Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: This work involves the analysis of Spinoza’s presence in Carl Schmitt’s works. This paper´s objectives are the following: a) identify Schmitt’s reasons for supporting his political discourse on Spinoza notions; b) clarify the contradictions between the different images of Spinoza that Schmitt projects in his writings. To achieve these objectives, the investigation here in carried out addressed both the contradictory Spinoza character created by Schmitt (anti-mechanistic philosopher, critic of rationalism, liberal, thinker of concrete individuality) and the spinozist concepts handled by the jurist (conatus, natura naturans, freedom of conscience). The elucidation of Schmitt’s tactics of using philosophers that are hostile to his project - the case of Spinoza - is relevant as it makes clearer the rhetorical operations used by Schmitt in the 1920s and in the early years of the 1930s to increase adherence to unspoken purposes of his intellectual activity before joining Nazism.
Source: Cadernos Espinosanos
Institution: Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4407770929