A Profession Without Reason by Levine Bruce E.;

Author:Levine, Bruce E.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: AK Press
Published: 2022-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13: Madness and Scientia Intuitiva

The terms mental illness and psychosis were not used in Spinoza’s time, however, in the Ethics, Spinoza discusses madness, including hallucinations. He did not romanticize madness, as he saw nothing romantic about the irrational, however, he saw hypocrisies in the determination of madness. Specifically, he observed: “For sometimes we see men so affected by one object that they think they have it before them even though it is not present. When this happens to a man who is not asleep, we say he is delirious or mad. . . . But when the miser thinks of nothing but gain or money, and the ambitious man of honor, they are not reckoned as mad. . . . But in reality avarice, ambition, lust etc. are kinds of madness, although they are not accounted as diseases.”

Spinoza’s goal was not to explain madness but to provide a rational path to freedom and happiness, however, he provides concepts that are helpful to understanding madness. These concepts include: his recognition that a third kind of knowledge, intuitive knowledge (scientia intuitiva), is superior to reason; his belief in monism as opposed to dualism; and his recognition of the force by which each thing perseveres in existing (conatus). Before explaining the relevance of these concepts to madness, some thoughts on why it is so difficult to understand madness.

One way to gain perspective about just how difficult it is to comprehend all aspects of our humanity—including what is now called serious mental illness and psychosis—is to consider our earliest experiences with art. Were there some musicians and painters whom you immediately connected with? However, do you also recall some music and paintings that other people resonated with and you did not, but that which later in life, you were able to acquire a genuine appreciation for?

When I was a teenager, musicians and painters that were overtly emotional, political, and heroic were most easily accessible for me. For example, even when very young, I could resonate with some of Beethoven’s symphonies, though I was not able to connect with much of classical music. As a teenager, folk music was extremely accessible for me, as it spoke directly to my emotions and soothed them, and validated my sense of injustice in the world. Among painters, it was easy at an early age to connect with the overtly emotional Vincent van Gogh and Edvard Munch, and it was easy to understand overtly political paintings such as Pablo Picasso’s Guernica. But I could not connect with much of abstract modern art and, similarly, most of jazz.

With each new understanding of reality, I could connect with that which I could not before. As a teenager, I thought that I had completely grasped oppression and freedom, but it was only a partial understanding, and that is one reason why I could not completely understand Spinoza, whose grasp of freedom was far deeper than mine. So too did jazz musician Miles Davis and abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock have a deeper

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