THE ETHICAL ISSUE OF SPINOZA'S POLITICAL OBSEQUIUM HAPPY OBEDIENCE AND EMANCIPATION THROUGH REASON

Although Spinoza's philosophy is often mobilized to criticize mechanisms of domination today, particularly as regards his concepts of freedom and potentia multitudinis, his text -more conservative than such interpretations would suggest -requires us to examine the ethical positivity of a certain form of obedience. Spinoza's obsequium, which I propose to analyze in this article, refers to obedience determined by affects. How can such a conditioning process give rise to emancipation through reason? Only a certain affective composition -the hilaritas -in the determination to obedience may allow us to envisage the ideological horizon of free use of reason lead by the free republic of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. The analysis of the mechanism of obsequium invites us to think afresh the issue of our affective consent in submitting to authority to determine under what circumstances the progress of our faculty of reasoning is not prevented. Thus, it provides us with the genuine conditions for our liberation.