Democracy, Multitudo and the Third Kind of Knowledge in the.docVIP

Democracy, ‘Multitudo’ and the Third Kind of Knowledge in the Works of Spinoza Filippo Del Lucchese Spinoza first introduces the notion of a third kind of knowledge in the second Scholium of Proposition 40 in Part II of The Ethics. To the first kind of knowledge, which is imaginative and derived from the senses or from signs, and the second, a rational knowledge based on adequate ideas, Spinoza adds a third: the intuitive science. According to its definition, this intuitive science proceeds from the “adequate idea of the formal essence of certain attributes of God to an adequate knowledge of the essence of things” (E II, P40S2). Although Spinoza’s theory of adequation had already suggested a means of overcoming a binary logic founded on the rigid opposition between true and false knowledges, this introduction of a third kind of knowledge bursts into the argumentation quite unexpectedly, pronouncing an original development in his theory of knowledge. Spinoza’s argumentation nevertheless proceeds elliptically, remaining for several lines implicit and obscure. Criticism has plumbed the depths of this topic, continuing to present it as the key to an understanding of Spinozism. Critics also recognize that the author of the Ethics likely intended his elliptical approach to stimulate reflection rather than develop an exhaustive description of the intuitive science. In the following pages I will attempt to show the connection between Spinoza’s notion of a third kind of knowledge and his political thought, particularly his conception of multitudo and democracy, intended as omnino absolutum imperium (PT XI, 1). This essay’s hypothesis is twofold. My first task is to consider how the knowledge men come to attain with this intuitive science relates to the collective and political dimension, particularly in democracy. I therefore ask what links the conditions that enable the development of the highest kind of knowledge, and ultimately of wisdom, with the collective dimensio