Book Section
Spinoza’s philosophy is often characterized as a philosophy sub specie aeternitatis where time and temporality are notions without an expressive role. Consequently, understanding human history by means of the Ethics — using geometric demonstrations supported by metaphysical terms — and without the aid of the notion of time, can be considered as leading to an unsolvable problem. In this chapter, I draw upon Spinoza’s refusal of finalism to propose a renewed investigation about Spinozism and the issue of temporality, asking the question: could the absence of time in Spinoza’s work and his writings on efficient and immanent causality allow us to rethink a theory of history?
Keywords: finalism; causality; history; time; duration; Spinoza, Baruch
Part of Materialism and Politics Containing:
From ‘Materialism’ towards ‘Materialities’ / Bernardo Bianchi, Emilie Filion-Donato, Marlon Miguel, Ayşe Yuva
Introduction to Part I / Stefan Hagemann
Materialist Variations on Spinoza: Theoretical Alliances and Political Strategies / Mariana de Gainza
Non Defuit Materia: Freedom and Necessity in Spinoza’s Democratic Theory / Stefano Visentin
Temporality and History in Spinoza: The Refusal of Teleological Thought
Spinozist Moments in Deleuze: Materialism as Immanence / Mauricio Rocha
Are there One or Two Aleatory Materialisms? / Vittorio Morfino
Introduction to Part II / Marlene Kienberger, Bruno Pace
Language Follows Labour: Nikolai Marr’s Materialist Palaeontology of Speech / Elena Vogman
Materialism and Capitalism Today: Zoo-aesthetics and a Critique of the Social Bond after Marcel Mauss and André Leroi-Gourhan / Catherine Perret
The Product of Circumstances: Towards a Materialist and Situated Pedagogy / Marlon Miguel
In the Labyrinth of Emancipation: An Inquiry into the Relationship between Knowledge and Politics / Bernardo Bianchi
A Materialist Education: Thinking with Spinoza / Pascal Sévérac
Introduction to Part III / Alison Sperling
Materialism, Matter, Matrix, and Mater: Contesting Notions in Feminist and Gender Studies / Cornelia Möser
Anarchafeminism & the Ontology of the Transindividual / Chiara Bottici
Psychodynamism of Individuation and New Materialism: Possible Encounters / Émilie Filion-Donato
Emergence that Matters and Emergent Irrelevance: On the Political Use of Fundamental Physics / Christoph F. E. Holzhey
Introduction to Part IV / Daniel Liu
Materialism against Materialism: Taking up Marx’s Break with Reductionism / Frieder Otto Wolf
Materialism, Politics, and the History of Philosophy: French, German, and Turkish Materialist Authors in the Nineteenth Century / Ayşe Yuva
The Historicity of Materialism and the Critique of Politics / Alex Demirović
On Populist Illusion: Impasses of Political Ontology, or How the Ordinary Matters / Facundo Vega
Theory’s Method?: Ethnography and Critical Theory / Marianna Poyares
Title
Temporality and History in Spinoza
Subtitle
The Refusal of Teleological Thought
Author(s)
Ericka Marie Itokazu
Identifier
Description
Spinoza’s philosophy is often characterized as a philosophy sub specie aeternitatis where time and temporality are notions without an expressive role. Consequently, understanding human history by means of the Ethics — using geometric demonstrations supported by metaphysical terms — and without the aid of the notion of time, can be considered as leading to an unsolvable problem. In this chapter, I draw upon Spinoza’s refusal of finalism to propose a renewed investigation about Spinozism and the issue of temporality, asking the question: could the absence of time in Spinoza’s work and his writings on efficient and immanent causality allow us to rethink a theory of history?
Is Part Of
Place
Berlin
Publisher
ICI Berlin Press
Date
2 March 2021
Subject
finalism
causality
history
time
duration
Spinoza, Baruch
Rights
© by the author(s)
Except for images or otherwise noted, this publication is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Language
en-GB
page start
55
page end
72
Source
Materialism and Politics, ed. by Bernardo Bianchi, Emilie Filion-Donato, Marlon Miguel, and Ayşe Yuva, Cultural Inquiry, 20 (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2021), pp. 55–72

References

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  • Bove, Laurent, La Stratégie du conatus. Affirmation et résistance chez Spinoza (Paris: Vrin, 1996)
  • Chaui, Marilena, ‘A questão democrática’, in Cultura e democracia: o discurso competente e outras falas (São Paulo: Cortez, 2006), pp. 144–69
  • Descartes, René, Meditations on First Philosophy, in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, trans. by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoot, and Dugald Murdoch, 3 vols (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984–91), II (1985), pp. 1–62 <https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511818998>
  • Israël, Nicolas, Spinoza. Le temps de la vigilance (Paris: Payot, 2001)
  • Itokazu, Ericka, ‘Tempo, Duração e Eternidade Na Filosofia de Espinosa’ (Universidade de São Paulo (USP), 2008) <https://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/8/8133/tde-18032009-110714/pt-br.php> [accessed 02 July 2020]
  • Itokazu, Ericka, ‘Au-delà du temps mesure. La question du temps chez Spinoza’ in Ontologia e temporalità. Spinoza e i suoi lettori moderni, ed. by Giuseppe D’Anna and Vitorio Morfino (Milano: Mimesis, 2012), pp. 387–98
  • Jaquet, Chantal, Sub specie æternitatis. Études des concepts de temps, durée et éternité chez Spinoza (Paris: Kimé, 1997)
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  • Morfino, Vittorio, Plural Temporality: Transindividuality and the Aleatory between Spinoza and Althusser (Leiden: Brill, 2014) <https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004270558>
  • Morfino, Vittorio, Genealogia di un pregiudizio. L’immagine di Spinoza in Germania da Leibniz a Marx (Hildesheim: Olms, 2016)
  • Spinoza, Benedictus de, The Collected Works of Spinoza, ed. and trans. by Edwin Curley, 2 vols (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985–2016)
  • Tosel, André, Du matérialisme, de Spinoza (Paris: Kimé, 1994)
  • Vinciguerra, Lorenzo, Spinoza et le signe. La Genèse de l’imagination (Paris: Vrin, 2005)
  • Yovel, Yirmiyahu, Spinoza and Other Heretics: The Adventures of Immanence (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989)

Cite as: Ericka Marie Itokazu, ‘Temporality and History in Spinoza: The Refusal of Teleological Thought’, in Materialism and Politics, ed. by Bernardo Bianchi, Emilie Filion-Donato, Marlon Miguel, and Ayşe Yuva, Cultural Inquiry, 20 (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2021), pp. 55-72 <https://doi.org/10.37050/ci-20_03>