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Educating the ingenium: Spinoza, plurality, and the imitation of affects
Malmö University, Faculty of Education and Society (LS), Department of Childhood, Education and Society (BUS).ORCID iD: 0000-0003-1669-7132
2023 (English)Conference paper, Oral presentation only (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

There is a social and political dimension to Spinoza’s theory of affects that is important to highlight for educational purposes. Because all people are always in part passionate (i.e., determined to act by causes that are external to them), it makes no sense to assume that empowerment is ever an entirely individual affair. On the contrary, Spinoza contends that if people want to become more active and more empowered, they need to join with others who are striving for the same thing. Accordingly, ‘the good which everyone who seeks virtue wants for himself, he also desires for other men’ (E4p27d). There are two upshots to this idea that can be addressed in terms of practical (educational) questions. First, it demands that we find out more about how people can be influenced to want the same thing. Second, it means that we need to look closer at how passivity can help bring about activity. Because different people have different ingenium (i.e., affective constitution) it is not a straightforward thing to assume that we would all naturally strive for something similar. At bottom, we all want to become more empowered, but what we take to be empowering may differ widely depending on our past experiences and our culturally encoded patterns of association. The educational concern at the heart of this matter is therefore bound up with the question of how different people can be made to strive for the same thing so as to help them flourish, individually as well as collectively. 

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2023.
Keywords [en]
Spinoza, imitation of affects, plurality, education
National Category
Pedagogy
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-58557OAI: oai:DiVA.org:mau-58557DiVA, id: diva2:1755191
Conference
”Productive tensions? Engaging with pluralism, politics and conflict in education” Manchester, 4th & 5th of May 2023
Available from: 2023-05-05 Created: 2023-05-05 Last updated: 2023-10-25Bibliographically approved

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Dahlbeck, Johan

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CiteExportLink to record
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Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
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  • de-DE
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  • en-US
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