Beyond Decisionism: Spinoza’s Affective Logic of Political Foundation
This paper argues that Spinoza's concept of affective imitation offers a solution to the constitutional deadlock of constituent power by redefining political foundation as a subjectless, spontaneous alignment of passions rather than a sovereign act of decision.
Original paper licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). This is an AI-generated explanation of the paper below. It is not written or endorsed by the authors. For technical accuracy, refer to the original paper. Read full disclaimer
Every modern nation relies on a constitution, a set of rules that defines how a society is governed. But a deep puzzle has long troubled the people who study these rules: how can a group of millions of individuals, each with their own desires and fears, act as a single person with a single will? For centuries, political theorists have tried to solve this by imagining a "constituent subject"—a specific entity, like "the People" or a monarch, that stands above the crowd and makes a decisive, conscious choice to create the law. This idea suggests that a nation is founded by a moment of pure will, a deliberate act where a sovereign subject says, "We are now a country." Yet, this explanation leaves a gap. It is difficult to prove that a collection of individuals can truly merge into one mind, or to identify exactly who that single decision-maker is. The question remains: does a nation need a leader to start, or does it form in some other way?
A new paper by Albano Pina, a researcher at the University of Beira Interior, proposes that the answer lies not in a single decision, but in the invisible, automatic ways human emotions connect us. Pina turns to the work of Baruch Spinoza, a 17th-century philosopher, to argue that political order does not begin with a conscious choice by a leader or a group. Instead, it emerges spontaneously from the way people copy each other's feelings. The paper suggests that we do not need to imagine a mythical "People" making a grand decision to form a state. Instead, the state is built from the ground up by a natural process where fear, hope, and anger spread from person to person until they align, creating a shared sense of purpose without anyone ever planning it.
To understand this, one must first look at how Spinoza viewed human nature. Unlike many thinkers who saw emotions as irrational obstacles to be controlled by reason, Spinoza treated them as natural forces, much like weather. Just as a storm is a necessary result of atmospheric conditions, human passions like anger, envy, or compassion are inevitable results of our biology. Spinoza argued that any successful political system must be built on this reality, not on an idealized version of humans who act only with cold logic. He observed that people are constantly influenced by the emotions of those around them. If you see someone else in pain, you naturally feel a pang of sorrow. If you see someone else joyful, you feel a spark of happiness. This is not a conscious choice; it is a biological reflex.
Pina explains that Spinoza identified a specific mechanism behind this connection, which he called "affective imitation." This is the process where one person's feeling triggers the same feeling in another, creating a chain reaction. When a large group of people experiences the same emotion at the same time—such as a shared fear of a common enemy or a shared hope for a better future—these individual feelings begin to align. They do not need to sit down and sign a contract to agree on this. The alignment happens automatically as emotions circulate through the crowd. Over time, this shared emotional landscape creates a sense of unity. The group begins to act as if they have one mind, not because they decided to, but because their feelings have synchronized through this natural, mimetic process.
The paper challenges the traditional view that a constitution requires a "constituent subject"—a specific person or group with the power to decide the rules of the state. Pina argues that this idea is a fiction. There is no single "People" that wakes up one day and decides to form a government. Instead, the legal order is the result of a subjectless process. It is the outcome of countless individual emotions interacting, clashing, and eventually finding a pattern that holds the society together. The paper suggests that the "will" of a nation is not a pre-existing thing that makes a decision, but rather an effect that appears after the fact, created by the continuous flow of shared passions.
This perspective changes how we understand the foundation of a country. It means that the stability of a government does not depend on the strength of a leader's will or the perfection of a legal document. It depends on the quality of the emotional bonds between the citizens. If the emotions circulating through a society are based on fear and resentment, the political order will be fragile and unstable. If the emotions are based on hope and a shared sense of security, the society will be more resilient. The paper does not claim that this process is perfect or that it always leads to a good government. It simply argues that this is how political order actually forms: through the impersonal, automatic circulation of feelings, not through the deliberate act of a sovereign subject.
The research also addresses a common worry: if there is no single decision-maker, how can we judge if a government is legitimate? Pina suggests that legitimacy is not about who made the rules, but about how well the rules work for the people living under them. A political order is legitimate if it allows the society to function stably and rationally, reducing destructive passions and fostering cooperation. The paper concludes that we should stop looking for a mythical moment of creation where a nation is born from a single act of will. Instead, we should recognize that a nation is a living, breathing entity that is constantly being made and remade by the everyday emotional interactions of its people. The foundation of a state is not a stone laid by a king or a vote cast by a crowd, but the invisible, ever-shifting web of feelings that binds us together.
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