Lantoine, Jacques Louis:
L'agent automate : Le concept de disposition chez Spinoza

2016.

Literature type: Monographs
Language: French
Thematic areas: Anthropology / psychology / doctrine of affections / body and mind

English commentary: "This research aims at developing a theory of practice and a moral philosophy that leaves no place for what is merely possible and virtual. While inspired by the sociology of Bourdieu, I first draw on Spinoza to develop a concept of disposition that is freed of all indeterminist connotations by referring dispositions to actual states of the body so as to clarify the meaning of the term, which is so often confused with concepts such as aptitude, capacity, habitus. In the second part of this work, I show that the incorporation of the exteriority comes with the necessary effort to immediately accomplish what the agent is condemned to accomplish. « Disposition » refers to a power that sees through to the end what it can, notwithstanding internal and external impediments. If the power to act increases or diminishes, effort itself can only be helped or hindered. Thus, the agent is an automaton, but one that willingly strives to do what it is compelled to do, even if it is for the worst. Consequently, in the third part, I contest interpretations that relate human bondage in Spinoza’s ethics to alienation. I argue that Spinoza’s intellectualism must be redefined : emancipation cannot occur without relying on the dispositions we receive from the common order of Nature, including imagining possible progress. Finally, although the automaton is characterized by the inconstancy of his dispositions, he has to be disposed in a way that is favorable to reason. The workings of the state should rest solely on the mechanism of the institutions, as it has been established that we really cannot rely upon anyone." (abstract)

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