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The desire to live is not an easy topic to pursue. On the one hand, it seems too basic to thematize; on the other hand, it is vexed enough as a topic to cast doubt on whether one can settle the question of what is meant by the phrase itself. The desire to live is not the same as self- preservation, though both can be understood as interpretations of a person’s desire “to persevere in its being,” Spinoza’s well-known phrase. Although self-preservation is largely associated with forms of individual self-interest associated with later contractarian political philosophers, Spinoza’s philosophy establishes another basis for ethics, one that has implications for social solidarity and a critique of individualism. The self that endeavors to persevere in its own being is not always a singular self for Spinoza, and neither does it necessarily succeed in augmenting or enhancing its life if it does not at once enhance the lives of others. Indeed, in what follows, I hope to establish within Spinoza not only a critical perspective on individualism, but also an acknowledgment of the possibility for self-destruction. Both of these insights come to have political implications when recast as part of a dynamic conception of political solidarity in which sameness cannot be assumed. The fact that Spinoza takes some version of self- preservation to be essential to his conception of human beings is undisputed, but what that self is and what precisely it preserves is less than clear. He has been criticized by psychoanalysts who contend that he leaves no room for the death drive, and he has been appropriated by Deleuzians who for the most part wish to root negativity out of their conception of individuality and sociality alike. He has been castigated, as well, by writers like Levinas for espousing a form of individualism that would eradicate ethical relationality itself. I propose to test these views and to consider in some detail Spinoza’s view of the desire to live—not to establish a definitive reading, but to see what possibilities for social ethics emerge from his view.
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Butler, Judith. “The Desire to Live. Spinoza’s Ethics under Pressure”. In Senses of
the Subject. New York: Fordham University Press, 2015, pp. 63-89.
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