This striving [conatus] to do something (and also to omit doing something) solely to please men [hominibus placeamus] is called Ambition [ambitio], especially when we strive so eagerly to please the people [vulgo] that we do or omit certain things to our own injury, or another’s. In other cases, it is usually called human kindness. Next, the Joy with which we imagine the action of another by which he has striven to please us I call Praise. On the other hand, the Sadness with which we are averse to his action I call Blame. Spinoza, Ethics 3, p29, Scholium (translated by Curley)
Above I reproduce the Curley translation because this is the one I generally trust and teach from. But this week-end, while looking at the Latin, I noticed 'vulgo.' And, indeed, when I checked the Silverthorne and Kisner translation, they use 'the crowd;' this strikes me as more fitting. For, this suggests that in the passage, Spinoza is, in fact, treating the demagogue as the ambitious type or exemplar of ambition. Noticing that the demagogue is the characteristic ambitious type impacts how we read a whole number of scholia in the heart of Spinoza's Ethics. You could easily miss it because this is the only time he connects excess of ambition to pleasing the crowd. In what follows I show what happens when you read Spinoza's treatment of such ambitio as a treatment of demagoguery.
A few pages later in the scholium to proposition 31, Spinoza explicitly refers back to the scholium quoted above:
This striving to bring it about that everyone should approve his love and hate is really Ambition (see P29S). And so we see that each of us, by his nature, wants the others to live according to his temperament; when all alike want this, they are alike an obstacle to one another, and when all wish to be praised, or loved, by all, they hate one another. [E3p29S]
That is, the effect of widespread demagoguery is polarization or mutual hatred. I return to this below.
The next mention of ambition is the scholium to E3p32 (which reads) "If we imagine that someone enjoys some thing that only one can possess, we shall strive to bring it about that he does not possess it"); there Spinoza writes, "we see, then, that from the same property of human nature from which it follows that men are compassionate, it also follows that the same men are envious and ambitious."* This property is a kind envy at people enjoying non-shareable goods, that is to say, status and attention (prestige, etc.), the demagogue "desires nothing so much as renown/attention [gloria]" (E3P39S)+ So, the demagogue is driven by the desire for applause from the crowd, and, simultaneously, gain attention and status and, thereby, prevent others from having it. (The significance of this to thee size of Trump's inaugural day crowd is evident.)
The connection between demagogue [ambitio] and renown [gloria] is made explicit in th definitions of the affects: "Ambition is an excessive desire for renown." In the explanation, Spinoza makes the desire for renown a ruling passion (to use Hume's phrase) that can be extremely hard to tame: "ambition is a desire by which all the affects are encouraged and strengthened (by P27 and P31); so this affect can hardly be overcome. For as long as a man is bound by any desire, he must at the same time be bound by this one.**
Spinoza is not done with the demagogue. For, this person instantiates immoderation in all respects: he "will not be moderate in anything provided he can hope he will not be discovered." You may think that Spinoza holds out the possibility that outside publicity, a functioning public opinion, might be such a countervailing force. President (then candidate) Trump, de facto, pointed out the weakness in this hope, when he said, "I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters." (E3 Affect 48, explanation.) Once the (would-be) demagogue believes that the crowd is loyal to him (as opposed to truth, justice, liberty, etc.), it can't function as a countervailing force.
And, in fact, Spinoza himself recognizes the point. Because he goes on to say, "if [the demagogue] lives among the drunken and the lustful, then because he is ambitious, he will be the more inclined to these vices." (E3 Affect 48, explanation.) Thus, the demagogue is especially dangerous in the company of fellow bandits or a corrupted society, etc. For then there is no countervailing force at all which can stop the havoc of the unity of the vices.++
In such circumstances, the demagogue is really a symptom, or an effect, of a much wider social malaise. This, too, is Spinoza's position (although I am going to cheat by glancing outside the Ethics), in fact (recall); in the final chapter of the TTP, Spinoza had defined the corrupt state in terms of its susceptibility to demagoguery: "some corrupt state, where superstitious and ambitious persons, unable to endure men of learning, are so popular with the multitude that their word is more valued than the law." In such a case, the demagogue can expect to commit crimes without punishment.
Of course, to say, that a successful demagogue is the effect of a corrupt society, it does not follow that the demagogue has no role in generating the corruption and polarization. For, the aspiring demagogue is himself characterized by fake morality (think of the Central Park 5), and simultaneously, this fake morality generates polarization and lawbreaking: "Ambition, or a Desire by which men generally arouse discord and seditions, from a false appearance of morality." [Sed si ex affectu oriatur, ambitio est sive cupiditas, qua homines falsa pietatis imagine plerumque discordias et seditiones concitant.'] (E4capt25)
I could stop here, but it is worth noting that Spinoza himself is insistent on the following point: demagogues "are not thought to be mad, because they are usually troublesome, and are considered worthy of hate." But he goes on to insists that it is a "species of madness/delirium [delirare], even though...not numbered among the diseases." (E4P44S) This is, so, I think because a demagogue is characteristic of a certain kind of excess.
It is not entirely clear why Spinoza thinks the excessive longing for renown is a species of madness (except that, perhaps, the excessiveness is supposed to be self-explanatory). But near the end of part 4, Spinoza concludes his analysis of the demagogue with the following thought:
If someone sees that he pursues renown too much, he should think of its correct use, the end for which it ought be pursued, and the means by which it can be acquired, not of its misuse and emptiness, and men’s inconstancy, or other things of this kind, which only someone sick of mind thinks of. For those who are most ambitious [the demagogue] are most upset by such thoughts when they despair of attaining the honor they strive for; while they spew forth their Anger, they wish to seem wise. E5p10S***
There are a number of ways to read this. The first, and less, interesting point is that Spinoza clearly thinks that once the desire of fame becomes all consuming it is just sheer craziness. The more interesting point is that Spinoza clearly thinks that the demagogue fundamentally abuse renown, which in different hands could be instrumentally useful. But in the demagogue renown/fame becomes an all consuming end without any such utility except self-aggrandizement. And, third, the emptiness and the futility of being the center of all attention (to be godlike, really) makes the demagogue angry. And, then oddly, in their despair, they proclaim (repeatedly) their own genius.
One final comment--this is very speculative. There is a firmly entrenched reading of the Ethics as a book free of politics and history (which Spinoza is said to tackle in his more political works). This reading stands in the way of the kind I have offered. It is possible, of course, that I have read a concern with demagoguery into the Ethics because I have been reading Livy. But, if we read the Ethics, in part, as a manual to become wise, that is a philosopher, and not just seem wise, then an old problem (also to be found in Mill) raises its head. what happens (now quoting Ibn Rushd on Plato) "to virtuous natures when they grow up in corrupt cities and are badly educated"? And the answer is, they can become very bad. So, if you have followed me this far, we can see in the Ethics a manual for the education of wisdom and a diagnostic tool-kit that can help you recognize the demagogue. Sadly, it offers no guidance on how to be rid of one.
*Earlier in the scholium, Spinoza had written: "for the most part human nature is so constituted that men pity the unfortunate and envy the fortunate, and (by P32) [envy them] with greater hate the more they love the thing they imagine the other to possess." This anticipates Adam Smith, and is central to what Smith calls the greatest corruption of the moral sentiments and a key source of political stability.
+Curley translates gloria with 'esteem;' Kisner/Silverthorne with 'glory.'
**Hume himself is clearly aware of this passage, or the original in Cicero. As Spinoza continues: "as Cicero says, every man is led by love of renown, and the more so, the better he is. Even the philosophers who write books on how [gloria] fame is to be disdained put their names to these works." Spinoza did not put his name on the TTP; Hume did not put his name on the Treatise.
++Perhaps unity of vices is too strong; but I do think that Spinoza is encouraging the reader to think of Alcibiades.
***Talibus enim cogitationibus maxime ambitiosi se maxime afflictant, quando de assequendo honore, quem ambiunt, desperant; et dum iram evomunt, sapientes videri volunt. Quare certum est, eos gloriae maxime esse cupidos, qui de ipsius abusu et mundi vanitate maxime clamant. Nec hoc ambitiosis proprium, sed omnibus commune est, quibus fortuna est adversa, et qui animo impotentes sunt. Nam pauper etiam avarus de abusu pecuniae et divitum vitiis non cessat loqui; quo nihil aliud efficit, quam se afflictare et aliis ostendere, se non tantum paupertatem suam, sed etiam aliorum divitias iniquo animo ferre.
Comments