Discussion on Populism & Spinoza 02/02/2011 @ Schijnheilig
The Common Seminar - 25.01.2011 16:48
The Common Seminar presents: PASSIONS, THE COMMON AND POPULISM. A discussion about Spinoza as a political tool in hard times. On Wednesday 2nd of February, 20:00 at Schijnheilig (Amsterdam).
Populism is a powerful political tactic. In all it's historical expressions it has proven difficult to confront. Such difficulty lies a.o. in the fact that populism is an expression of the most intimate human life drives. Populism is a politics of desire, of collective passions.
Because humans cannot avoid to have passions, be they sad or joyful, populism is an issue that confronts all of us, our common human nature. Therefore, to dismiss populism as irrational, opposing our alleged rationality, or the moral superiority of the Left to an evil Right is a strategic error we are now paying in terms of the rise of politics of hatred all around the world.
Against a rationalist condemnation of populism, the philosophy of Spinoza allows us to, maybe, to delineate a counter-attack strategy, beyond good and evil. If, according to the philosopher from Amsterdam, every passion is intrinsically rational, only a stronger passion can overcome another passion.
Spinoza's militant lesson seems to be that populism, it's blinding simultaneity or organizing and disorganizing passions, can only be understood from the perspective of joyful desire. Let's try to understand this lesson a bit better and let's explore what the lesson means in terms of what can be done.
Wednesday 2nd of February
20:00 'o clock
Schijnheilig
Passeerdersgracht 23 Amsterdam
www.schijnheilig.org
 Website: http://www.schijnheilig.org
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