id	author	title	date	pages	extension	mime	words	sentences	flesch	summary	cache	txt
cord-025192-ujvnio3f	Gatens, Moira	Spinoza: thoughts on hope in our political present	2020-05-25		.txt	text/plain	14978	612	54	In the Theologico-Political Treatise, Spinoza offers an incisive account of how Moses used narrative, song, prayer, and law to bind the Hebrews, recently freed from slavery, into a unified affective community, now motivated by shared loves, fears, and hopes materialised through sanctioned images, enforced rituals, and socially authorised attachments. Each contribution here attempts to bring Spinoza's account of hope to bear critically on our political present in a way that endeavours to enhance our collective powers of action and our shared capacities for joyful fellowship. For Susan James, the disempowering affects and lack of stable consensus, recently witnessed in political debates over Brexit, can be usefully addressed through a Spinozist framework that casts hope and fear in a mutually corrective and jointly empowering role. Hope and fear -about plagues, wars, and natural disasters -are not new, and remain the two most powerful drivers of our political behaviour, and the constructive institutional management of these passions is essential if governments are to provide safety and security.	./cache/cord-025192-ujvnio3f.txt	./txt/cord-025192-ujvnio3f.txt