BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//132.216.98.100//NONSGML kigkonsult.se iCalcreator 2.20.4// BEGIN:VEVENT UID:20250512T150659EDT-6765Cernaj@132.216.98.100 DTSTAMP:20250512T190659Z DESCRIPTION:Work in Progress Seminar Series | Winter 2023\n\n“An Undergroun d Current in the Theory of Desire”\n\nThomas Minguy\n Friday\, January 20\, 2023\n 3:30-5:30 PM\n Leacock Building\, Room 927\n\nAbstract:\n\nIn this p aper\, I frame Benedict Spinoza’s notion of desire in terms of a pleasure- principle. The philosopher famously defined human essence as desire\, and so to analyse how this essence is organized\, how it navigates the world a ccording to what one could call\, with Laurent Bove\, a set of existential strategies\, establishes a firm ground on which we can approach the remai nder of Spinoza’s thought. But the concept of desire has quite a track rec ord in philosophy\, and so to distinguish the Spinozian version from other s is far from being simple.\n\nThe interpretation I offer here has two mai n implications.\n\nOn the one hand\, I answer the following: how is desire organized in Spinoza’s philosophy? My argument relies on the pivotal role of pleasure in the move from desire as a form of inertia and desire as an expansive movement. Most of the argument here relies on a close reading o f a few propositions in the Ethics\, accompanied by a discussion of the re adings of Yirmiyahu Yovel and Eugene Garver that also discusses this shift in Spinoza’s description of what Michèle Bertrand called “affective econo my”.\n\nOn the other hand\, I confront Spinoza’s conceptualization of desi re with a contemporary contender\, namely\, the Freudian understanding of psychic life as cashed-out in terms of desire\, also ruled by a pleasure-p rinciple. Freud\, I suggest\, remains within a teleological understanding of desire. This gives to Spinoza’s theory a subversive dimension.\n\nToget her\, these two moments show that a reading of Spinoza’s philosophy ground ed in the conception of desire I propose helps us to reframe Spinozian tho ught as a peculiar form of libertine philosophy.\n DTSTART:20230120T203000Z DTEND:20230120T223000Z LOCATION:Room 927\, Leacock Building\, CA\, QC\, Montreal\, H3A 2T7\, 855 r ue Sherbrooke Ouest SUMMARY:Thomas Minguy\, 'An Underground Current in the Theory of Desire' URL:/philosophy/channels/event/thomas-minguy-undergrou nd-current-theory-desire-344622 END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR