Imaginary Authority and Critical Immanence: Spinoza’s Critique of Miracles

This paper was presented at “Spinoza’s TTP: Politics, Power, and the Imagination,” a conference at The Open University, London, UK, supported by the British Society for the History of Philosophy, organized by Dan Taylor and Marie Wuth.

I. The Ambivalence of the Imagination

This paper’s subtitle promises that I’ll talk about Spinoza’s critique of miracles in the Theologico-Political Treatise. And I will, but first let me lay out what I think is at stake in the reading I will present. What I would like to argue is that perhaps the single most important nodal point at which the theological and political of the book’s title are intertwined is the problem of authority. The kind of authority in question here involves the operation of the imagination.