"Nothing governs the multitude more effectively than superstition”: The politics of superstition in Spinoza.

Abstract

The phrase that titles the present article is radical for understanding how Spinoza comprehend the political problems, using Quinto Curcio Rufo’s quote, the dutch philosopher transmit to us, not as a political advice, but in a critical way, demonstrating that superstition is a political-affective dispositive that determine a specific form of practicing power through the affective manipulation and the perpetuation of the passives forms that this imply. Although there is no systematic treatment about this term, our analysis proposes an history and etymology of superstitio, to then examine what Spinoza’s says about it, and finally our thesis that propose to think superstition as a determined affective configuration that operates in a parasitic way, because this could not exist except in relation with others affects, joined to power forms, overlapping the others in a meta-affective way. Of this way it is propose explaining the political efficacy of superstition in a renewed time, the one of the contemporaneity of capitalism as an ars affectandi that, just like theology, seats his power in superstition, considering also the ethical, political, epistemics and aesthetics consequences.