Event Details - Hasana Sharp Lecture

Friendship as Freedom in Spinoza
It may be obvious that humans could not hope to be free without social support. A newborn could not live a day without a caregiver, no one could provide for herself without a social division of labor that satisfies our basic needs such as food, clothing, and shelter, and we could not think well without the collective production of language and knowledge. What may be less obvious is that the power to produce social relations, or the capacity to make friends, is one of the greatest skills that human beings exercise. Spinoza names this virtue "generosity" -- the rationally guided desire to join others to oneself in friendship -- and it describes one of the two basic dispositions of the free person. In stark contrast to a portrait of freedom as solitary and heroic, Spinoza's account of freedom is necessarily social. The more we are able to transform relationships of antagonism and hostility into relationships of alliance and friendship, the freer we are.

Hasana Sharp is an associate professor of philosophy at McGill University. She is author of Spinoza and the Politics of Renaturalization, which examines the consequences for political theory of Spinoza's denial of human exceptionalism. She has also written on Descartes, feminism, and (most recently) climate change. She is completing a book on social liberation in Spinoza that concentrates on his understudied Political Treatise. She is also researching a book on climate change and social justice, guided by insights from Spinoza.