BOOK III, PROP. XXXII. If we conceive that anyone takes delight in something, which only one person can possess, we shall endeavour to bring it about that the man in question shall not gain possession thereof.
Note.–We thus see that man’s nature is generally so constituted, that he takes pity on those who fare ill, and envies those who fare well with an amount of hatred proportioned to his own love for the goods in their possession. Further, we see that from the same property of human nature, whence it follows that men are merciful, it follows also that they are envious and ambitious. Lastly, if we make appeal to Experience, we shall find that she entirely confirms what we have said; more especially if we turn our attention to the first years of our life. We find that children, whose body is continually, as it were, in equilibrium, laugh or cry simply because they see others laughing or crying; moreover, they desire forthwith to imitate whatever they see others doing, and to possess themselves whatever they conceive as delighting others: inasmuch as the images of things are, as we have said, modifications of the human body, or modes wherein the human body is affected and disposed by external causes to act in this or that manner.
May 22, 2007 at 4:45 pm
Ressentiment as a properly dialectical response to selflessness? This is very interesting.
May 22, 2007 at 4:54 pm
Does this also explain why we may shrink from the happiness of others, especially when their happiness appears due to some thing, some factor or condition that affects them and only them?
I am reminded of lots of life-situations, but also of a scene in “Seven Years in Tibet” when Heinrich Harrer is confronted with his friend getting married to a Tibetan. Harrer is upset, and is told that the happiness of a friend should be rejoiced and not reproached.
May 22, 2007 at 5:25 pm
Adam, Spinoza isn’t making prescriptive statements here, so it would be inappropriate to say this is the properly dialectical response to selflessness. Rather, Spinoza is tracing the psychodynamics that follow from the conatus of the body or what he refers to as its “endeavor to be”. Book III of the Ethics is a prelude to his discussion of human bondage or the way certain psychic structures enslave us.
PDX, that certainly seems to be one way of taking Spinoza. The reason I chose to post the propositions from Book III of the Ethics was that they nicely articulate Lacan’s logic of the imaginary and what he has in mind by dual imaginary relations. When Lacan was a boy he had the entire Ethics mapped out on his bedroom wall.
May 22, 2007 at 6:16 pm
I figured as much. I didn’t want to mention the Lacanian connection, because it seemed too obvious, but I guess it wouldn’t have hurt, especially if I’m just commenting. I think this is one of the most personally relevant propositions I’ve read you post so far. I experience it more than I would like to admit, this sensation of ineffable hate/fear when some people around me, but especially those around me, enjoy something that I can’t quite seem to enjoy.
I have suggested at I Blame The Patriarchy that women’s enjoyment is regularly experienced as threatening by men for basically this reason. Men, or rather the masculine subject, will be anything from dimissive to out-and-out violent when forced to endure a woman or feminine subject’s enjoyment. I don’t think it caught on that much over there though. Most of the commentators want to see misogynistic hate of female-enjoyment in decidedly sexed terms, which I don’t want to buck against entirely, but I think it goes deeper than that.
May 22, 2007 at 6:22 pm
I was also seeing the proposition in terms of the desire of the Other. Do you think that the object that Spinoza says we would like to see the Other be denied is really what we want to be? From a more Freudian perspective, Spinoza is simply pre-figuring the traumatic denial of the mOther’s love when we realize that the Father is an object of at least equal if not greater love for her.
May 22, 2007 at 8:29 pm
Wow, terrific observation! I’m not sure I would treat the Other as you seem to be doing here. The other person related to in the sorts of relations Spinoza is describing are dual imaginary relations with the other as semblable (like me) or the lower-case “other”. Lacan is often highly abbreviated in his discussions of the imaginary and the antagonism that emerges from the imaginary, so I think Spinoza does an excellent job unfolding the dymamics of these antagonisms in book three of the Ethics. La Rouchefoucault was another constant source for Lacan when thinking about the imaginary.
I try to distinguish the Other from the other (as semblable, not objet a) in a previous post that can be found here:
https://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2007/01/23/the-absent-third/
May 23, 2007 at 5:25 am
I noticed this in an essay by Miranda Joseph, titled “The Performance of Production and Consumption”: “One should be able to enjoy seeing someone else make good use of the product of ones labour, and in Marx’s view, one would if one did not see that someone as Other…”