Spinoza: Discovering What the Body Can Do

Abstract

For a supposed rationalist, there has probably never been a philosopher more interested and one who put more value in bodily experience than Spinoza. While his predecessor Descartes (and much of classical philosophy and theology) deems the body to be decidedly unreliable in its particularity and changeability, for Spinoza bodies are fascinating, ingenious and just as worthy of our attention as any of our most lofty ideas and concepts. As Spinoza famously puts it, ‘no one yet has determined what the body can do’.¹ This ‘yet-to-be-determined’ aspect of bodies is perhaps why they have been treated with such mistrust—bodies change and their senses and feelings are transient and instable, whereas our ideas and concepts are far more stable and truth as such is permanence itself. However, rather than this constant change and variability being considered as a weakness or a hindrance to life, Spinoza accepts it as the essential way in which we live and therefore something to be affirmed and appreciated: affectivity, the constant sense of transience and ‘inbetween-ness’ that relates each and every discernible experience of the world, is precisely that which allows us to build a knowledge that can compose our encounters in the world into ‘euphoric’ experiences; that is, experiences that are carried well and where the body can express itself.