The Hermarchus–Spinoza Complex: Epicurean Politics and the “Naturalism vs. Constructivism” Opposition

Naturalism vs Constructivism

A genealogy of the opposition between naturalism and constructivism would show that it leads to a pivotal ambiguity or paradox within liberalism. This is not entirely unlike what Chantal Mouffe calls the “paradox of liberal democracy”—that is, the undecidable ambiguity between the universal and the particular; it points to a similar aporia that is constitutive of liberalism. ⁹ I would like to add that any employment of the opposition “naturalism vs constructivism” is eo ipso positioned within the terrain of liberalism.

The opposition between naturalism and constructivism starts developing at the end of the medieval period and in early modernity. For instance, we can trace this distinction in the discourse of natural right. Nominalists such as William of Ockham or Jean Gerson develop a naturalist position by promoting “subjective ius,” or right determined in terms of the power or capability of the human, whereas the humanist preference, which is later adopted by the Calvinists, for “objective ius,” or the correlation of right with law, leads to a constructivist approach. ¹⁰

At the same time, both naturalism and constructivism would lay claim to ancient precedents. The position that asserts the natural sociality of the human is perceived to derive from ancient Greek philosophy. Thus, the Platonic insistence on rationality, the Aristotelian conception of the human as the “political animal,” and the Stoic delineation of the classical natural law theory all have been perceived to assert in different ways the naturalist approach. The rise of liberal democracy is inextricable from this line of thought. The liberal tradition requires the supposition of a certain universality of the human whose grounding is natural. ¹¹ This tradition leads all the way to the French Revolution and the discourse on the “rights of man,” the first iteration of the discourse on human rights. ¹²

The liberal form of the argument about natural sociality is far from being the only naturalist account of social formation in modernity. Other kinds of “naturalness” can function as the basis of community, too, such as ethnicity or race, giving rise respectively to forms of nationalism and colonialism in modernity, which become particularly impactful in the nineteenth century. These ought to be distinguished from the liberal approach, even though there is cross-pollination. The discourse on the right is different from nationalism or colonialism, even as the development of liberal democracies follows colonial expansion and the creation of the nation-state. Thus, the naturalist line is characterized by enormous diversity of positions that are often mutually exclusive conceptually, even if cross-wired politically and historically.

Constructivist approaches also claim ancient precedents, such as the opening sections of Cicero’s De Inventione that describe the invention of the social sphere out of an initial lawless, pre-political condition. In modernity, constructivism was appealing because of the desire to present the political as amenable to change. After centuries of the entitled rule of aristocracy under the sanction of the Church, it becomes pressing to conceptualize the social in such a way as to be open to transformation. A common feature of this tradition is its grounding in philosophical anthropology, according to which the human is inherently violent, whereby human relations are inimical. That’s why, as Marx says in Capital, violence is “the midwife of history.”

Just like the tradition of natural sociality, there are significant variations in the constructivist tradition. Hobbes is often taken to represent an influential early constructivist approach. Leviathan describes the state of nature as the realm of freedom where everyone can express their self-interest unhindered. The result is a generalized war of all against all. The renunciation of the natural state leads to the formation of the social, but the political requires, in addition, the policing of the laws by the sovereign. And this political realm—the third stage of the development of society—is no longer natural; it is entirely constructed, and that’s why Hobbes outright rejects the Aristotelian formulation that the human is a “political animal,” opting instead to refer to the human as “artificial man.” ¹³

The difficulty with the opposition between naturalist and constructivist accounts of sociality is that it is impossible to sustain their separation. Any attempt to present a pure naturalist or a pure constructivist position is inevitably contaminated by its opposite. The opposition, then, between naturalism and constructivism in liberal discourses shows that it is not merely accidental but rather constitutive of liberalism.

A significant example of this invidious circularity between naturalism and constructivism in liberalism can be found in Ronald Dworkin’s “The Original Position.” ¹⁴ This is an agenda-setting article, appearing soon after the publication of John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice and establishing the reading of Rawls as a constructivist—whose implication is that liberalism rests on a constructivist conception of the social and the political.

Dworkin’s reading of Rawls proceeds by drawing a distinction between naturalist and constructivist conceptions of justice in the course of which Dworkin establishes a number of the constitutive characteristics of constructivism. The key one is that liberal theory does not require a “moral ontology” or metaphysics because it looks at the political from “a more public standpoint” as opposed to the naturalist—which is more “personal”—consequently, holds Dworkin, a constructivist model is suitable to “amending” institutions to make them fit for purpose. ¹⁵ By identifying opposing characteristics between naturalism and constructivism, Dworkin seems to be establishing a clear-cut separation between them in the course of defending Rawls’ concept of justice.

Yet a closer look makes the two positions far less incommensurable than they might appear at first. Dworkin defines naturalism as the positing of the “objective moral reality” of principles of justice that are thus never “created by men or societies but are rather discovered by them.” ¹⁶ This is a narrow definition of naturalism that leads Dworkin into difficulties. For instance, consider Aristotle, who is usually regarded as the prototypical naturalist political philosopher since he describes the human as an animal (zoon) who is political and rational naturally—that is, by virtue of being a zoon. Paradoxically, on Dworkin’s definition, Aristotle would not be a naturalist. According to Aristotle, virtues are not “discovered” out there in some kind of “objective” metaphysical realm—to use Dworkin’s terms for the naturalist position. To the contrary, justice, as the Nicomachean Ethics explains, is enacted; it is something to be discerned in one’s actions—and the same, in fact, can be said for the conception of virtue in Greek thought in general. And as Politics adds, the just actions are public because they are fundamental to the building of institutions. According to Dworkin’s typology, these are features of the constructivist position.

So why does Dworkin lead himself into troubled waters by using such a narrow definition of naturalism that excludes even the purported father of naturalism? The answer becomes clear as soon as we notice the assumption that organizes the entire discourse of “The Original Position.” Summarizing Rawls’s original position, Dworkin states: “Rawls tries to show that if these men and women are rational, and act only in their own self-interest, they will choose his two principles of justice.” ¹⁷ The conditional states that Rawls’s original position is premised on the rationality that leads to a public pursuit of self-interest interlaced with principles of justice. But isn’t this conditional—which remains unjustified in Dworkin’s discourse—a restatement of Aristotelian naturalism? Isn’t this merely another way of assuming that the human is an animal that is both rational and political? Dworkin presents the naturalist foundation as an assumption and then narrows the definition of naturalism to obfuscate the naturalist roots of Rawls’ argument, thereby establishing a sharp separation between naturalism and constructivism.

There are two strategies to respond to such an approach to the distinction between naturalism and constructivism. The first consists of rejecting the obviousness of the initial conditional. Thus, a Humean empiricist or an affect theorist may simply point out that the passions are just as important in the historical constructions of notions of justice. Such an approach can undermine any naturalist approach that privileges rationality but would promote a skeptical approach to social formation while remaining uncommitted to constructivism. I note this approach without considering it further here. ¹⁸

The second strategy undoes the dichotomy between naturalism and constructivism, since it points out that their separation is question-begging, whereby it is caught in a vicious circle. The dichotomy can be drawn only because of the initial assumption, which itself, however, presupposes the separation between naturalism and constructivism. The assumption of rationality is so clearly begging the question that it appears as if the sharp separation between naturalism and constructivism was nothing but a mirage.

This circular argument that haunts constructivism has a metaphysical baggage whose provenance is Kantian. For Kant, there is a critical distinction between, on the one hand, subjectivity, which is common to everyone and is responsible for the “kingdom of ends” in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, and, on the other, the subject, the rational agent of action called upon to make moral judgments. Dworkin’s assumption concerns subjectivity while his separation of naturalism and constructivism operates at the level of the subject. Thus, the political liberalism of Rawls, as it is presented in “The Original Position,” far from being immune to metaphysics, in fact presupposes a Kantian morality grounded on transcendental idealism. This would not have been a problem in itself, except that—as we saw—constructivists justified their approach as a practical one that does away with metaphysics.

Maybe, instead of the liberal constructivism that surreptitiously adopts metaphysical assumptions, we could embrace a materialist approach, according to which not only metaphysics is always political but also conversely that politics always has a metaphysical ballast. ¹⁹ And, maybe, in order to avoid the vicious circle of constructivism constitutive of liberal discourses, we need to bypass the opposition between nature and nurture, which amounts to saying that we need to build a political philosophy that is beyond the opposition—and, synecdochically, beyond the conceptual ground of liberalism. Spinoza does just that through his Epicurean conception of the formation of society.

“Through a Universal Basis”

A great deal has been written about Spinoza’s undoing of the naturalism vs constructivism opposition. For example, Hasana Sharp has argued convincingly that Spinoza has “renaturalized politics,” by which she means that his notion of nature is not opposed to nurture and thus it is distinct from the essentialist conception of nature characteristic of a metaphysics of transcendence. ²⁰ But such approaches to Spinoza, whose best representative is Sharp’s book, tend to be based primarily on the Ethics, and thus not enough attention has been paid to a passage from chapter 5 of the Theological Political Treatise, which both offers Spinoza’s most explicit account of social and political formation and undercuts the opposition between naturalism and constructivism.

To understand what is at stake in chapter 5 of Spinoza’s Theological Political Treatise that presents his account of social formation, we first need to situate that passage within the Theological Political Treatise. In chapter 4, Spinoza provides a definition of the law, both human and divine. ²¹ After that, he identifies four topics arising from his definition. He deals with the first two in chapter 4. Chapter 5 concerns the third and the fourth topics. The passage about social formation occurs at the end of the response to the third topic.

The third topic is about the nature of ceremonies in the Jewish state. The bulk of the discussion of ceremonies relies on historical evidence derived from the Bible. Spinoza’s thesis is that a ceremony aims at “the temporal prosperity of the state and in no way contributes to blessedness” (60/71). ²² In terms of the terminology about the law introduced in chapter 4, this assertion amounts to saying that ceremonies are exclusively a matter of human law and in no way contribute to divine law. Spinoza provides examples from the Bible to support his position and draws the strong inference implied in it—namely, that the Jews were no longer not bound by the Mosaic law since the collapse of the Hebrew State.

Prior to turning to the fourth topic foreshadowed in chapter 4, Spinoza explains in an apostrophe that he has proven his thesis about ceremonies in the Hebrew State “by Scriptural authority”—that is, by interpreting passages from the Bible—but before he proceeds he will also demonstrate it “as briefly as possible, arguing through a universal basis” (62/73). He immediately adds that such “a universal basis” concerns the question of “the formation of society” (62/73).

We can discern three notable features of this passage that proceeds “through a universal basis.” The first is that the demonstration that follows is not about ceremonies specifically but about the formation of society in general. Despite how Spinoza introduces the topic—as if he will argue that ceremonies concern solely human law, not only in the Hebrew State, but in any possible state—in fact, the passage that follows says nothing about ceremonies. Thus, the real topic is not ceremonies narrowly defined, but rather the formation of human law as part of the formation of social relations, which is the genus to which ceremonies belong.

Second, at the conclusion of this short passage, Spinoza once again bases his argumentation on the Hebrew Bible, as the fourth topic he addresses is about the historical nature of the Biblical texts. The contrast is presented in plain sight: an analysis of ceremonies with reference to the Bible, followed by the short passage proceeding “through a universal basis,” and then the rest of chapter 5 proceeds again exclusively through Biblical analysis. Thus the passage about social formation appears as a “montage,” a juxtaposition of the “universal basis” against the biblical analysis surrounding it. I am using this analogy deliberately: As Eisenstein has shown in cinema, montage can be deliberately used to highlight a position and to signpost a commitment.

The third notable feature of the passage in question is that it challenges the interpretation of Spinoza as a liberal democrat. A liberal political theory places the emphasis on universal values such as equality or tolerance and pays attention to how they are articulated within formalized institutional processes. ²³ The presentation of social formation “through a universal basis” in chapter 5 holds, pace liberal interpretations, that, in the absence of universal values, social cohesion depends on judgments about how to act within the given circumstances. These judgments, to which everyone has an equal share, determine what is good for the polity or what is in the utility of the people (63/74). This idea about the calculation of utility within given social and political circumstances is essential to the Epicurean account of social formation, as we see when we turn to Hermarchus.

Social Formation and Practical Judgment in Hermarchus

Hermarchus was a major figure in the Epicurean tradition. We know from Diogenes Laertius that Epicurus chose him as his successor to head the Epicurean School. ²⁴ Hermarchus was a prolific writer but nothing has survived other than his account of social formation contained in Porphyry’s De abstinentia. ²⁵ Notably, Porphyry is writing over half a millennium after Hermarchus, so referring to his account of social and political formation is not only an indication of the respect for Hermarchus in antiquity, but also for his importance in formulating the Epicurean position on the topic.

In De abstinentia—the title means “on abstaining from eating animals”—Porphyry provides various arguments for and against vegetarianism. It is in this context that he presents in Book 1, sections 7 to 12, the Epicurean account of the formation of society with reference to Hermarchus. The key Epicurean idea is that the calculation of utility accounts for social and political formation. This position combines the idea of the natural propensity of the human to form practical judgments prior to acting with the idea that the natural capacity to calculate one’s utility is situated within communal practice. Both are indispensable in the construction of laws and the operation of the political. Thus, the calculation of utility becomes the fulcrum of the combination of natural sociality and constructivism, which preempts any opposition between the two.

It is often said that Epicurean politics consists merely in the attempt to eliminate fear. It is further claimed that, according to Epicurus, only sages can achieve ataraxia, the tranquility or beatitude that is free of fear, whereas the fickle multitude is always swayed by passions. These premises lead to the inference that the absence of fear is not an adequate basis for politics. ²⁶ Therefore, the conclusion is that Epicureanism was not really political. ²⁷

Even a cursory look at Hermarchus’s argument will be enough to dispel this distorted picture. The absence of fear (ἀφοβία) is mentioned in passing only once. ²⁸ Rather, what organizes the entire discourse is that justice is determined according to utility (συμφέρον). ²⁹ Hermarchus’s argument pivots around the “calculation of utility [ἐπιλογισμὸν . . . τοῦ συμφέροντος].” ³⁰ Overcoming fear is the outcome of the exercise of phronesis—the knowledge and virtue that encapsulates the calculation of utility—and not an end in itself independent of its enactment. The Epicurean account of social formation revolves around the practical, instrumental judgment called phronesis (see §5).

The presentation of Hermarchus’s account of social formation through the calculation of utility proceeds in three steps—which, as we will see (§4), mirror Spinoza’s three steps for the “universal basis” of social formation. The first starts by inquiring into the sources of the proscription against the killing of humans. The Epicureans had conducted a “long genealogy [γενεαλογίαν μακρὰν]” on the formation of the laws against murder. What chiefly caused such laws was the consideration that killing others “detracts from the attainment of utility in living as a whole [τὸ μὴ συμφέρειν εἰς τὴν ὅλην τοῦ βίου σύστασιν].” ³¹ What causes laws is the calculation of utility “as a whole”—that is, both for the individual and society. It is this calculation of social utility as a whole that the ancients called phronesis. ³² Significantly, such a calculation consists in both the natural capacity of the human to form practical judgments so as to act, signified by “τὸ συμφέρειν” in the previous passage, and the construction or “σύστασιν”—or, translated literally, constitution—of laws and institutions. The practical judgment is, then, both derived from the natural faculty to calculate one’s utility and from the fact that this faculty can only be exercised in an environment that is constructed through interactions with others.

The second step consists of a further elaboration of this double genesis—both natural and constructed—of sociality. The cause of the laws continues to operate today (καὶ νῦν), says Hermarchus. This consists of neither merely the dispensation of the practical rationality at the foundation of sociality nor solely in the observance of the constructed laws through the fear of punishment. Rather than simply the effect of something pre-given, the calculation of utility can take two different forms: some act in society by considering utility, others by considering the punishment following acts against the law. These two attitudes determine sociality both on the basis of rationality and on the basis of the affects. It is as if the social comprises two distinct, parallel regimes of power. ³³ One is grounded in the free calculation of utility and the other in an adherence to authority that is charged to calculate utility on behalf of the community guided by passion. We could call the former “democracy,” since political decisions are shared amongst all, and the latter a “state of authority.” ³⁴

The third step establishes the relation between “democracy” and the “state of authority.” It is phronesis—the “phronesis of the soul” says Hermarchus—that holds the two regimes of power together, where phronesis is the calculation that strives for what is useful and to avoid the harmful (χρησίμου καὶ βλαβεροῦ). This produces a tension that Hermarchus articulates as follows: “If everyone had the capacity to calculate and pursue utility in the same way, no written laws would be required,” as everyone could act freely (αὐθαιρέτως—without constraint) for the utility of everyone. ³⁵ But such an exercise of phronesis is impeded by the fact that people do not calculate their utility correctly. This is the case not only because, in Spinoza’s favored formulation, “we see the better but do the worse,” but also because phronesis lacks certainty since it depends on complex contingent circumstances. This means that there will be conditions when it would be utilius and a matter of good judgment to defer our free judgments or even transfer the authority to judge on our behalf to others whose expertise or ability could lead to decisions that benefit the community as a whole. This could be the case, for example, in an emergency, such as an economic crisis that requires technocratic know-how to resolve, or a defense crisis for the state that requires military expertise.

Thus social formation in the Epicurean account is not premised on any “natural” proclivities determining the political. Rather, it presents a combination of the natural facility to exercise practical judgment or phronesis and its necessarily constructive enactment in the social and political spheres. This double source of sociality—both natural and constructive—creates a tension. Eschewing any utopian pretensions, the Epicureans never contemplate that such a tension can be reconciled. ³⁶ There is no resolution between the natural propensity to calculate means and ends in the process of acting, and the way that this calculation is constructed by and constructs in return a social space of ethical and political action.

Spinoza’s Repetition of Hermarchus’s Three Moves

Even though the structure of the passage about social formation in chapter 5 of the Theological Political Treatise mirrors the three steps of Hermarchus’s account—whence the Hermarchus–Spinoza complex—there is no direct reference to Hermarchus in Spinoza, and we cannot know whether Spinoza had read Porphyry’s presentation of Hermarchus’s argument. It is possible because of the publication and reception history of De abstinentia. Porphyry’s book reentered circulation in manuscript form in the fourteenth century, so it was known in humanist circles long before its first print edition in Florence in the mid-sixteenth century. ³⁷ Further, Hermarchus was particularly important for Gassendi, and through his influence, for Hobbes too. ³⁸

Although we cannot determine whether Spinoza had read De abstinentia, this does not affect my argument: the structure of Spinoza’s presentation of social formation is Epicurean, which means that he overcomes the opposition between naturalism and constructivism with recourse to the notion of the calculation of utility, or what ancient Epicureans called phronesis. Let us examine, then, the three moves of Spinoza’s account of social formation in chapter 5 of the Theological Political Treatise that mirror Hermarchus’s account.

First, Spinoza insists that utility is the source of sociality. This is stated clearly at the beginning of the passage that aims to show the formation of society “through a universal basis.” Spinoza frames the conversation thus: “A society is advantageous [perutilis], even absolutely necessary, not merely for security against enemies but for its expedient accomplishment of a variety of things” (62–63/73). His example is how people divide tasks amongst themselves in a community, which can thereby be organized even in the absence of written laws, as it is to everyone’s utility to cooperate. This emphasis on utility as the basis of sociality in chapter 5 is consonant with the overall argument of the Theological Political Treatise. Thus, for instance, the distinctive feature contributing to the formation of the Hebrew State, according to chapter 17, was “the calculation of utility [ratio utilitatis],” which “must have been most effective” to achieve the good of the state (198/215). Even more tellingly, within the context of the development of the argument of the Treatise, in chapter 4, Spinoza had defined the law as a “logic of living [ratio vivendi] that one prescribes to oneself or to others for some end [finem]” (49/58). In other words, the law itself was defined in terms of the means and ends logic characteristic of the calculation of utility. ³⁹ Thus, the argument about the formation of society according to the calculation of utility not only mirrors Hermarchus’s first point, but it is also further developed by Spinoza as it accords with his primary example of a specific state formation—the Hebrew state—and with the definition of the law in the Theological Political Treatise.

Second, Spinoza distinguishes a democratic polity from a community reliant on authority that functions through obedience to the law. As he puts it, “the entire community, if possible, should hold government in common [collegialiter imperium tenere], so that all are thus servants to themselves and no one to his equal [sic omnes sibi, et nemo suo aequali servire teneatur]” (63/74). The language here echoes the description of democracy elsewhere, such as in the Political Treatise. The premise of such a society is the free operation of the calculation of utility or what Hermarchus and the Epicurean tradition call phronesis. ⁴⁰ If such an equal society is not possible, then “sovereignty [imperium] is invested in a few men or in one alone he should have extraordinary virtue [summis viribus], or at least attempt to persuade the masses [vulgo] of this” (63/74). If the political regime is not democratic, then the holders of power must be, or at least perceived to be, extraordinary, which is what gives them authority. Crucially, in both cases the underlying principle is the same, namely, the calculation of utility (63–64/74). If the formation of the state originates in the calculation of utility, then the continuing operation of the state has exactly the same basis. Thus Spinoza repeats Hermarchus’s point of a common source of sociality—the calculation of utility or phronesis—that can spawn two distinct regimes of power that we can call “democracy” and a “state of authority.” ⁴¹

Third, Spinoza repeats Hermarchus’s point that when phronesis is freely and successfully enacted, then written laws are not necessary: “Now if people were so constituted by nature as to desire nothing but what is prescribed by true reason [vera ratio], society would stand in no need of any laws. Nothing would be required but to teach them true ethical examples [vera documenta moralia], and they would then act to their true utility [vere utile] of their own accord, wholeheartedly and freely” (63/73). The truth of utility is not—cannot be—deductively verified like the second kind of knowledge we find in Part II of the Ethics. Rather, it is the kind of knowledge that connects the good with utility, as Definition 1 of Part IV of the Ethics puts it. The problem is that not everyone pursues their “true utility,” notes Spinoza. Most people only care about their own personal advantage (“suum utile,” 63/73). For this reason, “no society can subsist without government [imperio] and coercion [vi], and consequently without laws [legibus]” (63/74). Just as in Hermarchus, Spinoza underscores the tension between the democratic regime and the state of authority.

The tension between the possibility of ethical action that strives for “true utility” without the requirement for obedience, and the pragmatism of the need for authority, sets in motion a dialectic of authority and utility that is pivotal for the conception of the political in the Theological Political Treatise. ⁴² The framework of this dialectic is the argument about the formation of society we find in chapter 5 of the Treatise, which mirrors the structure of the Epicurean argument about social formation attributed to Hermarchus. Just as in the Epicurean conception of social formation, the natural is not an origin that determines its products in advance, as would be the case in essentialist conceptions of nature. As a consequence, the dialectic of authority and utility is open-ended, lacking a synthesis that could resolve the tensions.

Such a dialectic requires to be staged in material reality; it requires a kind of performativity, which is described in the Epicurean tradition in terms of phronesis—the calculation of utility or to sympheron that is the motor of social formation in the Hermarchus–Spinoza complex.

Phronesis as Performative

Phronesis as a performative that is central to the conception of ethics and politics is a common feature of the entire Greek philosophical tradition. ⁴³ I acknowledge here Derrida’s position in “Signature Event Context” that performativity ought not be reduced to a certain intentionality that bifurcates between theory and praxis. ⁴⁴ The Epicurean notion of phronesis sketched here aligns with Derrida’s position, as we will see in the present section, and has a family affinity with the queer, as we will see in the next section.

The Epicurean contribution to phronesis consists in elevating it to the primary form of knowledge and virtue. The most succinct presentation of phronesis as performative occurs at the beginning of book 6 of the Nicomachean Ethics, which offers the only systematic account of phronesis that has survived from antiquity. The description of the performativity of phronesis occurs when Aristotle raises the question of the truth of praxis. The truth of action necessarily includes the ends of action (ἡ ἕνεκά του καὶ πρακτική); as Aristotle puts it, nothing happens (οὐθὲν κινεῖ) without ends. ⁴⁵ The end of action is provided through the combination of rationality, emotional disposition, and a specific setting within which the ends are calculable.

The truth of action has nothing to do with an essence that is to be retrieved or attained and which is independent of the actions. This is not even entertained as a possibility by Aristotle. Instead, the truth of praxis is the acting well (εὐπραξία). ⁴⁶ In other words, the truth of phronesis is its enactment or performance that combines correctly calculative rationality, the emotions, and a consideration of the given circumstances.

Such a determination of phronesis as performative arises from Aristotle’s ontological commitments. As soon as one posits an ontology without transcendence, it becomes difficult to account for the truth of acting, or good and bad actions, since one no longer has recourse to any external values or authority to determine the truth and the good. This explains Aristotle’s solution, which is a solution adopted by ancient philosophy as a whole—namely, to say that we can evaluate an action according to whether it is well performed, or through its effects. There is nothing inherently good or bad in any action. Rather, actions are different because they produce different effects depending on how the rationality, emotion, and material reality combine to determine the ends of acting. ⁴⁷

Instrumentality is integral to the performativity of phronesis, the kind of practical knowledge and virtue that the Greeks regarded as constitutive of ethics and politics. We should recall here Marcel Detienne and Jean-Pierre Vernant’s Cunning Intelligence in Greek Culture and Society, which argues that instrumental reasoning is essential to the Greek conception of action. ⁴⁸ As such, it has many different names, the philosophical one being phronesis. Even though Detienne and Vernant do not designate this instrumental thinking as performative—since, after all, the term was not in circulation when they wrote their book—it is easy to see the performative aspect of instrumentality. For instance, Ulysses, an—or, the—exemplary figure of “cunning intelligence,” exhibits a consistently performative virtue. Thus, before blinding the cyclops, Ulysses deceives him that his name is “No one,” so that when the cyclops screams that “No one blinded me,” the other cyclops ignores him, giving Ulysses and his companions time to escape.

The complication with Aristotle’s presentation of phronesis in book 6 of the Nicomachean Ethics is that he concludes by comparing it to Sophia, where phronesis comes second best. Phronesis—the practical, instrumental knowledge and virtue, which, because of its performativity, remains fallible—is, according to Aristotle, inferior to Sophia, which is a form of knowledge that leads to certainty. By contrast, the calculation of the effects of the ends of our action can never be certain because of the contingent circumstances upon which the ratiocination and emotions are based. At the end of book 6 of the Nicomachean Ethics, then, Aristotle demotes phronesis precisely because of its performativity.

I regard as the most important feature of Epicureanism that it takes phronesis to be the highest form of both knowledge and virtue. To understand the Epicurean primacy of phronesis, we need to avoid the deceiving interpretation of Epicureanism as hedonism. In the Letter to Menoeceus, Epicurus says that “pleasure [ἡδονὴν] is the end of action,” but he immediately specifies that pleasure here does not mean hedonism. Rather, “it is sober reasoning [νήφων λογισμὸς] that calculates the causes of every judgment to do or avoid doing something good or harmful.” The natural emotion is inseparable from a calculation about what is utilius. We have here a faculty that combines mind and body, thought and desire through the calculation of means and ends. Such a faculty is “natural” by virtue of transcending all hierarchies between pleasure and calculation. Epicurus calls this faculty phronesis. He explains that it is “the principle and the greatest good [ἀγαθὸν]” of action that is simultaneously the source of “all the other virtues.” ⁴⁹ This amounts to asserting that phronesis as a performative is the highest form of knowledge and virtue. With this move, Epicureanism queers philosophy and political thought (see §6).

In Greek thought in general, not only in the Epicurean school, phronesis is the ethical and political virtue par excellence because the performative calculation of how the ends of action lead to the good—or the calculation of utility—is never personal but rather intersubjective or communal. The Epicurean assertion of the primacy of phronesis amounts to saying that the ethical and the political are both the most important fields of human action and the central field of philosophical discourse. ⁵⁰ To use a Foucauldian vocabulary, this means that knowledge and power are always intertwined. And to use an older vocabulary, phronesis is for Epicureanism the prima philosophia.

The political adumbration of this position—which early moderns such as Gassendi pay particular attention to—can be found in Epicurus’s Principal Doctrines, a collection of forty articles intended to summarize the entirety of Epicurean philosophy for didactic and mnemonic purposes. ⁵¹ The social and political philosophy of Epicurus occupies the last decade of aphorisms, and numbers 31 to 38 specifically highlight the connection between the calculation of utility, law, justice, and the “social contract.”

Article 33 says: “There is no absolute justice [καθ’ ἑαυτὸ δικαιοσύνη] but only a reciprocal agreement in specific places and times to prevent inflicting or suffering harm.” ⁵² No justice is absolute, and hence no laws are inviolable, because justice consists in calculating within specific circumstances what is good and what is bad. In article 36, Epicurus articulates the same idea in positive terms: “justice is common to all [κοινὸν πᾶσιν] and it consists in calculating the utility [συμφέρον] ⁵³ that contributes to sociality [πρὸς ἀλλήλους κοινωνία]; thus, depending on particular conditions, justice articulates itself differently.” ⁵⁴ This places the performance of justice through the enactment of phronesis at the center of the conception of the social and the political. Justice, says Epicurus, is not immutable. There are no principles of justice that can be applied to any place and time. Justice is performed through the legislation that expresses how utility is communally determined.

The conception of the organized society in Epicureanism is premised on this performativity of phronesis. The famous references to “συνθήκας,” which, since Gassendi is often translated as “social contract,” occurs in article 32. It designates a polity whose basis is justice as the kind of communal calculation of utility. ⁵⁵ The συνθήκη or social contract, then, is a deliberate combination of the natural propensity to make the kind of instrumental judgments required by justice, and the constructed social and political framework that facilitates this process through the establishment of institutions and governing bodies. Such a framework that bridges the division between naturalism and constructivism is possible because of the performativity of phronesis that relies on instrumentality or the calculation of utility (to sympheron).

It is this combination of the natural faculty to calculate collective utility and its necessary enactment within material reality that simultaneously constructs the social and political sphere that I call the Hermarchus–Spinoza complex.

Why the Hermarchus–Spinoza Complex Matters Today

We started with the problem of how the opposition between naturalism and constructivism impacts liberal political philosophy and theory to end up with a consideration of phronesis as the knowledge and virtue that offers a performative conception of ethical and political action that is premised on instrumental calculation. As a performative, phronesis evades the naturalism vs constructivism opposition, but this comes with the risk of placing instrumental calculation at the center of ethics and politics. Since the critique of instrumental reason has been so entrenched for a century, it may seem provocative, if not mad, to call phronesis, which is instrumental.

It is at this juncture that we see the first major reason why phronesis at the center of the Hermarchus–Spinoza complex matters today: Its politics beyond the naturalism vs constructivism opposition challenges the critique of instrumental reason. There are two key considerations in challenging the critique of instrumental reason following the role phronesis plays in the political.

The first consideration starts by questioning what conception of instrumentality the critique of instrumental reason opposes. We soon discover that the critique of instrumental reason does not touch phronesis. Instead, the instrumentality that such critiques have in mind is essentially that of nineteenth-century utilitarianism. ⁵⁶ The three key characteristics of a utilitarian conception of means and ends relations are that they can be calculated by the individual, they can be correctly calculated, and the ends of the calculation can be accomplished completely. Phronesis, as we saw, contradicts each of these characteristics. Phronesis is intersubjective, the calculation is fallible, and the end can never be reached to the extent that the end is not about one act but about the good of the community as a whole. Not only then does the critique of instrumental reason leave phronesis unaffected; moreover, by presupposing the utilitarian conception of instrumentality it elevates utilitarian thinking into a major position of significance for society today. A politics that insists on the function of phronesis would not accord utilitarianism such a position.

A further consideration consists in interrogating the effects of the critique of instrumental reason within critical discourse. The tradition of political philosophy and theory influenced by the critique of instrumental reason—a tradition that includes just about the whole of continental philosophy and political theory—is intent to locate the political proper in actions that have no preplanned or calculable effects, or the ineffectual, as I call it. ⁵⁷ For example, a politics of the ineffectual can rely on a conception of the event, a public happening that is unplanned and unpredictable, or of art whose “uselessness” is supposed to make it more political than any other calculative activity, or on an interruption or deviation that Deleuze models on the Epicurean clinamen, even though it is clear from every surviving record that the Epicureans never conceived of the clinamen in political terms. ⁵⁸ What all these variants of the ineffectual have in common is that they lead to a conception of political action that is either trivial or complicit with existing power structures—they are ineffectual in the additional sense that they are “good for nothing.” ⁵⁹ Take, for example, what Heidegger tells his students about Hölderlin in the mid-30s. A poet is supposed to reveal to a people their destiny precisely because the poet is not involved in the “machinations” that characterize politics. And yet, poetry is so ineffectual that Heidegger’s appeal to Hölderlin starts appearing supportive of the regime that was in power at the time. Having assumed the utilitarian conception of instrumentality, but entirely ignoring the phronetic tradition, the discourse of the ineffectual is mired in a celebration of action without effects that, if it exists, is indeed nothing but useless. ⁶⁰

After charting a route out of the chokehold of the critique of instrumental reason, we can discover a second reason why the Hermarchus–Spinoza complex that foregrounds phronesis matters today. This is the historical aspect: We may agree with Althusser that there is an “underground current” of materialism that traverses the history of political thought, while also disagreeing with him to look for such an underground current in the “encounter,” which is merely another version of the event that ignores phronesis—another version of the ineffectual. We may also agree with Butler about the performativity of the political, and we also have to disagree with her when she sees no function for instrumentality in such a performativity. Phronesis, as the performative instrumental knowledge and virtue, courses through the history of thought, from Hermarchus to Spinoza, demanding that scholars shake off their complacent acceptance of prevalent accounts of the history of philosophy and interrogate the phronetic tradition instead. A materialism that focuses on the role of phronesis, then, is not merely an underground current but rather necessitates a wholesale realignment of the history of philosophy. ⁶¹

Queer philosophy also undoes the naturalism vs constructivism opposition. By dismantling the distinction between sex and gender, Judith Butler has shown that the naturalism vs constructivism opposition is always inflected by political interests, and that, by contrast, sex and gender are performatives without a natural origin or without a cultural provenance separate from the establishment and perpetuation of power. Differently put, Butler argues that the opposition between naturalism and constructivism establishes a model of domination that can be overcome by promoting the performativity of sex/gender. ⁶² The Hermarchus–Spinoza complex gives a historical depth to the undoing of the naturalism vs constructivism opposition. I am not suggesting to queer Epicureanism ex post facto but rather that an avant la lettre queering is already part of ancient philosophy because of the performativity of phronesis, the primary ethical and political virtue. ⁶³ This introduces a significant divergence from Butler’s account of queering. If Epicureanism offers indeed a queer politics, then queering occurred before the modern adumbration of the nature vs construction opposition, not only in tragedies such as Antigone, as Butler notes, but within philosophy itself. ⁶⁴ If philosophy was queer since antiquity, queer thought is not merely a dismantling of the opposition of nature and nurture, but moreover, the latter opposition is derivative of queer performativity.

A third effect: Besides the revision of the critique of instrumental reason and of the history of thought, the Hermarchus–Spinoza complex also has a significant effect on the methodology of political thought and critique. The complex brings to the fore the Epicurean tradition of phronesis that is incompatible with both regional ontologies and intersectionality. Regional ontologies tend to develop an ontology and a politics departing from a single concept or existent, such as, for example, mourning. An institutional articulation of regional ontologies within the academic world is the proliferation of “studies”—such as race or women’s studies. The Hermarchus–Spinoza complex reveals a tradition that insists on the effects that phronetic calculations have on living as a whole. As such, regional ontologies will remain only ever limited perspectives of the political.

The complex also reveals a corresponding limitation of intersectionality, which argues that different discourses are causally and conceptually related, but without being able to point out to what it is that effects such overlaps. The Hermarchus–Spinoza complex would suggest that the link is phronesis. What would it be like to bring together, for example, feminist thought and race theory from the perspective that both sex/gender issues and race questions presuppose the striving for a community to achieve the good as a whole? Maybe then the methodological task to go beyond both regional ontologies and intersectionality in such a way that augments their opposition to the naturalism vs constructivism binary and enhances both of them is to discover their shared assumption about a performative calculation of utility that informs action, as well as the critical stance that conceptualizes action.

I do not see, then, the Hermarchus–Spinoza complex merely as a philological exercise that unearths the similar structure of argumentation that the two use to present an Epicurean account of the formation of the social and the political. Such exegesis matters, of course, but it is critical to recognize also the implications of this complex that challenge the ingrained critique of instrumental reason, invite alternative accounts of the history of thought, and suggest a way to synthesize disparate discourses.

I do not envisage such a synthesis as a unified theory of everything. In fact, the opposite is the case: If we adopt a perspective that sees the ineliminable presence of phronesis in all ethical and political action, then this opens up a space of contestation and agonism that resists unification because the truth of phronesis concerns its performative enactment rather than the discovery of some “true” end. Perhaps, then, the Hermarchus–Spinoza complex matters today because it stages or performs the persistent, ineliminable contestation about means and ends, which is indispensable if we are to consider the social and political good in our current predicament.