Flourishing Through Spinoza - A Conversation with Hasana Sharp

Howard Burton

• Publisher: Ideas Roadshow
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN:
  9781771701419
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Mind & Body in Philosophy

This book is based on an in-depth conversation between Howard Burton and Hasana Sharp, Associate Professor of Philosophy at McGill University. This conversation provides detailed insights into Hasana Sharp's book "Spinoza and the Politics of Renaturalization", in which she offers a sophisticated new interpretation of Spinoza's iconoclastic philosophy. Further topics include the implications of Spinoza's naturalism to today's world, from issues of social inequality, feminism, treatment of the elderly and the environment to animal rights, and more.This carefully-edited book includes an introduction, Philosophical Relevance, and questions for discussion at the end of each chapter: I. Radical Beginnings - Revolutionary sympathiesII. Finding Spinoza - Investigating failed revolutionsIII. The Joy of the Unknown - Naturalism, denaturalism, and the third wayIV. Modern Implications - Identity politics, animal rights and the environmentV. Philanthropic Post-Humanism - Onwards and upwardsAbout Ideas Roadshow Conversations: This book is part of a series of 100 Ideas Roadshow Conversations. Presented in an accessible, conversational format, Ideas Roadshow books not only explore frontline academic research featuring world-leading researchers but also reveal the inspirations and personal journeys behind the research.

The Conversation

I. Radical Beginnings

Revolutionary sympathies

HB: Before we turned on the cameras, you were talking about this philosophy program in Montclair, New Jersey, with small children being exposed to philosophical issues and in the view of many they had a keener, more penetrating, sense of the ethical components because they naturally weren’t dressing up their questions and responses in some sort of pre-set vocabulary.

HS: Yes, what struck me was that it seemed like they hadn’t yet “unlearned” how to ask a philosophical question. They were still in a phase of wonder, asking things like, “Well, should we eat animals? What is animal consciousness like? What would it feel like to be an animal? Is this right? Are there other ways we can live?”

On the other hand, for the university students, they were already at this more calculative, “means-end” reasoning; and had forgotten how to step back and ask these bigger questions. For them, it was immediately a question of feasibility, like, “Is it realistic to think that people could stop eating animals?” or, “Is it feasible that we could do without pharmaceutical testing?”

HB: That’s interesting to me, this idea of the formal education system somehow “beating it out of people”—training people not to think what they would naturally think. People have made similar comments about science: that children are natural scientists, they wonder about the world and they’re curious about the world; and at some point in a typical stage of education, they start looking at the whole subject as “boring,” because it becomes very structured and very orthodox.

We’re going to talk about lots of other things, but just off the top of your head, is there something that we could be doing better on the educational side of things so as to encourage, or at least not squelch, that innate level of critical thinking or curiosity? If you were queen of the world, what sorts of tangible things would you do to change that?

HS: Well, even at the university level I think of my own task as being not primarily one of content delivery; I’m not giving students things they need to know, doctrines they need to memorize and represent to me in adequate, acceptable form. I want to teach them modes of inquiry: how to ask questions, how to read texts and how to look for what meaning you might find in the text that’s not the first, most superficial, most obvious meaning.

I really encourage them to explore and think about whether what they think a word means might really mean something else. It’s really about how to ask questions and open up problems rather than the duplication of a particular kind of concept or getting something “right”.

I’m concerned with exploring the extent to which we can structure assignments and tests so as to better develop those skills, teaching them how to have insights or discoveries and how to ask questions rather than how to get “the right answer”.

One of the pleasures of teaching first-year students is that they do seem more wide-eyed and curious and they often don’t yet know what philosophy is, what philosophy looks like. They don’t have expectations in terms of how they should perform, so it can be very exciting to get them at that stage when they’re just really wondering. Often students take their first philosophy class as an elective. They don’t think, I’m going to become a philosopher—they frequently take their first philosophy class as a kind of gift to themselves.

They say things like, “I’m doing these practical classes, these classes that are going to get me a job and secure my future and I get to pick one class for me,” and that’s their philosophy class. They don’t really know what to expect, but they hope that it’s going to help them think about the meaning of life or what’s really important.

HB: Like an intellectual holiday, or “intellectual candy”, as it were, for them to be able to enjoy.

HS: Yes, exactly.

HB: What about you? How did it start for you? Did you have a similar sort of experience at university, or had you been someone who was determined from the age of three: “By golly, I’m going to be a philosopher”?

HS: No, it was very fortuitous in my case. I do remember, in high school, at the public library, picking Nietzsche off the shelf because the titles looked outrageous. I remember The Antichrist caught my eye and just thinking, Oh, I’ve got to look at this.

HB: So it worked, because he was trying to be outrageous.

HS: Right. So, I remember having that little bit of curiosity. I was 15 or so; I was probably wearing black and being really morose and wanting to be different from everyone else, and so I just thought, The Antichrist—that sounds really rebellious.

HB: What was the reaction from other people at the time? Did they say, things like “Oh, that Hasana Sharp is really deep”? Did you get labelled in some way?

HS: No, it’s very hard to be rebellious where I’m from. I’m from Northern California.

HB: How about voting Republican?

HS: Yes, that would be very rebellious. The main way, in my parents’ generation, of exploring the big questions was through New Age ideology. For example, my father was very interested in Starhawk, who was a Jungian-Wiccan, and was generally very interested in Jung and New Age psychology. And The Antichrist seemed a little more badass than that.

HB: Right, so you were pushing the Jungian-Wiccan envelope?

HS: Yes, just a little bit. However, when I went to university, I was just interested in absolutely everything, and I didn’t have a clear destiny in mind. I actually majored in literature and religious studies.

HB: Where did you go?

HS: I went to Occidental College in Los Angeles, where Obama went briefly as well—it’s on all their publicity material.

HB: But so far at least you don’t have any presidential ambitions?

HS: No. I mostly remember Ben Affleck, who lived in my dorm.

HB: Oh, really? Did he have philosophical interests as well?

HS: He had a significant interest in women. I didn’t see him in philosophy classes, but I had this very beautiful best friend so I encountered him frequently because he tried to talk to her. But she was more into brooding, arty types at the time, and he wasn’t exactly that.

HB: Maybe now he could play that role.

HS: Yes. He didn’t know what level to pitch it at then, I think.

HB: Right. So, you went to Occidental College and you studied religion and literature...

HS: Yes, and it was actually my English teacher who introduced me to Spinoza. His name is Warren Montag and he’s widely known for his scholarship, especially of the French philosopher Louis Althusser, but also for Spinoza. So it was a complete accident: I took this class on literature and philosophy and he was completely abusing his professorial prerogative and just taught the whole class on Spinoza.

HB: Well, under the circumstances it probably makes more sense to call that “stimulation” rather than abuse. How many people were in this class?

HS: I think probably 15 or something; it was a small class.

HB: You seemed to have swallowed the Spinoza bait; did other people as well? Did all 15 of you become Spinozists?

HS: No. I was really interested in feminism and Marxism; and Warren Montag has a background in Marxism and he works on French Marxism, so he really introduced Spinoza as a source of inspiration for French Marxism—for Althusser, Macherey, Balibar and Deleuze.

For me that was a huge hook: he presented Spinoza as someone to whom they were turning to ask the question of why people fight for their servitude as if it ...

Table of contents

• A Note on the Text
• Introduction
• The Conversation
• Continuing the Conversation