Susan James - Spinoza and the importance of living together

Susan James, Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College, London, talks about how and why Spinoza developed a framework for living together.

About Susan James

"I’m a professor of philosophy at Birkbeck College in London.
Most of my work is about early modern philosophy, particularly the social and political aspects of philosophy in that period. My most recent book is called Spinoza on Learning to Live Together."

The value of fortitude

Although Spinoza lived in one of the most harmonious parts of Europe at the time, it was nevertheless, by our standards, politically fairly wild. He lived through the public lynching of one of the leaders of the Dutch Republic, de Witt, and his brother. He saw a number of his friends prosecuted for publishing work that offended Church and State. He was extremely familiar with internecine religious and political feuds and he himself complained of being unjustly branded an atheist and being made notorious because of it.
So, we see that Spinoza sets great store by this value of fortitude, this philosophical motivation and desire to live together in the light of your understanding and to use your understanding to build relationships with other people and to co-operate with them. One of the questions that Spinoza is particularly interested in is what sort of politics can do that. What sort of State do we need to help us live like that as effectively as possible?

Key Points

• Spinoza’s philosophy of living together better is based on the value of fortitude – a philosophical motivation and desire to live together in the light of our understanding, and to use this understanding to build relationships and co-operate with other people.
• He suggests that one of the advantages of a democratic community – a relatively inclusive one – is that people are able to take account of a wider range of interests in working out how to live co-operatively together.
• Part of learning to live successfully, not only co-operatively but satisfyingly, may consist of learning to accommodate ourselves to the forces around us, including environmental forces.