Psychology without Foundations by Brown Steven; Stenner Paul; & Paul Stenner

Author:Brown, Steven; Stenner, Paul; & Paul Stenner
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 783513
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Published: 2009-08-30T16:00:00+00:00

The human mind has no knowledge of the human body, nor does it know it to exist, save through ideas of modifications by which the body is affected. (E. II. prop. 19)

This crucial proposition couples movements in ideas to modifications in the body (by way of ‘ideas of modifications’), or, to put it more plainly, knowing (as a mode of thought) proceeds in parallel fashion to the body’s physical engagements in unfolding scenes of encounters. As we will discuss later, this is the relational basis upon which Spinoza constructs an intimate relationship between affects and knowing (since an emotion [affectus], considered as a mode of thought, is the idea of a modification of the body). What is more, within the ‘parallelism’ adopted by the Ethics, activity and passivity cease to be uniquely identified with particular attributes, contra the Cartesian formulation. They become instead potential and actual properties of both attributes, since both attributes are ‘expressions’ of the underlying unity of these unfolding scenes of activity, encounter and transformation. A ‘body’ whose powers decrease as a function of an encounter is, when conceived under the attribute of thought, simultaneously a ‘mind’ with resultant diminished powers. The equal standing of each attribute in turn as expressions means in addition that they are no longer successively weaker parties in a relationship of control or ownership. Indeed, the very notion of a relationship between them is undermined by the assertion of their unity.

These moves may be characterised in several ways. They serve, initially, to remove the need to imagine some kind of ‘holding power’ or a mechanical point of connection between body and mind, there being no absolute difference in the substantial composition of the attributes. There is simply an ordering of things expressed in two registers. Beyond this, Spinoza may be read as performing an emancipatory act of awarding the body its full and proper standing in the definition of personal being that is not unlike that in critical psychological theory (e.g. Harré, 1991; Stam, 1997; Brown, 2001). But it is important to recognise that the ‘levelling’ of the attributes is ultimately warranted as the exercise of reason. What offends reason, for Spinoza, is the hitherto ignorance of the actual nature of the body displayed in conceiving of it as a simple vehicle for the mind. Such a conception fails to question what powers and capacities may be immanent to the body qua body:

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