Form vs Power: Pragmatism and the wave of Spinozism

Abstract

I begin by introducing some of Peirce’s quotations about Spinoza. A few but important remarks suggest that a new consideration of the philosophical “essence” can emerge from this analysis. As we read in Spinoza’s Ethics, essence (or meaning, in contemporary terms) is not to be regarded as pure form; nor is it a definite qualification with rigid designations. Meaning is power: in pragmatic terms, as I will try to show, the power of being ready to act, expanding one’s disposition to respond, embodying effectively a certain habit. Thus, it is not that meaning is, definitely and once for all. Rather, it makes itself as far as it can produce new effects. It is, as Spinoza said, a potentia agendi, an inexhaustible conatus that always produces a readiness to persevere in acting. Concepts are measurable in light of their results: they expand their effects like a forest, or wave, without any clear border or limit. Our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object, says the pragmatic maxim. Meaning implies a vast ocean of unforeseen consequences, writes Peirce (CP 8.176). In Spinozian terms: no one knows the extent of a mind’s power - or the body’s. I will avail myself of some of Giorgio Agamben’s and Gilles Deleuze’s suggestions on this point, building upon them in order to approach Spinoza’s ethics in pragmatistic terms, and pragmatism in a Spinozian shape.