Noodzakelijk determinisme, geen initiatief en tóch activiteit

In vervolg op het blog “De Spinozistische mens hoeft niet voor 100% reactie te zijn” waarin ik reageer op de voordracht van Wim Klever “Wie Spinoza den Menschen erklärt” breng ik hier een stukje dat ongeveer hetzelfde benadert op een andere manier (zo kunnen we het ook eens van een ander te horen). Ik neem een passage uit Paul Ricoeur: Oneself as another [Originally Soi-même comme un autre, 1990. Transl. Kathleen Blamey. University of Chicago Press, 1995]

Ricoeur, op zoek naar een filosofische benadering die een verbinding tot stand brengt tussen de fenomenologie van het ondergaande of lijdende zelf en de (in Aristotelische termen) actuele en potentiële grond waartegen een ‘zelfheid’ zich aftekent, komt uit bij Spinoza’s conatus. Ik citeer de betreffende tekst waarbij ik de voetnoten weglaat en alleen nog vermeld dat hij zich baseert op Sylvain Zac, L'Idée de vie dans la philosophie de Spinoza (Paris, PUF, 1963).

For me, this connection is Spinoza's conatus. I have written very little on Spinoza, although he is always to be found in my meditation and my teaching. I share with Sylvain Zac the conviction that "all Spinozist themes can be centered around the notion of life." But to say life is also to say power, as the Ethics confirms, through and through. Power here does not mean potentiality but productivity, which is not to be opposed to act in the sense of actuality or realization. Both realities are degrees of the power of existing. From this result, on the one hand, the definition of the soul as the "idea of an individual actually existing thing" (Ethics, bk. 2, prop. II) and, on the other, the assertion that this power of animation "is of quite general application and applies to men no more than to other individuals" (prop. 13, scholium)

It is against this overly hastily drawn backdrop that the idea of conatus stands out, as the effort to persevere in being, which forms the unity of man as of every individual. Here I like to quote proposition 4 of book 3: "Each thing, in so far as it is in itself, endeavors to persist in its own being" (the demonstration is in the main a reference to book 1, where it is shown that "particular things are modes whereby the attributes of God are expressed in a definite and determinate way ..., that is ... , they are things which express in a definite and determinate way the power of God whereby he is and acts."

I realize that this dynamism of living things excludes all initiative that would break with the determinism of nature and that persevering in being does not involve going beyond this being in the direction of something else, in accordance with some intention that could be held to be the end of that effort. This is excluded by the definition of conatus immediately following in proposition 7: that by which "each thing endeavors to persist in its own being is nothing but the actual essence of the thing itself" (Ethics, bk. 3, p. 109). The demonstration then evokes the idea of necessity that book 1 tied to that of expression, so that "the power or conatus by which it perseveres in its own being, is nothing but the given, or actual, essence of the thing" (p. 110). We should not, however, forget that the passage from inadequate ideas, which we form about ourselves and about things, to adequate ideas signifies for us the possibility of being truly active. In this sense, the power to act can be said to be increased by the retreat of passivity tied to inadequate ideas (cf. Ethics, bk. 3, prop. 1, proof and corollary). This conquest of activity under the aegis of adequate ideas makes the work as a whole an ethics. Thus there is a close connection between the internal dynamism worthy of the name of life and the power of the intelligence, which governs the passage from inadequate to adequate ideas. In this sense, we are powerful when we understand adequately our, as it were, horizontal and external dependence with respect to all things, and our vertical and immanent dependence with respect to the primordial power that Spinoza continues to name "God."

[cf books.google]

spinoza | 18-12-2011 | 18:08 | Link | Reacties (1)

Reacties

Ik verwijs naar mijn eerdere repliek.Zac (ik heb hem nog gekend) heeft zijn studenten in de Spinoza-studie verkeerde wegen gewezen (o.m. Inzake Schriftinterpretatie en de verhouding Spinoza -Meijer) en de vroom protestantse fenomenoloog Ricoeur is al helemaal geen autoriteit betreffende Spinoza, die hij diep in zijn hart moest verafschuwen. Het gegeven citaat getuigt van een selectief aanschurken.

Wim Klever 18-12-2011 @ 20:38