An Analysis Of Spinoza's Way To Establish A National Foundation

As for the discussion of the national foundation the tradition has always followed the discussion framework that the national foundation is either natural or institutional.However,Spinoza's philosophy broke this opposition.He adopted an unprecedented and unique way to discuss sociality.In this way,not only did the discussion framework disappear,but empiricism and rationalism also showed a mutual combination.Finally,the national foundation can be seen as a unity of rationality and passion.In fact Spinoza put forward the concept of sociality or national foundation in Proposition 37 in the fourth part of Ethics.Proposition 37 contains two proofs and two paraphrases.The first proof and its paraphrases demonstrate the rational foundation of the country,while the second proof and its paraphrases demonstrate the emotional foundation of the country.In order to better understand Spinoza's exposition of the national foundation,the main body of this article is divided into three parts for analysis.Considering Spinoza's philosophy has a completely unified internal consistency,the three concepts of "essence","rationality" and "passion" cannot be avoided to discuss Spinoza's demonstrated national foundation.However,these three concepts are so closely linked with the concept of God in Spinoza's philosophy.In this way,it is necessary to sort out some metaphysical contents in the first part of this article.Therefore,the first part starts with the concept of God,and then analyzes the essential concept,as well as individual rationality(active state)and passion(passive state).Spinoza understood human nature as a kind of power,and the awareness of this power is human desire,so desire refers to the efforts of every natural thing to maintain its existence.In addition,Spinoza also understood all human individuals as a unity of body and mind.Thus,in Spinoza,as a body and mind entity,human beings express their essential desires through the passive and active states of the body on the one hand,and through the passive and active states of the mind on the other hand.When desire expresses itself through actions,the individual is in an active state;When desire expresses itself through passion,the individual is in a passive state.However,whether desire expresses itself through actions or passion depends on Spinoza's analysis of human's ideological power.When analyzing the power of human thought,Spinoza distinguished two modes of cognition,namely imagination and rationality.These two modes of cognition also correspond to passive and active emotion domains respectively.Imagination is a passive way of understanding,while rationality is an active way of understanding.They are opposite to each other.Spinoza found the social or national foundation by analyzing the interactive process of rationality and imagination.This is what the second part of this article focuses on.On the one hand,the desire to maintain one's own existence on the rational level means that each individual should strive to find things that are beneficial to their own existence,and according to the guidance of rationality,each individual should combine their own strength with the strength of other rational individuals to form a stronger friendship association;On the other hand,on the emotional level,all individuals will love things that help them maintain their own existence,this means that each individual will inevitably take other individuals as emotional objects to carry out imagination activities.Because individuals are weak and powerless,they cannot exert their essential strength to obtain the good they desire.Therefore,they can only imagine that they may obtain the good through the strength of other individuals.However,while they place their hopes on other individuals,they are also afraid that other individuals will take away the good they want,so love can be converted into hate at any time,and hate can be converted into love at any time.Therefore,this kind of love-hate emotional constitute a social bond.The mixed feelings of love and hate further set the existence of coercive force.Therefore,the third part of this article focuses on analyzing how this compulsion is carried out.