Limiting the Political Imagination: Spinoza’s Prohibition of Novelty in the Political Treatise

Australasian Philosophical Review 7 (1):65-70 (2023)
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Abstract

James proposes that imagination plays a positive role throughout Spinoza’s works, and that it is continuous in his metaphysical and political works. In the Political Treatise, Spinoza argues that politics needs no creative imagination. History, he argues, has given us all the examples we need, and we should not use our imaginations to think up new ones. I will examine Spinoza’s ban on the use of the imagination for politics to see if James’s claims of continuity are challenged. Rather than limit the imagination, Spinoza seeks to encourage us to study historical examples and gain that knowledge of the past experience upon which the imagination works.

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Ericka Tucker
Marquette University

Citations of this work

Spinoza and the Poetic Imagination: Replies.Susan James - 2023 - Australasian Philosophical Review 7 (1):94-104.
Introduction.Deborah Brown - 2023 - Australasian Philosophical Review 7 (1):1-8.

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References found in this work

Spinoza and the Poetic Imagination.Susan James - 2023 - Australasian Philosophical Review 7 (1):9-27.
Collective Imaginings: Spinoza, Past and Present.Moira Gatens & Genevieve Lloyd - 2001 - Philosophical Quarterly 51 (203):257-258.
Spinoza and language.David Savan - 1958 - Philosophical Review 67 (2):212-225.

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