the guidance of reason—i.e. a true philosopher in Spinoza’s sense—then he or she would surely know when indoctrination was the lesser of two evils. As we have seen, however, this is not a realistic scenario. It is, in fact, more realistic to assume that the civic educator is also—albeit hopefully to a lesser degree than his or her students—governed by passions. The educator, then, is not exempt from the education of the imagination but must be made part of the virtuous circle of

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affects that begins with passions but that evolves gradually toward a collective life guided by reason. Even if the teacher was already living according to the guidance of reason, this would not automatically solve the problem, however. It would rather turn it around so that the new problem would be that the philosopher–teacher would lack the imaginative means necessary to persuade the students to become more like him or her. Because of the passionate nature of human beings, the pessimistic answer to the second question is therefore that the assumption must be that some measures of indoctrination are always necessary as long as people are passionate and less-thanfully rational. Civic education, catering to a very diverse group of people, should therefore be primarily geared at establishing security and peace in the state utilizing imaginative means. This, as we have seen, requires measures that would qualify as indoctrination so long as these measures can compel people to cooperate. Once the state is made relatively secure and peaceful, however, those who wish may freely exchange ideas so as to help one another attain a more adequate understanding of themselves and the world. This, in turn, would require quite different educational measures that would be far less likely to be compatible with indoctrination and with emotional manipulation.12 In the next and final chapter, I will summarize the steps taken thus far, and I will address some critical questions that can reasonably be posed to Spinoza’s conception of civic education. I will also try to tease out what we might consider some especially valuable lessons for a contemporary conception of civic education, where I will bracket the historical interest in Spinoza’s ideas momentarily and focus instead on what we could learn from them in a more general sense.

References Barrow, R. (2020). Philosophical method and educational issues: The legacy of Richard Peters. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 54(3), 717–730. Callan, E., & Arena, D. (2009). Indoctrination. In H. Siegel (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of philosophy of education. Oxford University Press. Copp, D. (2016). Moral education versus indoctrination. Theory and Research in Education, 14(2), 149–167. Counts, G. S. (1932). Dare the school build a new social order? Southern Illinois University Press. Dahlbeck, J., & De Lucia Dahlbeck, M. (2020). The moral fallibility of Spinoza’s exemplars: Exploring the educational value of imperfect models of human behavior. Ethics and Education, 15(2), 260–274. Field, S. L. (2020). Potentia: Hobbes and Spinoza on power and popular politics. Oxford University Press. 12

Insofar as the freedom of philosophizing refers to ‘a normative rhetorical framework for candid, intellectual exchange’ (Lærke, 2021, p. 64) it would not seem to be compatible with indoctrination or manipulation. As Lærke has noted, the kind of teaching involved in Spinoza’s conception of free philosophizing is rather that of ‘mutual teaching and open sharing of knowledge among noble minds’ (p. 65). Because the bar is set extremely high for this kind of mutual teaching, it would not seem to be a feasible starting point for civic education as a public institution.

References

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Garver, E. (2010). Why can’t we all just get along: The reasonable vs. the rational according to Spinoza. Political Theory, 38(6), 838–858. Gatens, M., & Lloyd, G. (1999). Collective imaginings: Spinoza, past and present. Routledge. Gatens, M. (2012). Compelling fictions: Spinoza and George Eliot on imagination and belief. European Journal of Philosophy, 20(1), 74–90. Hobbes, T. (1994). Leviathan: With selected variants from the latin edition of 1668 (ed. E. Curley). Indianapolis: Hackett. Kisner, M. J. (2011). Spinoza on human freedom: Reason, autonomy and the good life. Cambridge University Press. Lærke, M. (2021). Spinoza and the freedom of philosophizing. Oxford University Press. Puolimatka, T. (2001). Spinoza’s theory of teaching and indoctrination. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 33(3–4), 397–410. Rosenthal, M. A. (2001). Spinoza’s dogmas of universal faith and the problem of religion. Philosophy and Theology, 13(1), 53–72. Rosenthal, M. A. (2002). Why Spinoza chose the Hebrews: The exemplary function of prophecy in the Theological-Political Treatise. In H. M. Ravven & L. E. Goodman (Eds.), Jewish themes in Spinoza’s philosophy. SUNY Press. Sangiacomo, A. (2019). Spinoza on reason, passions, and the supreme good. Oxford University Press. Steinberg, J. (2018). Spinoza’s political psychology: The taming of fortune and fear. Cambridge University Press. Steinberg, J. (2020). Politics as a model of pedagogy in Spinoza. Ethics and Education, 15(2), 158–172. Tillson, J. (2021). Wrongful influence in educational contexts. In K. Hytten (Ed.), Oxford encyclopedia of philosophy of education. Oxford University Press. Wareham, R. J. (2019). Indoctrination, delusion and the possibility of epistemic innocence. Theory and Research in Education, 17(1), 40–61. Youpa, A. (2020). The ethics of joy: Spinoza on the empowered life. Oxford University Press.

Chapter 5

Spinoza’s Lesson to the Contemporary Political Imagination

‘Well. So, are you a friend, or are you a foe?’ Mr. Lorry asked. He looked me straight in the eye. ‘How can I know that yet? We’ve only just met,’ I answered.—Samantha Kolesnik, True Crime For of the extremes, one is more erroneous, one less so; therefore, since to hit the mean is hard in the extreme, we must as a second best, as people say, take the least of the evils.—Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, Book II, 9

In this, the final chapter of the book, we should begin by taking stock of what we have learned so far. Let us, therefore, begin by retracing the steps taken and see where that leaves us with regard to Spinoza’s lesson for a contemporary discussion on the means and ends of civic education.

5.1 Retracing the Steps Taken In Chap. 1, we began by outlining the major conditions and constraints for political theory that Spinoza sets up in his metaphysical, epistemological, psychological, and ethical work. We concluded that the normative upshots of Spinoza’s political theory, to a large extent, follow from his conception of human nature as necessarily caught up in an ongoing struggle between being moved by passions and being determined to act by reason. This struggle is what motivates the existence of political institutions insofar as institutions, according to Spinoza (TTP 5[20]), are set up to moderate and counteract dangerous passions that threaten the safety and well-being of the individual and the community. It would be unfair, however, to assume that Spinoza is hostile towards the influence of passions as such. Because some passions function by empowering us (i.e. the joyful passions), it would be a mistake to dismiss the power of passions out of hand. In fact, because humans are not (and can never be) © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 J. Dahlbeck, Spinoza, SpringerBriefs on Key Thinkers in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-7125-8_5

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fully rational, passions always have an important role to play for the preservation of the individual and the human social world. The challenge for political and civic institutions is to help ensure that passions are productively exploited so as to empower the individual and the community by compensating for a natural cognitive limitation and the resulting lack of understanding. In order to do this, Spinoza seems to think that civic education can make use of a psychological mechanism that is already at work whenever humans interact with one another. This mechanism is the imitation of affects, and the imitation of affects amplifies our emotions by linking them with those of people we identify as being like ourselves. The imitation of affect is, therefore, both a valuable tool and a dangerous threat as it can either empower us by bolstering joyful passions or weaken us by strengthening sad passions. Civic education is uniquely equipped to make use of the imitation of affects in order to help boost joyful passions in a collective setting, so as to instigate and sustain what Sangiacomo (2019) calls virtuous (rather than vicious) circles of affects. An important upshot of the imitation of affects is that human autonomy is inherently relational. That is, autonomy is always grounded in affects and emotions and these are never entirely individual affairs to begin with (as illustrated by the association of ideas and the imitation of affects). An important educational consequence following from the above is that civic education needs to take seriously the impact of passive affects (rather than focusing single handedly on cultivating reason). One way of doing this is by looking at how people influence one another through the ways they communicate. When people communicate, they inevitably engage their imagination and since the imagination represents an inadequate form of knowledge for Spinoza, it concerns a form of passivity. The educational challenge is to ensure that the imagination is educated, so as to help identify and pursue passions of joy rather than being trapped by passions of sadness and to help ensure that passions of joy can come to dominate the collective imagination through the use of valuable fictions. Valuable fictions in civic education would be those kinds of fictions that can help contribute to the strengthening of cooperation and sociability and that can help ensure the peace and security of the state. The peace and security of the state is not an end in itself, however, but a necessary means to the end (summum bonum) of ethical and intellectual flourishing. In order to see whether a fiction is educationally valuable or not, one needs to find out whether it is sufficiently accommodated to the ingenia of the students. For civic education to be able to establish a community based on cooperation and sociability, then the educator needs to be able to identify popular narratives that can speak to the affective makeup of students, which includes appealing to their shared history and to their shared cultural imaginations. This, in turn, requires that the educator is sufficiently attuned to the ingenia of the students, so as to be able to know what kinds of narratives they would be moved by. Paradoxical as this may seem—insofar as it means setting up a kind of civic education that is geared at appealing to imaginations rather than to the ability to reason—it corresponds well with the kind of double movement Spinoza sets up in his political theory, assuming that people need to be ‘constrained to live well’ (TTP 2[46], G III/41/5) as they are— generally speaking—cognitively unable to naturally follow the guidance of reason.

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Valuable fictions in the guise of popular narratives are, therefore, needed to provide action-guiding bridges between the imagination and a more adequate understanding of the world. Because an adequate understanding of the world is not action-guiding in itself, what Garver (2010) calls ‘true imaginations’ are needed to provide imperatives directed at strengthening cooperation and agreement while countering dissent and hostility. While this may seem uncontroversial insofar as it amounts to setting up a common legal framework for all citizens to abide by, it also entails allowing for a form of emotional manipulation that may be labeled indoctrinatory insofar as it exploits the existing closed-mindedness of people in order to nudge them via fictions towards agreement and cooperation without primarily appealing to their ability to reason. Because peace for Spinoza is not simply the absence of war (as Hobbes would have it), but requires the willing cooperation of the citizens of a state, it is not enough to simply compel them to obedience by coercion or by threat of punishment. This kind of obedience is inherently unstable and so it would not provide the kind of security that Spinoza requires of a good (i.e. stable) state.1 At the same time, since people are always governed to some degree by passions, it is not enough to simply assume that they will help preserve the peace and security of the state by just being presented with rational arguments for why doing so would benefit their self-preservation. Instead, what is needed, on Spinoza’s account, is imaginative means of persuading people to act in their own interest, which translates into preserving the peace and security of the state by remaining obedient and cooperative.2 This, in effect, is hard to interpret in any other way than as an argument in favor of a kind of benevolent political indoctrination on Spinoza’s part. And, it obviously raises some important questions regarding the tenability of Spinoza’s conception of civic education. 1

Spinoza comments on the instability of a violent rule in Chap. 5 of the TTP: As the Tragic poet, Seneca, says, no one has sustained a violent rule for long; moderate ones last. For as long as men act only from fear, they act very unwillingly, and don’t recognize the advantage, even the necessity, of doing what they’re doing. (TTP 5[22], G III/74/4–7)

2

It is important for Spinoza that obedience to common laws is instigated through willing participation rather than enforced through brute force. If it was not so then there would be no obvious relation between the stability of the state and the freedom of the individual, and this relation—as we have seen—is absolutely pivotal for Spinoza (who considers the peace and security of the state a means to the end of ethical freedom for the individual). This is why it is important that people are motivated more by hope than by fear. Accordingly, Spinoza points out that ‘[i]n each state the laws must be so instituted that men are checked not so much by fear as by the hope of some good they desire very much. For in this way everyone will do his duty eagerly’ (TTP 5[24]). He comments on the connections between freedom/hope and bondage/fear in the TP: For a free multitude is guided by hope more than by fear, whereas a multitude which has been subjugated is guided more by fear than by hope. The first want to cultivate life; the second care only to avoid death. The first are eager to live for themselves; the second are forced to belong to the victor. So we say that the second are slaves, and the first free. (TP 5[6], G III/296/18–23)

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5.2 Critical Questions to Spinoza For the sake of brevity, I will focus on three interconnected questions that seem relevant to address if we are interested in evaluating Spinoza’s ideas in light of challenges posed by contemporary civic education. The first two questions concern the fictions and popular narratives used in education as well as the prerogative to choose valuable fictions. The third question concerns the plausibility of indoctrination as a pedagogical method for civic education. Let us deal with them in turn. • What would be contemporary examples of popular narratives that could function in the same way as Spinoza takes the social contract and the doctrines of universal faith to function in Chapters 14 and 16 of the TTP? Given what we have learned so far it would seem foolish to attempt to identify one or a few popular narratives that would fit the bill for what contemporary civic education needs in a wholesale kind of fashion. There are two things that can guide us when looking for suitable narratives, however. One, they would need to be sufficiently accommodated to the ingenia of teacher and students to come across as appealing to their imagination. Two, they would need to be gauged against whatever greater harm they are intended to counter, so that they can be confidently labeled the lesser of the two evils. Looking at Spinoza’s examples in the TTP, we can also glean that part of what makes them a lesser evil is that while they do not adequately render philosophical truth, they also do not contradict it. That is, valuable fictions need to be compatible with philosophical truth, but they are widely different insofar as they appeal to the imagination rather than to reason. While fictions can never substitute philosophical truth on Spinoza’s account, they can prepare the ground for truth-seeking in the sense that we discussed in Chap. 2 and elsewhere in this book. The best way of preparing the ground for truth-seeking is, as we have seen, to help ensure that people can live securely and healthily, which is a precondition for cultivating a sound philosophical understanding and gaining some measure of control over dangerous passions (TTP 3[12]). Valuable fictions, then, seem to need to live up to three interconnected criteria: (1) they ought to be adequately accommodated to the ingenia of teacher and students to be effective; (2) they ought to be conceived in terms of a lesser evil in relation to the threat of a greater evil; and (3) they ought to be geared at increasing the students’ chances of living securely and healthily by seeking to stabilize (rather than disrupt) the collective. No doubt this is a tall order. Identifying fictions that are sufficiently accommodated to the affective makeup of different individuals with different backgrounds while also serving to bring together (rather than to divide) the collective, seems quite a challenge. In a sense, however, we are already doing this, or at least we seem to be constantly attempting to. The notion of universal human rights, for example, provides us with a kind of collective narrative in the same sense that the social contract does. It supplies us with a conceptual framework for constructing imaginative fictions that serve to illustrate how people need to work together and share resources on a global scale, so as to avoid various

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external threats such as global famine and disease. The specific makeup of these fictions will always need to be adjusted to different cultural settings and so it would not be desirable to fashion one grand fiction to fit all scenarios in precisely the same way. The important thing is that the different fictions used all appeal to the kinds of common values that can help increase the overall degree of security and health. This is the only way to gauge the benefit of a fiction relative to greater harm. The challenge facing contemporary civic education is of course that the more pluralistic a society is, the more challenging it will be to find popular common narratives that are effective in the sense that they are unifying rather than divisive. What Spinoza’s example of the Hebrews shows us, however, is that, even in the direst of circumstances, the human ability to make use of powerful collective narratives to unite them against the threat of destruction is a force to be reckoned with. Many societies have found ways of transforming, so as to adapt and survive using collective narratives as a way to instill courage and to strengthen cooperation. At the same time, other societies have succumbed to destructive narratives that have driven people apart in anger and hatred. What Spinoza seems to be telling us is that the same instruments that can unite us can also be our downfall depending on how we put them to use. This is why it is impossible to list a fixed set of narratives that will do the trick. It is not just a matter of identifying popular and exemplary narratives that can appeal to peoples’ shared imagination, but it is about using them in a way that makes them valuable in relation to the overarching goal of attaining intellectual and ethical flourishing. That is, the narratives appealed to cannot contradict reason, as reason is the one thing that will ensure that people are pulling in the same direction toward a common good. This unifying effect is lacking in narratives that only appeal to people’s passionate responses and idiosyncratic desires, ‘[f]or according to the laws of appetite each person is drawn in a different direction’ (TTP 16[14], G III/191/28–29). • Who gets to decide which narratives to opt for? Or, put differently, who would be the prophets of our time? Even if it turns out to be impossible to identify narratives that are guaranteed to work in any given context, there is still the problem of who should get to decide which narratives to use (however temporary and contextually dependent these narratives are acknowledged to be). Is it up to the individual teacher? Is it a matter for the state (or local government) to decide? Or is it a collective question where students should get to have some input as it concerns their well-being? If we were to pose these questions to Spinoza, it seems that the last option would not find much favor. Assuming that students (in general) are sufficiently equipped to know not only which narratives would appeal to them but also which narratives would fulfill the criteria listed above is simply not realistic from Spinoza’s point of view. The main reason why the last option would be insufficient is because of the risk that what is taken to be a smaller harm in reality turns out to be a greater harm. In short, distinguishing between the seemingly good and the truly good is inherently difficult, and so it is not something that can be entrusted to just anyone without the right kind of training. When faced with options we always (naturally) opt for what

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seems to enhance pleasure and bring us joy and to counter pain and sadness, but often what is a present pleasure can turn out to be a greater future pain, and what is a present pain can turn out to be a greater future joy. The striving to seek pleasure and to avoid pain is deeply inscribed in human nature, yet the ability to distinguish one from the other (with some precision) is not. Accordingly, as Spinoza reminds us: Between two goods, each person chooses the one he judges to be greater; between two evils, the one which seems to him lesser. I say explicitly: the one which seems to the person choosing to be greater or lesser. It does not follow that things must be as he judges them to be. (TTP 16[15], G III/192/1–6, emphasis in original)

For this reason, an educator with some experience in distinguishing the seemingly good from the truly good is needed to guide the inexperienced. This aspect of the educator’s task is aligned with LeBuffe’s analogy of the optimistic nutritionist, describing someone who is proficient at connecting sweetness and nutrition and, therefore, in a good position to help children ‘by showing them which foods really are healthy and convincing them of what is true, that those really are the ones that bring a life full of sweetness’ (2010, p. 113). In relation to a theory of civic education gleaned from Spinoza’s political philosophy, however, the educator’s role would primarily be to accommodate existing narratives to the ingenia of students. Insofar as teachers are more like prophets than like philosophers (as indicated in Chap. 1)—in the sense that a good teacher is imaginatively gifted but not necessarily supremely rational—they ought to be sufficiently attuned to their students to know how to appeal to them via fictions and narratives. While good teachers can accommodate narratives to the ingenia of students, they are not necessarily the best judges of which popular narrative will serve the above-stated purpose of promoting peace and security. For this reason, it would seem that the answer to the question (‘Who gets to decide which narratives to opt for?’) is that it should be a combination of the first two options. Accordingly, while the teacher is responsible for accommodating fictions to the ingenia of students, the state is responsible for overseeing the validity of the fictions and narratives employed in relation to the self-preservation of the state. The quality of civic education, therefore, seems to hinge on two interconnected aspects: (1) the individual teacher’s ability to make use of the imagination to accommodate fictions to the ingenia of a diverse group of students and (2) the state’s ability to identify and promote fictions that serve its self-preservation by strengthening cooperation and general agreement rather than inflaming suspicion and fear. • Why should we assume that what starts out as indoctrination could ever develop into anything other than just that? This last question goes to the heart of the matter of assessing the tenability of a theory of civic education modeled after Spinoza’s political philosophy. For Spinoza to get away with indoctrination as a viable pedagogical tool, it would need to be shown that indoctrination is in fact the lesser of two evils. One way of doing this would be to show how indoctrination can actually lead to something other than a sustained sense of closed-mindedness. I believe that Spinoza would answer the last question

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in two ways. First, it seems likely that he would question what we mean by closedmindedness, arguing that some of the presuppositions at work in the background of this notion are inherently faulty or prejudiced. Insofar as autonomy is taken to require epistemic self-sufficiency, it makes sense to talk of closed-mindedness as a problematic outcome of indoctrination. When autonomy is taken to be fundamentally relational however, it becomes harder to categorically determine external influence as illegitimate as these external forces are part and parcel of what makes up an individual to begin with (as discussed in Chaps. 1 and 4). Second, he would very likely stress the fact that indoctrination is a tool made by humans, and as such, it can be used for good or for bad (much like religious dogmas or political ideals). Because joyful and sad passions exist on a continuum where debilitating passions are always relative to empowering passions, education is not a matter of finding means of circumventing all passions writ large. Instead, education—as discussed in Chap. 4—always concerns exploiting existing passions, so as to gradually move from a state of relative disempowerment to a state of relative empowerment, which includes making use of passive encounters that constitute smaller harms relative to greater harms that can be avoided. This is why civic education can begin as a process of indoctrination and end up as a process of formation guided by reason, provided it is adequately tailored to the ingenia of the students involved. The reason indoctrination is not conceived in terms of a cognitive trap by Spinoza is that it is simply a pragmatic way of dealing with the seeming paradox stating that people need to be ‘constrained to live well’ (TTP 2[46], G III/41/5). Put differently, if something can increase our power to act, it does not really matter, from Spinoza’s point of view, if we are in a position to fully understand it. What matters is that we are being gradually moved closer to a kind of life that begins with agreeability and progresses toward a life guided by reason. To call something indoctrination, then, is simply another way of saying that the educational tools used are adjusted so as to fit the ingenia of people governed largely by passions. Accordingly, it is not so much that what starts off as indoctrination transforms along the way, but that our understanding of the fictions and narratives employed will change from an understanding predominantly grounded in the imagination to one predominantly grounded in reason. Much like with the doctrines of universal faith discussed in the previous chapter, we can approach the same imperative from two opposing perspectives without ending up with something that contradicts itself. The same doctrine can be action-guiding in one and the same way even though it can be understood from two different perspectives. To be sure, Spinoza’s political theory is conceived to fit in a seventeenth-century context and cannot be neatly divorced from its historical setting. To study the educational implications of this theory from a contemporary point of view will, therefore, always run the risk of coming across as anachronistic in one way or another. At the same time, we can endeavor to temporarily separate the historical context from the philosophical message that lies embedded within it. Much like Moses is a historical figure far removed from the realities of the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic, he is also the protagonist of a narrative whose political message transcends space and time. He becomes—in Spinoza’s political writings—an exemplar illustrating what a

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prophet can do in terms of instigating political change via imaginative means. This is at once a creative retelling of a historical narrative and a timeless message about how human affects can impact and are impacted by political forces.3 Keeping this in mind, we can turn our eye to the present time and approach our own contemporary societies using the same basic strategy.

5.3 Spinoza’s Lesson How, then, can Spinoza help us navigate in a contemporary democratic landscape, where divisive passions appear to be as powerful as ever? What would be Spinoza’s lesson to the contemporary political imagination and to civic educators around the world? In order to figure this out, I believe we need to approach it from a negative point of view. That is, we first need to figure out what he would not be teaching us in order to then get a better grasp of what the positive lesson might be. He would not be teaching us that civic education is equivalent to the cultivation of critical thinking (at least not in any direct sense). Odd as this may sound, it will actually—from Spinoza’s point of view—offer us a more realistic point of departure for our joint striving for intellectual and ethical flourishing. Let us look at this a bit closer. The desire to promote critical thinking seems to be a very plausible starting point for contemporary civic education. Insofar as we collectively wish students to become critically thinking and independently minded citizens, what could be problematic about positing critical thinking as the primary aim of civic education? Of course, if we had a failsafe way of ensuring that students could actually attain this ideal it would not be a problem at all. The problem is that the attainability of the ideal is far from certain. Drawing on recent insights from social psychology and empirical studies of belief formation, Henri Pettersson argues that the ideal of critical thinking in education is far less realistic than we might assume when we study the educational theory literature on the subject. He writes that this non-empirical orientation has led to the creation of an abstract and idealised account of critical thought, which mischaracterises the prospects and limitations of critical thinking as an educational ideal, both in theory and in educational practice. The problem is that the philosophical model of critical thinking encourages us to approximate a paragon of an ideal reasoner, who is not encumbered by the inbuilt properties of our cognitive machinery, such as the workings of our information processing and the systematic tendencies for sub-optimal functioning contained therein. On the pedagogical side, the non-empirical emphasis has encouraged an emphasis on teaching sound logical reasoning as the backbone of critical thinking courses and textbooks, which in itself does not protect against these psychological issues (but might in certain extreme cases even amplify them). (Pettersson, 2020, p. 323)

3

Lærke draws a similar conclusion with regard to Spinoza’s multiple references to the Hebrew Republic. He notes that Spinoza does not intend for the Hebrew Republic to function as ‘an exemplar to emulate but as a biblical commonplace from which we can learn essential lessons about human nature’ (2021, p. 279n).

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One important aspect of the problem is that the ideal of critical thinking is typically based on an unrealistic understanding of how humans actually behave and reason.4 While this may be mitigated by accounting for the empirical facts underlying people’s reasoning, it does not really compensate for the fact that [t]he basic premise is that philosophising, with its focus on universal analyses and abstract thought experiments, creates idealisations regarding ethical norms and just societies, which in the process lose those particularised details about these phenomena that have crucial bearing on their nature. (Pettersson, 2020, p. 324)

The effect of this idealization seems to be that the aim of education—in this case, critical thinking—is assumed to not only be readily attainable for students, but also to be, in one way or another, already in place for this educational setup to work. When looking at how most people tend to reason, however, it becomes clear that ‘we tend to hold on to our existing beliefs even in the face of contradicting evidence by practicing “slothful induction”’ as well as ‘gravitate towards those stimuli that corroborate our prior beliefs and interpret ambiguous evidence favourably’ (Pettersson, 2020, p. 330). One would have to assume that this goes for most educators as well. While critical thinking appears to be a sound intellectual virtue in itself, it lacks the power (as an idea) to thwart and counteract more powerful affects, such as those resulting in psychological phenomena like confirmation bias and belief perseverance. On Spinoza’s account, the value of an idea in terms of its truthfulness will always be relative to the power of other affects (E4p14). Another important aspect of the problem—one that is not addressed by Pettersson—is that this kind of educational promotion of critical thinking may not only be misleading, but it can also be counterproductive. What if the rather one-sided emphasis on cultivating critical thinking as a crucial ability for future democratic citizens (see, for example, Nussbaum, 2016) can in fact have the opposite effect of what is intended? What if it, when it does not work out as intended, can turn out to bolster prejudices rather than help defeat them? What if it can turn out to inflame unfounded conspiracy theories rather than strengthen truth-seeking? Recently, the general appeal to critical thinking appears to have been embraced by a wide array of people, with widely different—sometimes even incommensurable—interests. Some people appeal to critical thinking when they question the official results of presidential elections, and some people appeal to it when defending the same electoral processes. Some people appeal to critical thinking 4

In the context of moral education, there is a recent history of critiquing the idealization of critical thinking and logical reasoning as a form of ‘highly idealized conversation’ (Noddings, 2002, p. 120). Other differences aside, care ethicist Nel Noddings raises some serious concerns about the educational value of Habermasian ethics of discourse in a way that clearly parallels my reasoning here. This becomes obvious from the following critical summary of the Habermasian ideal: Hence, competent participants do not make dogmatic assertions, put self-interest above logic, attack persons instead of arguments, or insist that personal stories carry more than a modicum of weight as evidence. Such a highly constrained conversation has little resemblance to real conversation. (Noddings, 2002, p. 120)

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when arguing against mass vaccination, and many people appeal to it when arguing in favor of mass vaccination. To be sure, the problem here is not that people misuse their ability to think critically, but that the ideal of critical thinking may not be as readily available as it is often made out to be. At the same time, the ideal is vague and general enough that it can be invoked for many different purposes and in relation to many different agendas simultaneously. Nussbaum’s conception of citizenship education, for instance, relies heavily on the assumed stability and attainability of the ideal appealed to via ‘the ability to think critically’ (Nussbaum, 2016, p. 7). Contrasting education that cultivates critical thought with an irrational form of ‘education for profit-making’ (ibid.), Nussbaum avoids difficult questions such as: what are some of the possible drawbacks of striving for an ideal that may in fact be unattainable? This is precisely the weak point that Spinoza targets in his critique of naïve forms of idealism in political philosophy (TP 1[1]). To the extent that an ideal is too far removed from human nature, he argues, we should not be surprised if it turns out to hamper rather than help us. Grounding civic education in an idealized image of what it is to be human, it may not only be ineffective, but it can also be harmful to the extent that it feeds into a vicious circle of affects. As Pettersson notes, it is important to remember that: The ‘epistemic agent’ who is actually trying to fulfil the normative standards of critical thinking is not an immaterial Cartesian thinker or a disembodied ‘brain-in-a-vat’, but an actual human being of flesh and blood with limited computational capacities, restricted amounts of psychophysical energy resources, subconscious processes, finite memory, inbuilt biases and so on. (Pettersson, 2020, p. 327)

Looking to a seventeenth-century philosopher like Spinoza for answers to contemporary problems in civic education may not come across as a terribly realistic option, but there is a sense in which Spinoza’s understanding of the affective nature of human beings (and his understanding of where this leaves us with regard to matters of politics and governance) resonates well both with the current critique of the educational ideal of critical thinking and with empirical reports of how people actually behave in politically charged situations. A recent example that is of interest here concerns the different governmental strategies for coping with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic (which is still ongoing at the time of writing this). While many countries have struggled with the logistics of maintaining a functioning societal structure during the ongoing pandemic, the results so far have varied. One way of looking at this is to evaluate how various governmental agencies perform under duress (i.e. to evaluate the efficiency of the mechanics of public institutions), and another is to look at how different governments communicate with their citizens. It is the latter aspect that connects most noticeably with our current discussion. In a recent article in The Guardian, the success of New Zealand’s strategy for containing the spread of the virus is discussed in relation to the role played by communications.5 It is argued that ‘[i]n seeking to foster calm and compassion, New 5

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/26/words-matter-how-new-zealands-clear-messag ing-helped-beat-covid?utm_term=Autofeed&CMP=twt_gu&utm_medium&utm_source=Twitter# Echobox=1614303916.

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Zealand’s messaging was starkly different to that elsewhere’. While in countries such as England and the United States focus was placed on instilling fear in the virus and on arousing general feelings of alarm, New Zealand’s strategy focused instead on appealing to people’s sense of cooperation and civic unity: The New Zealand government’s team opted to take a different route, focusing on the impact on people’s daily lives and steps they could take to protect each other. ‘We wanted something that was very human,’ says [Linda] Major [the advertising agency Clemenger’s director of social marketing]. Within 48 hours of being briefed, Clemenger had landed upon the organising principle of their campaign: ‘Unite Against Covid-19’.

Opting for a narrative intended to inspire public cooperation rather than to ignite fear and alarm seems to have had the desired effect. Looking at this from the point of view of Spinoza’s theory of the affects, we see how the same kind of scenario can unfold in very different ways depending on which affects are engaged and how they are put into play. It is interesting to note that working deliberately with people’s emotional involvement seems to have granted the New Zealand government the upper hand in relation to the setting up of effective strategies for countering the spread of the virus. Accordingly, the article goes on to say that ‘[t]he aim was to trigger team spirit, not fear; to bring New Zealanders together, and galvanise them to act. “Partly what we were trying to do was give people a common thing to rally or fight against”, says Mark Dalton, Clemenger’s creative director’. This is a telling example of how the virtuous circle of affects can be productively exploited in a situation not too different from what we might encounter in the context of civic education. Perhaps, however, Spinoza’s greatest lesson for our time is not that we can learn to harness the power of the passive affects for collective goods, but that it is often more difficult than we might think to tell the difference between affective encounters that are empowering and affective encounters that are debilitating. Not only is it difficult to distinguish what is truly good from what is only seemingly good, but it is exceedingly difficult to know when something constitutes a smaller harm and when it is actually a greater harm. Even debilitating affects like envy and the desire for vengeance can sometimes constitute a smaller harm relative to a greater harm, meaning that it would be premature to simply dismiss the value of certain affects taken out of context. For Spinoza, affects are always relational and, therefore, always context dependent. What constitutes a greater harm in one context may very well constitute a smaller harm in another. Civic education, therefore, cannot be tailored around the teaching of a static set of civic virtues and vices, but it should be geared at increasing young people’s proficiency at judging degrees of harm and empowerment in different situations. We can apply the same line of thinking to the problem of indoctrination. Rather than simply assuming that indoctrination constitutes a form of moral wrongdoing in any given context, it would be wise to consider indoctrination as a method that must be judged in relation to a specific educational situation. If indoctrination can be convincingly taken to be a smaller harm (of exploiting the passive affects already in circulation) in relation to a greater harm (of enhancing the influence of debilitating passions), then it can also be argued to offer something useful for civic education.

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It becomes less a matter of principle, however, and more an empirical matter of looking at what different situations require. While this may seem unsatisfactory, Spinoza encourages us to see that it is better to try to appreciate things for what they are, in all their imperfection, and to take that as a starting point, than to design a seemingly perfect system that is always already doomed to fail as it will prove impossible to live up to.

References Garver, E. (2010). Why can’t we all just get along: The reasonable vs. the rational according to Spinoza. Political Theory, 38(6), 838–858. Lærke, M. (2021). Spinoza and the freedom of philosophizing. Oxford University Press. LeBuffe, M. (2010). From bondage to freedom: Spinoza on human excellence. Oxford University Press. Noddings, N. (2002). Educating moral people: A caring alternative to character education. Teachers College Press. Nussbaum, M. (2016). Not for profit: Why democracy needs the humanities. Princeton University Press. Pettersson, H. (2020). De-idealising the educational ideal of critical thinking. Theory and Research in Education, 18(3), 322–338. Sangiacomo, A. (2019). Spinoza on reason, passions, and the supreme good. Oxford University Press.