Spinozist Approach to Affectivity in Light of the Issue of Non-Reflective Consciousness and the Problem of Self-Knowledge

Abstract

In this paper I consider the Spinozian account of affectivity in the context of the question of primordial pre-reflective forms of self-consciousness and the problem of self-knowledge. The author presents the idea of conatus and its relation to emotion, demonstrating the heuristic potential of the Spinozian approach to the sphere of passivity. The discussion is centred on the problematic question of whether passivity gives us only a vague knowledge of ourselves, being an undesirable state, or whether the way in which affect is experienced and perceived can be relevant to selfconsciousness, constituting its primary pre-reflective form. Referring to the hermeneutics of subjectivity, the author points out that the structure of the fundamental striving to preserve one’s existence is revealed in the reflexive order as the experience of specific effort being the condition of self-consciousness. The analyses presented concerning the Spinozian conception of the striving inherent in human nature to preserve and enlarge one’s power (conatus), the operation of which is revealed, among other things, in the experience of affects, also point to considerable interpretative difficulties. Spinoza does not seem to sufficiently explain the relationship between desire, which is an expression of life, and the meaning given to it, which belongs to the order of speech.