This book offers a detailed study of the political philosophies of Thomas Hobbes and Benedict de Spinoza, focussing on their concept of power as potentia, concrete power, rather than power as potestas, authorised power. The focus on power as potentia generates a new conception of popular power. Radical democrats–whether drawing on Hobbes's 'sleeping sovereign' or on Spinoza's 'multitude'–understand popular power as something that transcends ordinary institutional politics, as for instance popular plebsites (...) or mass movements. However, the book argues that these understandings reflect a residual scholasticism which Hobbes and Spinoza ultimately repudiate. Instead, on the book's revisionist conception, a political phenomenon should be said to express popular power when it is both popular (it eliminates oligarchy and encompasses the whole polity), and also powerful (it robustly determines political and social outcomes). Two possible institutional forms that this popular power might take are distinguished: Hobbesian repressive egalitarianism, or Spinozist civic strengthening. But despite divergent institutional proposals, the book argues that both Hobbes and Spinoza share the conviction that there is nothing spontaneously egalitarian or good about human collective existence. From this point of view, the book accuses radical democrats of pernicious romanticism; the slow, meticulous work of organizational design and maintenance is the true centre of popular power. Three minute video summary available via HPBin3. Extended discussion on The Political Theory Review podcast. First chapter open access available via Oxford Scholarship Online. Videos of book talks at National University of Singapore (Centre for Legal Theory) and Universidad de Buenos Aires (Instituto de Investigaciones Gino Germani) available via YouTube. (See links below.). (shrink)

Hobbes redefines his conception of liberty in the Leviathan as the absence of external impediments to motion. Power, on the other hand, refers to the body’s intrinsic dimension, that is, to the faculties possessed by each individual. There thus appears to be a clear distinction between liberty and power in Hobbes’ political philosophy. Taking into consideration Hobbes’ Latin works, however, in which he uses two different terms to refer to power: at times potestas and others potentia, (...) such a distinction may need to be revisited. As we will argue, there is a marked relation between liberty and power when considering human sociability. In this way, the aim of the article is to discuss Hobbes’ conception of power, through the pages of the Leviathan and De Homine, trying to clarify its complex, even ambiguous relation with his conception of liberty. (shrink)

In the Leviathan, power can be understood in two different senses, which are carefully discriminated in its Latin version by the use of the terms potentia and potestas to translate, depending on the context and the type of power concerned, the English power. Potentia and potestas, although types of power of a different nature – one, the physical power that bodies have to take effect on each other; the other, the juridical power, (...) out of which legal effects as justice itself come about –, are mutually implicated in the intertwining of juridical representations. This article aims to explore the consequences that follow from this ambivalent concept of power to think about justice and natural right. (shrink)

The driving question behind Sandra Leonie Field's exciting new book, Potentia, is: what, exactly, constitutes popular power? Field turns to two seventeenth-century political theorists, Thomas Hobbes and Benedict de Spinoza, to try to extract an account that might avoid Joseph Schumpeter's dismal conclusion that we should abandon all pretenses to popular power. In the process, she exposes problems with recent populist interpretations of Hobbes and Spinoza, showing that both of these figures appreciated the problems with identifying plebiscites (...) with popular power better than their "radical" interpreters. The result is a rich and stimulating work on a topic—namely, power—that remains somewhat undertheorized, at least... (shrink)

The European Hobbes Society Online Colloquium featured my book, Potentia: Hobbes and Spinoza on Power and Popular Politics. This is a précis of the book.

In this paper we attempt to provide a physical representation of quantum superpositions. For this purpose we discuss the constraints of the quantum formalism to the notion of possibility and the necessity to consider a potential realm independent of actuality. Taking these insights into account and from the basic principles of quantum mechanics itself we advance towards the definition of the notions of power and potentia. Assuming these notions as a standpoint we analyze the meaning of ‘observation’ and (...) ‘interaction’. As a conclusion we provide a set of axioms which comprise our interpretation of quantum mechanics and argue in favor of a redefinition of the orthodox problems discussed in the literature. (shrink)

Field, Sandra Leonie Potentia: Hobbes and Spinoza on Power and Popular PoliticsNueva York: Oxford University Press, 320 p.ISBN 9780197528242.

The present article discusses the relationship between might ( potentia ) and power ( potestas ) as it has unfolded throughout the modern age, from Thomas Hobbes to Carl Schmitt. Hobbes indicates the way forward for a progressive linguistic and conceptual coincidence of potentia and potestas : the goal of Hobbesian political philosophy (the search for peace and security) necessitates the reduction of potentia to potestas through the elimination of the content of actus . Schmitt accepts (...) this reduction, by assigning priority to potestas : the image of modern technology as a privileged dimension of potentia—potestas comes together as the modern state. Instead of taking the route of potentia understood as an opening-up to new possibilities and as human self-affirmation, the language of potentia—potestas has triggered a process, which is that of a naturalization of power relations, that is based on and justified by the social inequality arising from the differing extent of ownership of the instruments of technological production. (shrink)

Potentia of Poverty opposes to the surplus-value of capital a surplus-concept of life - of the worker, of the non-worker, of the poor, of the rich: an excess of being with the power to undo capital by using its own mechanism. Antonio Negri writes in the preface that 'The poor is the powerful, Pascucci tells us. She interprets Marx as a reader of Spinoza; however, maybe there is something more here than there is in Spinoza and Marx themselves. (...) A further passage is necessary to grasp this "more": namely, to tie the experience of poverty to an ontology of "cupiditas" [desire], that is, of "amor" [love]'. (shrink)

The author examines Spinoza's view of (1) the relationship between modes of substance and divine power, particularly in the context of the limitations of each individual mode, (2) the process of realizing divine power within a specific mode. The text proves that the representation of all things as modes of substance, or divine modes, allows Spinoza to endow them with divine power. For a thing that exists in time and has duration, the preservation of existence means creation. (...) Thus, maintaining the existence of a thing is identical to its creation. The power of a substance, expressed in its potency, is manifested in the duration of a thing. The specified duration is a manifestation of the substance's power, that is, its ability to create, preserve, and destroy things in their existence. (shrink)

In line with his theory of secularization according to which all significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts, Carl Schmitt argues in Constitutional Theory that people’s (Volk) constitution-making power in modern democracy is analogical to God’s potestas constituens in medieval theology. It is also undoubtedly possible to find a resemblance between Schmitt’s constitution-making power and God’s power as it is described in medieval theology. In the same sense as the constitution-making (...) class='Hi'>power is absolutely free from all normative ties, God’s potestas constituens, or rather, God’s potentia absoluta is free from such ties. Yet, unlike the Schmittian constitution-making power, God’s potentia absoluta was not, in medieval theology, originally intended as a description of some form of divine action: the absolute power of God referred to the total possibilities initially open to God. However, when the canonists started to employ the term potentia absoluta in their speculations concerning the papal plenitude of power (plenitude potestatis) by the end of the thirteenth century, they used it in a different sense than the theologians previously. According to certain canonists, the pope, by his potentia absoluta, could grant de facto dispensations from divine and ecclesiastical laws. Later on, this notion became a theological notion as well, but given its origin in juridical discourse, the constitution-making power, rather than being a secularized theological notion, is a theologized juristic notion. (shrink)

Starting with the claim that Quantum Mechanics is in need of a new interpretation that would allow us to understand the phenomena of this realm, I wish to analyse in this paper de Ronde's theory of power and potentia from a phenomenological perspective. De Ronde's claim is that the reason for the lack of success in the foundations of QM is due to the reluctance of both physicists and philosophers to explore the possibility of finding a new ontology, (...) new concepts for the physical theory. De Ronde proposes such new ontology and the question I wish to address here, is whether his ontology is conceptually plausible. I will, for this purpose, recur to Edmund Husserl's phenomenology. After presenting some of the basic concepts and methodological tools of this theory, I shall apply them to de Ronde's ontology to determine the viability of his theory. (shrink)

Emmanuel Tourpe | Résumé : La voie traditionnelle de l’analogie de l’être s’accomplit en contexte post-heideggérien dans une analogie de la fécondité. Mais cette analogie de la fécondité a pour fondement une ontologie de la fécondité, qui suppose une reprise du questionnement thomiste sur la puissance de Dieu à la lumière des développements de Boehme et de l’idéalisme allemand. C’est en découvrant la positivité essentielle de la puissance féconde de Dieu que la métaphysique contemporaine peut se renouveler de manière décisive. (...) |: The traditional way of the analogy of being is fulfilled, in a post-heideggerian context, by an analogy of fecundity. But this analogy of fecundity is based on an ontology of fecundity, which implies a resumption of the thomistic quest concerning God’s power in the light of the developments owed to Boehme and German Idealism. It is by discovering the essential positivity of God’s fertile power that contemporary Metaphysics can renew itself in a decisive manner. (shrink)

In this paper, I seek to clarify, criticize, and expand upon the ambiguous-yet-influential concept of divine violence introduced by Walter Benjamin’s “Zur Kritik der Gewalt”. I proceed in three parts: in the first, I outline Benjamin’s argument about the cycle of mythical violence and divine violence’s special role as an interruption of that cycle. Next, I explicate Spinoza’s key concepts of potentia and potestas, which can be used to more clearly define what ought to instead be translated as “divine (...) force”. In the third part, through Benjamin’s brief discussion of Sorel’s theory of the anarchist general strike, I equate potentia as a determinate power of aggregative individuals to divine force, both as a collective action and as an idea itself. I use this renewed and more sophisticated concept of divine force to oppose several interpretations of Benjamin’s concept, including Benjamin’s own quietist stance toward divine force. (shrink)

Within the realm of nano-, bio-, info- and cogno- (or NBIC) technosciences, the ‘power to change the world’ is often invoked. One could dismiss such formulations as ‘purely rhetorical’, interpret them as rhetorical and self-fulfilling or view them as an adequate depiction of one of the fundamental characteristics of technoscience. In the latter case, a very specific nexus between science and technology, or, the epistemic and the constructionist realm is envisioned. The following paper focuses on this nexus drawing on (...) theoretical conceptions as well as empirical material. It presents an overview of different technoscientific ways to ‘change the world’—via contemplation and representation, intervention and control, engineering, construction and creation. It further argues that the hybrid character of technoscience makes it difficult (if not impossible) to separate knowledge production from real world interventions and challenges current science and technology policy approaches in fundamental ways. (shrink)

Let us imagine for a moment that God is a most accomplished cithara player who nevertheless is not playing because he does not have a cithara; in other words, he is someone who has all the skills to act in the most masterly manner, but refrains from acting due to a lack of material implements. As no bodily counterpart can match his active power, he finds himself in the awkward situation of not being able to express himself. This is (...) the conundrum that the early modern philosopher Giordano Bruno brings to the attention of his readers in De l'infinito, universo e mondi, one of the... (shrink)

Hobbes’s account of the sovereign’s right to punish in Leviathan has led to a longstanding interpretive dispute. The debate is prompted by the fact that, prima facie, Hobbes makes two inconsistent claims: subjects (i) authorize all the acts of the sovereign, and are hence authors of their own punishment, yet (ii) have the liberty to resist such punishment. I argue that attending to Hobbes’s surprisingly neglected account of power yields a novel interpretation of his theory of punishment. Hobbes, it (...) turns out, is working with two conceptions of power: potestas, a juridical power, and potentia, a factual power. Each power grounds one of the ‘inconsistent’ claims above: potestas founds the authorized condemnation by the legal system, and potentia the factual enforced penalty, which is not directly authorized and can be resisted. (shrink)

On Power (De Potentia) is one of Aquinas's ''Disputed Questions'' (a systematic series of discussions of specific theological topics). It is a text which anyone with a serious interest in Aquinas's thinking will need to read. There is, however, no English translation of the De Potentia currently in print. Fr. Richard Regan has produced this abridgement, which passes over some of the full text while retaining what seems most important when it comes to following the flow of (...) Aquinas's thought. (shrink)

Benedict Spinoza (1634–1677) is feted as the philosopher par excellence of the popular democratic multitude by Antonio Negri and others. But Spinoza himself expresses a marked ambivalence about the multitude in brief asides, and as for his thoughts on what he calls “the rule of (the) multitude,” that is, democracy, these exist only as meager fragments in his unfinished Tractatus Politicus or Political Treatise. This essay addresses the problem of Spinoza’s multitude. First, I reconstruct a vision of power that (...) is found in the Ethics but that tends to be overlooked in the scholarly literature: power is not just sheer efficacy or imposition of will, but rather involves a capacity for being-affected; I call this the conception of power as sensitivity. The second part of my argument shows how, given Spinoza’s emphatic political naturalism, the conception of power as sensitivity can be extended to his political philosophy to shed light on what Spinoza calls potentia multitudinis, or “the power of the multitude”—a term found solely in the Political Treatise and nowhere else in his oeuvre. This juxtaposition reveals significant qualifications to the liberatory potential of the multitude currently claimed in the scholarly literature. (shrink)

O conceito de potentia possui uma pluralidade de sentidos na obra de Hobbes, sendo empregado na física, na antropologia, nas reflexões sobre o direito e sobre a política, bem como no discurso sobre Deus e seus atributos. Neste artigo, o exame será circunscrito ao conceito hobbesiano de potência (power) no Short Tract em seu diálogo com a tradição aristotélica da potência e do ato, isto é, ao conceito físico de potência por meio do qual os movimentos são explicados. (...) O que pretendo indicar é que já nessa obra esse conceito se forjou em oposição ao conceito aristotélico e à tradição escolástica, por mais que essa primeira formulação da noção de potência seja problemática. Hobbes fundamenta uma dupla fonte do determinismo no Short Tract, fonte que se tornará una com a reformulação do conceito de potência nos textos posteriores, como exporei na segunda parte do artigo. (shrink)

In the De potentia, Thomas Aquinas runs a series of disputations on the power of God. The treatise considers ten questions related to God's power to create external things, namely the universe, angels, and human beings. His explanation of creation here is the most developed treatment found in any of his writings, but the principal purpose of the work is to analyze the internal life of God--that is, the Trinity. According to Aquinas, we predicate the Persons of (...) the Trinity as relations, not as absolute things, and he examines the processions of the Son and the Holy Spirit in the light of reason. The complete De potentia is a very long document. In this new translation, Fr. Richard Regan offers an abridged version that passes over some of the full text while retaining what is most important when it comes to following the flow of Aquinas's thought. (shrink)

Thomas Hobbes has been hailed as the philosopher of power par excellence; however, I demonstrate that Hobbes’s conceptualization of political power is not stable across his texts. Once the distinction is made between the authorized and the effective power of the sovereign, it is no longer sufficient simply to defend a doctrine of the authorized power of the sovereign; such a doctrine must be robustly complemented by an account of how the effective power commensurate to (...) this authority might be achieved. Nor is this straightforward: for effective political power can fluctuate, sometimes severely. In this light, the prevalent juridical reading of Hobbes’s political philosophy is inadequate. (shrink)

In the Aristotelian tradition, there are two broad answers to the basic question "What is soul?" On the one hand, the soul can be described by what it does. From this perspective, the soul seems to be composed of various different parts or powers (potentiae) that are the principles of its various actions. On the other hand, the soul seems to be something different, namely, the actual formal principle making embodied living substances to be the kinds of things that they (...) are. Contemporary Aristotelians are split on how to interpret Aristotle: Anna Marmodoro (2013, 18), Thomas Johansen (2012, 81), and most others argue that the soul is nothing but a kind of cluster or group of powers. Rebekah Johnston (2011), however, strongly disagrees and argues that the soul is only the actual principle of embodied substance. Aquinas provides a novel and neglected solution to this problem and would argue that both sides are partly right but that either side is insufficient without the other. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Absolute and Ordained Power of God in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century TheologyFrancis Oakley[W]e must cautiously abandon [that more specious opinion of the Platonist and Stoick]... in this, that it... blasphemously invades the cardinal Prerogative of Divinity, Omnipotence, by denying him a reserved power, of infringing, or altering any one of those Laws which [He] Himself ordained, and enacted, and chaining up his armes in the adamantine fetters (...) of Destiny.Walter Charleton, The Darknes of Atheism Dispelled by the Light of Nature : A Physico-Theologicall Treatise (London, 1652)Of the various attributes characteristically ascribed to God in the Christian tradition—goodness, wisdom, omniscience, omnipotence, and the like—it is omnipotence which of recent years has most persistently been the object of focused attention among philosophers and historians alike. That that should be the case with philosophers working in the Anglo-American analytic tradition is not altogether surprising. While it is doubtless a development few would have predicted half a century ago, the years since then have seen something of a recrudescence of interest in a legislative or divine-command ethic. 1 Had that [End Page 437] not itself conspired to make omnipotence an obvious focus of philosophic attention, the deepening contemporaneous preoccupation with modal logic or the logic of possibility would surely have succeeded in so doing. Understood classically as affirming of God the ability to do all things and connoting a virtual capacity for action (as opposed to a power exercised in actuality), omnipotence has proven to be something of a troublesome notion, inviting unrestrained speculation about hypothetical divine action and generating a veritable cat’s cradle of philosophical conundrums concerning the relationship of God’s power to his will, wisdom, goodness, and justice.Medieval theologians and philosophers alike were forced to grapple with these taxing problems, 2 and philosophers of our own era have found them no less directly pertinent to their own logical and ethical concerns. 3 In 1955 Mackie inaugurated what was destined to become an ongoing discussion of omnipotence in the philosophical journals, 4 and such philosophers as Kenny and Keane, Cowan and Wolfe, Dummett, Plantinga, Swinburne, and Geach have been drawn into the fray. Since then, as a result, the pages of Mind, Philosophy, Philosophical Review, and even The Listener have been punctuated by their efforts to grapple with those venerable questions concerning the divine power that had exercised St. Peter Damiani in the mid-eleventh century, brought Abelard to grief a half-century later, and subsequently led Peter Lombard to devote to them a crucial and influential section of his Sentences—whether God of his omnipotence could undo the past, whether he could have made things other than he had, or created a world better than he did, and so on. 5 [End Page 438]While no medievalist can be expected to be anything but gratified by this unexpected testimony to the enduring significance and power of medieval scholastic concerns, those of us interested especially in the intellectual developments of the later-medieval centuries have particular reason to be energized by it. The years since Mackie launched this contemporary philosophical debate have also seen an intensification of interest on the part of historians in the ways in which, during these particular centuries, medieval thinkers themselves came to terms with the implications of the divine omnipotence and dealt with the theological and philosophical puzzles characteristically generated by that notion. Unlike the philosophers, whose concerns have been somewhat more broad-ranging, the historians have focused in particular on a quintessentially scholastic distinction that was developed, it has been said, “as a ‘yes and no’ answer to the question whether God is able to do or arrange things other than he did in creating the orders of nature and grace.” 6 The distinction in question is that between God’s power understood as absolute and as ordained (potentia dei absoluta et ordinata), which the theologians and philosophers of the period deployed as part of their great effort of accommodation between Greek philosophical and biblical notions of the divine, and the historical significance of which the scholarship of the past forty years has served increasingly to vindicate. 7 But while that distinction has been... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Absolute and Ordained Power of God and King in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries: Philosophy, Science, Politics, and LawFrancis OakleyThe quintessentially scholastic distinction between God’s power understood as absolute and ordained (potentia dei absoluta et ordinata) has been described “as a ‘yes and no’ answer to the question whether God is able to do or arrange things other than he did in creating the orders (...) of nature and grace.” 1 The importance of that distinction the historical scholarship of the past forty years has served increasingly to indicate. 2 The idea that it expressed had emerged already in the twelfth century, and in the standard form familiar to us from later years we now know it to have surfaced among the theologians of Paris in the opening years of the thirteenth. We also know that long before the end of the thirteenth century it had come to be understood in the two distinct ways that were to persist on through the late medieval and early modern centuries and to be acknowledged in the neo-scholastic manuals of the late nineteenth century.According to the first of these understandings, embedded in the classical formulations given to the distinction by Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, William of Ockham, and many other later thinkers, the term potentia absoluta was used simply to denote God’s power in itself, taken in abstracto and without reference to the orders of nature and grace he has actually willed de potentia ordinata to establish. There was no question, that is, of the absolute power’s [End Page 669] being understood as a presently-active power by means of which God intervenes in the world to act apart from or set aside the order established by the ordained power. It refers instead to God’s ability to do many things he does not choose to do. Or put in the temporal terms that William Courtenay favors, it refers to “the total possibilities initially open to God, some of which were realized by creating the established order,” the “unrealized possibilities” being “now only hypothetically possible.” 3Side by side with this “classical” usage, however, there had emerged already in the thirteenth century what has been called a “juristic” or “opera-tionalized” understanding of the potentia dei absoluta as a presently-active power of potential interposition in the established order. Thus Duns Scotus, who gave a most influential expression to this alternative understanding, drawing an analogy not only with kings but with any free agent within whose power the law falls, distinguished between the ordained power by which God acts de jure in accordance with the rightful law he has established and the absolute power whereby de facto he can act apart from or against the law. In such a formulation the absolute power clearly exceeds the ordained. Rather than referring simply to the realm of logical possibility prior to God’s ordination of things, that absolute power is now construed as a presently-active and extraordinary power capable of acting apart from the order established de potentia ordinata and prevailing in the ordinary course of things. This “juristic” understanding of the distinction was clearly affiliated closely with the cognate distinction that medieval canonists invoked as early as the thirteenth century in an attempt to elucidate what the pope, in the absoluteness of his plenitudo potestatis, or absolute power, could do that was not open for him to do when acting in accordance with his merely ordained or “ordinary” power.Philosophy and ScienceIn an earlier and complementary article, I traced the career of the power distinction, as well as the persistence of the two distinct ways of understanding it, across the fifteenth century and on into the thinking of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century theologians, Lutheran and Reformed as well as Catholic. 4 It remains now to go on to demonstrate that the currency of the distinction in these later centuries was no more confined to strictly theological circles or settings than it had been during the Middle Ages. The Coimbran commentators and Suárez certainly deployed it for more generally philosophical purposes, 5 [End Page 670] and in the seventeenth century they were by no means... (shrink)

This chapter offers some insight into Spinoza's understanding of the concept of potentia. As is well known amongst scholars, the concept of potentia is fundamental for Spinoza. From ontology, to ethics and politics, the concept of potentia seems to embody the unity of Spinoza's thought. Unlike E1p9, Spinoza focuses on the independence or in the per se nature of the intelligibility of each attribute. The demonstration of the proposition recalls both the definition of the attribute and the (...) definition of substance as explanations. Having more reality, Spinoza states, means having more powers or strength, that is, more potentia to exist. The chapter shows that Spinoza's radical ontology of power emerges in the propositions preparing the consideration of God's necessary existence, namely E1p9–10. (shrink)

In classical physics, probabilistic or statistical knowledge has been always related to ignorance or inaccurate subjective knowledge about an actual state of affairs. This idea has been extended to quantum mechanics through a completely incoherent interpretation of the Fermi-Dirac and Bose-Einstein statistics in terms of "strange" quantum particles. This interpretation, naturalized through a widespread "way of speaking" in the physics community, contradicts Born's physical account of Ψ as a "probability wave" which provides statistical information about outcomes that, in fact, cannot (...) be interpreted in terms of 'ignorance about an actual state of affairs'. In the present paper we discuss how the metaphysics of actuality has played an essential role in limiting the possibilities of understating things differently. We propose instead a metaphysical scheme in terms of powers with definite potentia which allows us to consider quantum probability in a new light, namely, as providing objective knowledge about a potential state of affairs. (shrink)

In this article I provide a Spinozist perspective on popular power. It is written as a blog post for a popular audience, and draws on my book, Potentia: Hobbes and Spinoza on Power and Popular Politics (OUP: 2020).

Eu inicio por introduzir algumas citações que Peirce faz sobre Espinosa. Poucos, mas importantes comentários, sugerem que uma nova consideração da “essência” filosófica pode emergir dessa análise. Conforme lemos na Ética de Espinosa, essência não deve ser considerado como forma pura; tampouco é uma qualificação definida com designações rígidas. Significado é potência: em termos pragmáticos, como buscarei demonstrar, o poder de estar pronto para agir, expandindo a própria disposição para responder, encarnando dado hábito de modo eficaz. Assim, não procede que (...) o significado é, de modo acabado e de uma vez por todas. Antes, este se faz na medida em que é capaz de produzir novos efeitos. Como disse Espinosa, é uma potentia agendium conatusinexaurível que sempre produz uma prontidão para perseverar na ação. Conceitos são mensuráveis à luz de seus resultados: expandem seus efeitos como uma floresta, ou onda, sem uma fronteira ou limite claros. Nossa concepção desses efeitos é o todo de nossa concepção do objeto, diz a máxima pragmática. Significado implica um vasto oceano de consequências inesperadas, Peirce escreve. Em termos espinosistas: ninguém sabe até onde chega o poder da mente – ou do corpo. Lançarei mão de algumas sugestões de Giorgio Agamben e Gilles Deleuze a este respeito, construindo sobre eles para abordar a ética de Espinosa em termos pragmáticos e o pragmatismo numa forma espinosista. (shrink)

The article discusses the causes for the formation of the polysemanticity of the Latin word virtus (virtue; strength, valor, masculinity) and term virtual, which was derived from virtus. The emergence of the polysemantic character of virtual became possible due to the unique semantics of the word virtus, in which there are two dominant meanings – virtue and strength. According to Ekaterina Taratuta, there are two lines of constructing the meanings of concepts based on the root vir(t) – “Platonic” and “Aristotelian.” (...) We believe that on the basis of the first semantic “dominant” of the word virtus (virtue) a “Platonic” group of meanings of the word virtual was formed, and on the basis of the second “dominant” (strength) the “Aristotelian” group of meanings was formed. The first cause of the existence of the “Platonic” group of the meanings of virtual is the translation of the Greek word ἀρετή using the Latin word virtus in Roman philosophy, Biblical texts and Greek-Byzantine patristic writings, as a result of which the concept of virtus has been enriched with the meanings of the Platonic and Christian concept of ἀρετή. The second cause is that through the Plato’s doctrine of arete-eidos the concept of virtus has been enriched with the meanings of the Platonic concept of εἶδος. As Hans Kremer has shown, in Plato’s doctrine eidos is the source of order and beauty, which is reflected in the empirical world as arete – virtue, goodness; thus, eidos is inextricably linked with arete. As a result, in the “Platonic” sense the virtual is understood as the eidetic, the ideal. The first cause of the existence of the “Aristotelian” group of meanings of virtual is the translation of the Greek word δύναμις using the Latin word virtus in Biblical texts and in Greek-Byzantine patristic writings, as a result of which the concept of virtus has been enriched with the Christian meanings of concept of δύναμις. The second cause is the translation of the Aristotelian concept of δύναμις using the Latin word potentia : the word δύναμις has become the medium, linking the words virtus and potentia and, under the influence of the latter, differences in the meanings of virtus and potentia (and especially their derivatives virtualis (virtual) and potentialis (potential)) have gradually disappeared. As a result, in the “Aristotelian” sense the virtual is understood as the potential, the possible. (shrink)

In [7] the authors of this paper argued in favor of the possibility to consider a Paraconsistent Approach to Quantum Superpositions. We claimed that, even though most interpretations of quantum mechanics attempt to escape contradictions, there are many hints -coming from present technical and experimental developments in QM- that indicate it could be worth while to engage in a research of this kind. Recently, Arenhart and Krause have raised several arguments against the PAQS [1, 2, 3]. In [11, 12] it (...) was argued that their reasoning presupposes a metaphysical stance according to which the physical representation of reality must be exclusively considered in terms of the equation: Actuality = Reality. However, from a different metaphysical standpoint their problems disappear. It was also argued that, if we accept the idea that quantum superpositions exist in a potential realm, it makes perfect sense to develop QM in terms of a paraconsistent approach and claim that quantum superpositions are contradictory, contextual existents. Following these ideas, and taking as a standpoint an interpretation in terms of the physical notions of power and potentia put forward in [10, 12, 15], we present a paraconsistent formalization of quantum superpositions that attempts to capture the main features of QM. (shrink)

In addition to the notion of power (potentia), Spinoza employs the notion of power of acting (agendi potentia), especially in the Ethics. This raises the question, if Spinoza uses both ‘power’ and ‘power of acting’, what is the difference between the two? What else could power be, for Spinoza, but power of acting? What is the relationship between power and activity in his system? This essays aims at giving answers to these (...) questions; thereby emerges what may be called an actualist model of God’s power. (shrink)

This paper is an intervention in the debate inaugurated by Peter Harrison in 2002 when he called into question the validity of what has come to be called ‘the voluntarism and early-modern science thesis’. Though it subsequently drew support from such historians of science as J. E. McGuire, Margaret Osler, and Betty-Joe Teeter Dobbs, the origins of the thesis are usually traced back to articles published in 1934 and 1961 respectively by the philosopher Michael Foster and the historian of ideas (...) Francis Oakley. Central to Harrison’s critique of the thesis are claims he made about the meaning of the scholastic distinction between the potentia dei absoluta et ordinata and the role it played in the thinking of early-modern theologians and natural philosophers. This paper calls directly into question the accuracy of Harrison’s claims on that very matter. (shrink)

The European Hobbes Society Online Colloquium featured my book, Potentia: Hobbes and Spinoza on Power and Popular Politics, with critical commentaries from Alissa MacMillan, Chris Holman, and Justin Steinberg. This is my response to their commentaries.

This paper asks: How can Spinoza help us to better understand digital capitalism? The article engages critically and constructively with the philosophies of Spinoza, Marx, Hegel, and Antonio Negri in order to combine elements from their works. It focuses on a particular aspect of digital capitalism, namely the antagonism between digital labour and digital capital. Spinoza did not directly analyse class relations. Nonetheless, his philosophy can help us to indirectly analyse contemporary capitalism. This paper undertakes an analysis of digital capitalism (...) by taking Spinoza’s concepts of power as potentia and potestas as a starting point. Antonio Negri has stressed the dialectic of potentia and potestas as part of the analysis of class and capitalism. This paper connects Spinoza to Marx’s and Negri’s analyses of capitalism and the working class. It analyses digital capitalism’s antagonisms between digital labour and digital capital, digital commodities and digital commons, and the networked digital productive forces and the digital relations of production as the antagonism between digital potentia and digital potestas. (shrink)

Power and its Number, from Abelard to Kepler. Catholic theology has always held, contrary to what the philosophers say, that God can do everything: his power is infinite, he always has a reserve of power and this reserve is not exhausted in the opus creationis. Thus, God's power is divine because it is incomprehensible. Therefore, there is an essential equivocity in the potentia Dei, which cannot be confused with the power of nature. What are (...) examined here instead are some of the arguments in favor of the opposite thesis. Let us take seriously a logical objection: by saying that divine power is inexhaustible, is this not to assert the impossibility of its being exhausted and, in so doing, to impose on it a limit which, by definition, it cannot bear? Should not a consistent theology refrain from considering the divine power according to comparisons borrowed from the kingdom of created things? Kepler's attempt to think of nature as a pure Trinitarian symbol seems in this respect to deserve special attention. (shrink)

Spanish translation of Field, S. L. (2014). 'Hobbes and the question of power'. Journal of the History of Philosophy, 52(1), 61-86. Thomas Hobbes has been hailed as the philosopher of power par excellence; however, I demonstrate that Hobbes’s conceptualization of political power is not stable across his texts. Once the distinction is made between the authorized and the effective power of the sovereign, it is no longer sufficient simply to defend a doctrine of the authorized (...) class='Hi'>power of the sovereign; such a doctrine must be robustly complemented by an account of how the effective power commensurate to this authority might be achieved. Nor is this straightforward: for effective political power can fluctuate, sometimes severely. In this light, the prevalent juridical reading of Hobbes’s political philosophy is inadequate. (shrink)

In Ethics 4, Spinoza argues that “A free man thinks of nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is a meditation on life, not on death” (E4p67). Spinoza’s argument for this claim depends on his view of imagination, reason, and scientia intuitiva and on his notion of conatus. I explicate Spinoza’s view of life in terms of power (potentia) and show that Spinozan death amounts to reconfiguration rather than absolute annihilation. I then show that E4p67 reflects Spinoza’s (...) well-known account of the three kinds of knowing. Thinking of death is quintessentially imaginative and passive. The free person of E4p67 is in contrast a rational person. To reason, and as becomes especially clear E5, to experience scientia intuitiva, moreover is to think of things “without any relation to time, but [rather] sub specie aeternatitis”(E2p44c2) and to experience activity To the extent, then, that we are rational, free, and active, death is a non-issue. Indeed, to the extent that we are able to meditate on life sub specie aeternitatis, we actually experience joy, love (E5p20s, p32c), eternity (Sp23s), and “the greatest satisfaction of the Mind” (E5p27). (shrink)

The notion of ‘omnipotence’ (potentia dei) runs through the history of medieval philosophy especially after the contribution of Augustine’s thought. Augustine thus traces ethical developments from the idea of God’s sovereignty to the construction of an order of things comparable with his power of creation. Augustine was the first Christian thinker to introduce and document the notion of potentia dei in an ethical context, proving at the same time that the ambivalence of God’s power results either (...) from the activity of ordering, or from the impossibility of God’s duplication, or from the incapacity to destroy the world in respect to a rational configuration of laws and events. (shrink)

Spinoza's use of the phrase “sui iuris” in the Tractatus Politicus gives rise to the following paradox. On the one hand, one is said to be sui iuris to the extent that one is rational; and to the extent that one is rational, one will steadfastly obey the laws of the state. However, Spinoza also states that to the extent that one adheres to the laws of the state, one is not sui iuris, but rather stands under the power (...) [sub potestate] of the state (TP 3/5). It seems, then, that to the extent that one is sui iuris, one will not, in fact, be sui iuris. In this paper, I offer an interpretation of Spinoza's notion of being sui iuris that enables us to overcome this paradox and sheds light on Spinoza's relationship to the republican tradition. I work towards this goal by distinguishing between two ways in which Spinoza uses the locution, which correspond to two different conceptions of power: potentia and potestas. This distinction not only allows us to save Spinoza from internal inconsistency, it also enables us to see one important way in which Spinoza stands outside of the republican tradition, since he conceives of liberty not as constituted by independence, or citizenship in a res publica, but as being sui iuris in the first sense described above: being powerful. (shrink)

In this paper, I inspect the grounds for the mature Spinozist argument for substance monism. The argument is succinctly stated at Ethics Part 1, Proposition 14. The argument appeals to two explicit premises: (1) that there must be a substance with all attributes; (2) that substances cannot share their attributes. In conjunction with a third implicit premise, that a substance cannot not have any attribute whatsoever, Spinoza infers that there can be no more than one substance. I begin the inspection (...) with the analysis of the first premise, which is provided in the form of the four proofs of God’s existence in Ethics Part 1, Proposition 11. While demonstrating how Spinoza adopts a progressive approach, where the fourth proof of God’s existence is more successful and persuasive than the third, which is more successful than the second, etc., I also unpack concepts central to Spinoza’s thinking here, including the concepts of reason (ratio) and power (potesta or potentia). I then analyze the second premise of the Spinozist argument for substance monism, as established by Ethics Part 1, Proposition 4 in conjunction with Ethics Part 1, Proposition 5. I take up and respond to the objection attributed to Leibniz that a substance p can have the attributes x and y and a substance q can have the attributes y and z, and thus that substances can share some attributes while remaining distinct. Throughout the study, my attention is focused on the argumentative procedures Spinoza adopts. This yields a close, internalist reading of the text where Spinoza effectively embraces substance monism. In conclusion to this study, I underscore to the originality of Spinoza’s argument for seventeenth century theories of substance. (shrink)

We will examine the revolts, begun in October of 2019, and currently developing in Chile under three conjoined parts. First, we will not try to theoretically ‘tame’ the revolutionary creature, but rather to plug immanently into the energy of the ‘potentia’ of the revolutionary event. To this extent, we will highlight the shortcomings of a theoretical enterprise that intends to explain it in traditional terms or that thrives for a variant of simple ‘reformism’. Second, and consequently, we will describe (...) how the concept of the constitution is the perfect product of coloniality. Hence, the concept of the ‘constitutional trap’ is not something unique to the Chilean experiment, but that the constitutional idea itself is the main pipeline of coloniality and the most sophisticated product in the contention of democracy. Third, and to encompass and give a particular direction to the previous topics, we will deploy the ‘theory of encryption of power’ and the concept of the ‘hidden people’ to explicate the Chilean phenomenon under a new light, where no past is irrevocable, and no future is necessary. (shrink)

O artigo argumenta que a teoria dos poderes políticos de Thomas Hobbes no Leviatã é inovadora, consistente e muito bem integrada no debate da época e em sua filosofia política. Essa teoria se revela na versão latina do Leviatã com a inserção pelo autor do binômio da potentia e da potestas, que traduz a palavra power, tornando explícita uma distinção que antes poderia ser compreendida apenas analiticamente. O uso dos dois conceitos por Hobbes é um tema pouco explorado (...) pela literatura e, mesmo aqueles e aquelas especialistas que tratam do binômio não interpretam adequadamente o texto hobbesiano nem oferecem uma contextualização do tema no debate da época. O presente artigo busca preencher essa lacuna. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A CONTRADICTION IN SAINT THOMAS'S TEACHING ON CREATION THEODORE J. KONDOLEON Villanova University Villanova, Pennsylvania 0 THOSE FAMILIAR with Saint Thomas's writings is generally known that the Angelic Doctor changed his position on a number of philosophical issues during the course of his relatively short professional career. For instance, there is his opinion concerning the instrumental role of higher creatures in the creation of the universe-something he allowed as (...) possible in his Commentary on the Sentences but later rejected in his Disputed Question On the Power of God and in the Summa Theologiae. Another example is Thomas's view on the possibility of an actual infinite multitude, an opinion he accepted in the early Disputed Question On Truth but argued against in the Summa Theologiae.1 However, to change one's mind on a particular issue is not to contradict oneself, since to do that is to say or hold, in the same time frame, pwhile also saying or holding not p. However, in his Treatise on Creation in the Summa Theologiae, Saint Thomas does, at least once, contradict himself in what he has to say on the question of the demonstrability of the world's temporal beginning, a contradiction which, to my knowledge, has never previous1 On the question whether higher creatures can be instrumental causes in the creation of lower creatures see In Sent. IV, d. 5, q. 5, a. 3; De potentia Dei, q. 3, a. le and Summa Theologiae, I, q, 45, a. Sc. On the issue of an actual infinite multitude see D. Q. De veritate, q. 2, a. 9 and Summa Theologiae, 1, q. 7, a. 5. However, in the De aeternitate mundi-a work possibly written after Saint Thomas completed the first part of his Summa-Aquinas asserts, towards the end of this work, that no demonstration has as yet been forthcoming that God cannot produce a multitude that is actually infinite. 51 52 THEODORE J. KONDOLEON ly been noted. In what follows I intend to expose this contradiction and to see whether there is any possible way for him to escape it. I In article 1 of Question 46 of the Prima pars, Aquinas argues that it cannot be demonstrated that the world of creatures always existed, given that the actual existence of creatures depends upon the causal will of God and the only thing which God wills necessarily is Himself.2 Consequently, whether or not the world exists, or is created eternally or with a temporal beginning, are matters entirely up to God's free will.3 In the following article he argues that neither can the world's temporal beginning be demonstrated but that this is something known only by faith.4 It cannot be demonstrated from the world itself since demonstration proceeds by way of knowledge of the universal essences of things and universals abstract from the hie et nunc, or from the question of temporal origin.5 Nor can it be proved from the world's efficient cause-the divine will-seeing that God's will cannot be investigated by reason except as regards those things which God wills necessarily (and what He wills about creatures is not among 2 " Dicendum nihil praeter Deum ab aeterno fuisse. Et hoc ponere non est impossibile. Ostensum est enim supra quad voluntas Dei est causa rerum. Sic ergo necesse est esse sicut necesse est Deum velle ilia, cum necessitatis effectus ex necessitate causae dependeat, ut dicitur in Meta. Ostensum est autem supra quod, absolute loquendo, non est necesse Deum velle aliquid nisi seipsum." ST I, q. 46, a. le. Latin quotations from Saint Thomas appearing in the footnotes are from the Leonine edition. 3 " Non est ergo necessarium Deum velle quod mundus fuerit semper. Sed eatenus mundus est quatenus Deus vult illum esse, cum esse mundi ex voluntate dependeat, sicut ex sua causa. Non est igitur necessarium mundum semper esse: Unde nee demonstrative probari potest." Ibid. 4 " Dicendum quod mundum non semper fuisse sola fidei tenetur, et demonsrtative probari non potest; sicut et supra de mysterio Trinitatis dictum est." Ibid., a. 2c. 5 "Et hujus ratio est, quia novitas mundi non potest demonstrationem recipere ex parte ipsius mundi... (shrink)

Die Frage, wie sich Aussagen uber Fahigkeiten von Personen zu Aussagen uber Moglichkeiten von Zustanden in der Welt verhalten, ist fur unser menschliches Selbstverstandnis zentral. Der vorliegende Band versammelt unter dieser Frage durchweg Originalbeitrage in historisch-systematischer Absicht; sie behandeln die Geschichte der Metaphysik und Ontologie von Parmenides bis Heidegger.INHALT: VORWORT - Klaus Jacobi: Das Konnen und die Moglichkeiten. Potentialitat und Possibilitat - Mischa von Perger: Moglichkeit, Parmenideisch - Ulrich Nortmann: 'Das Saatkorn ist dem Vermogen nach eine Pflanze'. Uber ontologische und (...) logische Aspekte Aristotelischer Moglichkeitssatze - Sang-Jin Kang: Anselm und die modallogische Betrachtung der gottlichen Notwendigkeit - Michael Astroh: Petrus Abaelardus on Modalities de re and de dicto - Christopher Martin: Peter Abaelard on Modality. Some Possibilities and Some Puzzles - Allan Back: Avicenna and Averroes: Modality and Theology - Seung-Chan (Elias) Park: Die Differenz von personlicher und unpersonlicher Moglichkeit bei Thomas von Aquin - Charles Lohr: 'Art' and Possibility: The Rule Concerning Possibility in the Ars lulliana - Peter King: Duns Scotus on Possibilities, Powers, and the Possible - Matthias Kaufmann: Gottes Allmacht und die Wahrheit modaler Satze. Potentialitat und Possibilitat bei Wilhelm von Ockham - Simo Knuuttila: On the History of Theory of Modality as Alternativeness - Stephan Meier-Oeser: Potentia versus Possibilitas? Posse! Zur cusanischen Konzeption der Moglichkeit - Dominik Perler: Cartesische Moglichkeiten - Hans Poser: Leibniz'sche Handlungsmodi zwischen Ontologie und Deontologie - Wilhelm Metz: Der transzendentale Moglichkeitsbegriff bei Kant und Fichte - Rainer Marten: Heidegger: Die eigenste eigentliche Moglichkeit - Tilman Borsche: Moglichkeiten des Seins, Moglichkeiten des Denkens - Thomas Buchheim: Zwischen Antinomie und Kompatibilitat: Versuch uber die naturliche Einbettung unserer Handlungsfreiheit - Kuno Lorenz: Dynamis und Energeia. Zur Aktualitat eines begrifflichen Werkzeugs von Aristoteles. (shrink)

This paper adopts Deleuze’s reading of Spinoza’s expressionism and pure semiotics to argue that Spinoza’s Ethics offers an alternative notion of freedom of speech that is based on the potentia of the individual. Its aim is to show how freedom of thought is connected to the problem of individuation that connects our mode of being with our power to speak and think. Rather than treating freedom of speech as an enlightened idea that is in opposition to, for example, (...) religious authority, or the suppression of human rights, this paper argues that freedom of speech should be understood by what Spinoza calls ‘an adequate idea’: an idea that explains the cause of its own production. What is to be considered is: who wants this freedom, in what situation, why, what is at stake? No freedom in itself is ever given. This paper argues for speech as an assembled body that is always in connection with other bodies. It is argued that to understand the power and value of the freedom of speech, we should study the praxis of the utterance as an assembled body, its causal dimensions, and its affective immanent relations with other bodies, and other modes of speaking. (shrink)