Thursday, February 3, 2011

The Inside Of The Vajina

Spinoza, philosophers, politicians

Here
a famous text of Spinoza, which I delivered by hand long ago: an apology for the political art of the possible and the lesser evil, against hubris intellectualist. The italics are mine.


§ 1. Philosophers conceive the affects that engage us in battle as vices into which men fall through their own fault, so they are wont to deride, to deplore, reprimand, or when they want to look more virtuous to hate. They believe and act divinely and rise to the pinnacle of wisdom, providing all sorts of praise to a human nature that exists nowhere, and withering by their speeches that actually exists. They design men, in fact, not as they are, but as they themselves wish they were : hence the result that most, instead of an Ethics, wrote a satire, and have never been in this policy, views that can be implemented, the Policy, as they understand, to be held for a Chimera, or as suitable to be the country of Utopia, or the golden age of poets, that is to say, where no institution was necessary. Between all the sciences, so that an application is the policy where the theory going to defer most of the practice, and no judge of men being less fit to govern a state that theoreticians, that is to say the philosophers.

§ 2. For politicians, however, they are believed to tend to the busiest men of the pitfalls that lead them for the better, and they are judged cunning rather than wise. experience indeed taught them that there will be flaws as long as there are men and they therefore apply to prevent human malice, and that means by which long experience has informed the efficiency, and men driven by fear rather than be guided by the why are wont to apply ; acting in a way that it seems contrary to religion, especially theologians as they in fact, the sovereign should lead public affairs in accordance with moral norms that the individual is required to observed. There is no doubt however, that politicians do not address in their written policy with much more happiness than the philosophers who have had experience as a mistress, they taught nothing that was in fact far from practice .

Political Treatise, (1677) Chapter I, § § 1-2. Ch Appuhn translation (slightly modified) in Works, Volume IV, Paris, Garnier / Flammarion, P. 11-12, taken from the website duty-of-philosophie.com )

0 comments:

Post a Comment