Dilemmas of servitude The fundamental problem for political philosophy today, Deleuze and Guattari claim in Anti-Œdipus, 1 remains the one that Spinoza saw so clearly when he raised the question of the conditions under which “human beings fight for their own servitude as if they were fighting for their deliverance, and will not think it humiliating but supremely glorious to spill their blood and sacrifice their lives for the glorification of one man” (TTP 7). 2 The question, in other words, is that of knowing how, independently of the exercise of physical force or coercion, subjects can desire their own servitude. 3 Spinoza’s answer to that question is summarized in the following statement, which he borrows from Curtius: “Nothing governs the multitude as effectively as superstition [superstitio]” (TTP 5). 4 By “superstition,” we need to understand a specific art of government, which draws on the imagination and requires the disciplining of bodies. The reason why it is so effective a method of government is that it is able to capitalize on the fact that human beings, who are naturally governed by the relentless fluctuation of their affects, constantly oscillate between fear and hope (TTP 1). While seemingly opposed, fear and hope are actually two sides of the same coin. Fear, Spinoza tells us, is an inconstant sadness, which arises from the idea of a thing, the outcome of which we are in some doubt (E III, Def. of aff. 13). Hope, on the other hand, is a joy, which arises from the idea of a thing, the outcome of which we are also in some doubt (E III, Def. of aff. 12). Since we are doomed to live in a condition of uncertainty, in which we do not control our destiny, these two passions are inseparable. The only difference 8 Spinoza and the Hydraulic Discipline of Afects: From the Teologico-Political to the Economic Regime of Desire Chiara Bottici and Miguel de Beistegui Spinoza's Authority Volume II : Resistance and Power in the Political Treatises, edited by A. Kiarina Kordela, and Dimitris Vardoulakis, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2017. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/newschool/detail.action?docID=5122286. Created from newschool on 2019-12-20 12:35:18. Copyright © 2017. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. All rights reserved.