Journal of Philosophy of Education, Vol. 45, No. 2, 2011
Transindividuality and Philosophical
Enquiry in Schools: A Spinozist Perspective
JULIANA MERÇON AND AURELIA ARMSTRONG
We suggest in this paper that the practice of philosophy with
children can be fruitfully understood as an example of a
transindividual system. The adoption of the term
‘transindividuality’ serves two main purposes: it allows us to
focus on individuation as a process and at the same time to
problematise some of the classical antinomies of Western
philosophy that continue to inform our understanding of the
relation between individuality and community. We argue that
the practice of philosophical inquiry with children, when
interpreted in terms of Spinoza’s conceptions of relational
individuality and affective reason, offers a compelling
example of how shared thinking operates as an individuating
process in that knowledge and affect, interiority and
exteriority, individuality and collectivity can be experienced
in action and thought as complementary aspects of the same
process.
The reality of individuals seems incontestable. We tend to perceive the
world as consisting of discrete things, units of cohesive matter which we
identify as clearly bounded objects or living beings. Traditionally,
individuality has been theorised either via a substantialist perspective,
whereby being is considered consistent in its unity, given to itself, and
resistant to what it is not,1 or through a hylomorphic2 approach, whereby
the individual is conceived as the perfecting form or telos of matter. The
self-centred substantialism of individuals is here opposed to the bipolarity
of the hylomorphic schema. In both cases, however, the existent individual
is the starting point of investigation, and an ontological privilege is
granted to the constituted individual (see Simondon, 2005).
What sort of theory would emerge if our inquiry did not focus primarily
on constituted individuals, but on the very processes of constitution that
enable individuation3 to occur? The work of Gilbert Simondon represents
a recent response to that query. His objective is to understand the system
of reality that permits individuals to become separated from the
environment—the individual is thus considered as what is to be explained
rather than the starting point of inquiry. For Simondon, the individual and
the collective correspond to effects in a process of individuation.
Individual and collective do not succeed one another, but are, rather,
r 2011 The Author
Journal compilation r 2011 Journal of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain. Published by Blackwell
Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
252
J. Merçon and A. Armstrong
synchronic, participating in the same process that engenders interiority
and exteriority. Both individuations, the psychic and the collective, are
reciprocal to each other. Their reciprocity defines the transindividual: ‘a
systematic unity of the interior (psychic) individuation and the exterior
(collective) individuation’ (Simondon, 2005, p. 23).
The term transidividuality thus refers to the mutual constitution or
reciprocal determination of the psychic and the collective. From the notion
of the transindividual another key concept emerges in Simondon’s theory:
that of relation. The transindividual understood as relation is not what
occurs between individuated terms, but is a dimension of individuation
itself. Relation is, according to this perspective, what constitutes
individuals and not the reverse. In sum, the concept of the transindividual
is characterised by the primacy of processes of individuation over
constituted individuals and of relations over relata.
Etienne Balibar suggests that Simondon’s arguments for transindividuality are ‘truly spinozistic’ and, indeed, that Spinoza’s striking rejection
of abstract oppositions is best described in terms of Simondon’s notion of
transindividuality. Following Balibar’s suggestion that Spinoza can be
fruitfully understood as a ‘theoretician of transindividuality’ (Balibar,
1997, p. 11), our objective is to demonstrate that Spinoza’s version of
transindividuality challenges traditional dichotomies in a way that sheds
new light on some of the processes that take place in the philosophical
community of inquiry in the classroom. Spinoza is one of the few
philosophers to have formulated a consistent critique of the dualisms that
form the conceptual infrastructure of post-Cartesian Western thought. In
understanding his challenge to the dualisms of mind and body, knowledge
and affect, interior and exterior, individual and collectivity through the
notion of transindividuality, these classical antinomies are more clearly
reconfigured. Given the productive connection between Simondon’s
notion of transindividuality and Spinoza’s philosophy, the suspicion that
moves the present paper is the following: if we conceive of philosophical
inquiries with children as complex psycho-social or transindividual
processes, we will be better able to understand how the aforementioned
distinctions are, in fact, not dichotomies, but reciprocally actualised and
maintained through a complementary dynamic.
Spinoza is often portrayed as an arch rationalist. The undeniable
significance of reason in his philosophy, however, should not blind us to
the pivotal role played by the affects4 and desire in his philosophical
system. Reason, like imagination, is a form of knowledge that corresponds
to a type of bodily experience. According to Spinoza, body and mind are
modes of the attributes of a single substance that express the same
individual power. Conatus is the name given to this power—it is our
striving to persevere in existence, our complex drives and dispositions,
which are also identified with our desire. The understanding of an
individual’s conatus as a reciprocal dynamic between the power to affect
and to be affected (between productivity and receptivity) will serve as the
centrepiece of the discussion of Spinoza’s conception of individuality in
the first part of the paper.
r 2011 The Author
Journal compilation r 2011 Journal of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain
Transindividuality and Philosophical Enquiry in Schools
253
The second part of the paper examines the relation between two types of
knowledge or ways of knowing: imagination and reason. From a Spinozist
perspective, imagination refers to an immediate, partial and non-causal
form of knowledge, whereas reason involves adequate ideas about causes.
We argue that the complex rational explanations that occur in
philosophical discussions with school children can be understood as a
rational transindividual system from which relatively stable singular and
collective forms emerge. Philosophical inquiry is thus understood as an
individuating process that gives rise to individuals and communities. A
paradoxical process emerges from this dynamic system: integration is
enhanced (that is, individuation is diminished) while difference is
highlighted (that is, individuality is reinforced). Thinking as a social
process fosters self-determination or individuality, just as the increase in
the intellectual powers of individuals enhances a certain kind of social
integration. Since different forms of thinking seem to be directly
associated with the formation of distinct types of community, we conclude
this paper with reflections on some of the ‘political’ implications of the
practice of philosophy with children.
SPINOZA AND INDIVIDUALITY
Spinoza’s philosophy has been subjected to radically different interpretations. Genevieve Lloyd (1996) and Christopher Norris (2006) argue that
the fact that significantly different readings may display exegetical
thoroughness and argumentative rigour, and that strong evidence can be
mustered to support opposing claims, indicates how inassimilable
Spinoza’s thinking is to mainstream classification. If, for instance,
Spinoza is classified as a rationalist on the grounds that he maintains
that true wisdom can only be achieved through a reasoned critique of
common-sense notions or self-evident ideas,5 he can equally be
considered a radical naturalist or materialist, according to whom such
wisdom consists in due recognition of the various physical, causal, and
socio-political factors that are the material conditions of knowledge.6
In agreement with Balibar (1997), we maintain that the apparent
incoherence detected in Spinoza’s philosophy indicates the difficulty
readers have in comprehending a perspective that challenges some of the
most ingrained antinomies of classical metaphysics and ethics. This
challenge is nowhere more apparent than in Spinoza’s notion of
individuality as essentially relational. Spinoza’s relational individual is
not the originating and sole source of reason or the affects. Rather, it is
situated in, and constituted by, social imaginary and rational systems that
hamper or promote its powers of action and thought. Spinoza thus invites
us to rethink the identity and activity of individuals as correlated with
extended interrelations.
What then is a human individual for Spinoza? Our response to this
question focuses on three main aspects of Spinoza’s theory of
individuality: (1) the concept of finite modes; (2) the doctrine of
r 2011 The Author
Journal compilation r 2011 Journal of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain
254
J. Merçon and A. Armstrong
psychophysical parallelism; and (3) the identification of an individual’s
essence with its conatus or desire.
Spinoza conceives of the human individual as a union of body and mind
(EII P21 S).7 In striking contrast to Descartes, body and mind are not
defined as separate substances but as finite modes or modifications of the
attributes of a single substance or all-encompassing reality.8 A mode is not
self-causing but is ‘that which is in another through which it is also
conceived’ (EI D5)—it is, in other words, existentially and conceptually
dependent. A mode is limited by other modes of its kind (bodies limit
bodies and ideas limit ideas). The finitude of a mode means that it has no
absolute self-sufficiency; it can only be comprehended through its
relations with other modes. In short, the concept of a mode indicates a
constitutive openness: bodies and minds are not understood as atomic or
self-contained, but as constitutively relational.
The totality of bodies and minds corresponds to natura naturata—that
is, the set of all individuals. All that exists is an effect of natura
naturans—that is, Nature’s immanent and incessant production of existing
individuals (EI P29 S). Nature understood as constant production or
natura naturans is the process of individuation on which this paper
focuses. In sum, Substance or Nature (the two are equivalent for Spinoza)
is nothing but this infinite process of production of multiple individuals,
whereas individuals, being all interrelated, are the necessary existence of
substance. The multiplicity of individuals and the unity of substance are
reciprocal for Spinoza (Balibar, 1997, p. 8).
As modes of the attributes of Substance, mind and body have not only
the same order and connection (EIIP7), but also the same being.
Moreover, as modes of the autonomous attributes of thought and
extension, there can be no causal interaction between them. Instead, their
connection is explicated as a union or identity, which is expressed in
Spinoza’s claim that mind is the idea of the body. In other words, mind or
idea and body are the same thing represented from the point of view of
either thought or extension. An important consequence of Spinoza’s denial
of psychophysical interaction is the refusal of the eminence of mind over
body, with the result that the agency or action of modes or singular things
can no longer be understood in Cartesian fashion as a function of the
voluntary power of the mind—or will—over bodily motions. Spinoza’s
so-called ‘parallelism’ of mind and body thus challenges the classic
dualist dichotomy that divides the human being into the higher faculty of
active mind and the passive animal drives and passions. Spinoza replaces
this dualistic, hierarchical model of mind-body relations with one that
attends to the psychophysical whole.
To define the mind as idea or awareness of an actually existing body
(EII P13), is to say that the mind is reflective and expressive of its own
body. Its activity (or the activity that it is)9 corresponds, in the first
instance, to the series of states of its body object (EII P11). Since the body,
of which the mind is an idea, is continuously affecting other bodies and
being affected by them, the mind is the idea not only of the body to which
it corresponds, but also of the ongoing relation between the body and its
r 2011 The Author
Journal compilation r 2011 Journal of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain
Transindividuality and Philosophical Enquiry in Schools
255
immediate environment. The mind, therefore, is not an isolated unit set
against an external world that it apprehends, but is the process of
encompassing the relations between body and world in thought.
For Spinoza, the essence of human individuals is their very desire (EIII
Def Aff I Exp), which is in turn defined as their appetite or conatus—that
is, their striving to persevere in existence—together with awareness of
their dispositions (EIII P6). For the spinozist individual to maintain its
identity—or exist—it must necessarily be connected to other body-minds
within a complex network of causal and affective relations. Spinoza’s
theory of conatus explains what it means to exist as the inherent striving of
the individual to maintain identity in and through such exchanges with its
environment. He understands conatus or desire as a principle of
determination and differentiation, and not of unification: ‘the desire of
each individual differs from the desire of another as much as the nature, or
essence, of the one differs from the essence of the other’ (EIII P57 D).
Spinoza thus eschews appeal to a universal human essence, and instead
refers to the singularity of individuals—to their multiple forms of
affection and striving—in order to define them.
Having briefly characterised the spinozist human individual as a finite
mode, a union of body and mind, and a complex network of strivings or
desire, it is now important to address Spinoza’s understanding of reason.
For Spinoza, the more an individual exercises its power of thinking the
more it is said to be active. Our ‘conative power’ finds its maximum
expression in reason, that is, in our power to adequately understand the
causal order.10 Adequate understanding is not the same as theoretical
knowledge; to understand more adequately is not simply to change one’s
intellectual perspective. It is, rather, a form of affective therapy that
involves a change in one’s existential stance, activity and desire. Reason is
always affective, necessarily involving a dimension of corporeal
assimilation or sensitivity. In fact, affecting and being affected constitute
a single power operation for Spinoza. Spinoza claims that a defining
characteristic of more complex and powerful bodies is a capacity for
‘being acted on in many ways at once’ (EII P13 S.). The growing
complexity of the body is accompanied by an expansion in the mind’s
power to assimilate impressions. A body that is capable of being affected
in a great number of ways shares a multitude of things with other bodies
and is thus more capable of regarding a greater number of things at once
and of comprehending the relations of agreement, difference and
opposition between them (EII P29 S).
The interdependence of productivity and receptivity may seem paradoxical insofar as it reconfigures the traditional dichotomy between autonomy
and heteronomy by affirming the compatibility of self-determination with
sensitivity or exposure to the world: any possible separation delineated by
individual powers cannot be dissociated from the individual’s open and fluid
communication with other bodies and minds. In this sense, we can affirm,
with Hans Jonas, that ‘only by being sensitive can a body and mind be
active, only by exposing themselves can they be self-determined’ (Jonas,
1973, p. 278). A powerful, productive or active body is not one that is
r 2011 The Author
Journal compilation r 2011 Journal of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain
256
J. Merçon and A. Armstrong
invulnerable to the world’s determining causes. Activity is not the result of a
process of ‘disaffection’ or ‘desensitisation’, but is the expression of a
flexible, vigorous, and multiply-determined form of sensitivity.
If we give Spinoza’s theory of body-mind correspondence any credit, our
desire to develop our intellectual power cannot but imply the cultivation of
our corporeal sensitivity. Likewise, since individual bodies and minds are
interdependent, the more other individuals increase their sensitive power
and their associated power of thinking, the more our capacities expand and
vice versa. Sensitivity and productivity, like sociality and individuality are
reciprocal processes in the individuation of the body-mind.11
Lipman and others have argued in various (and often contrasting) ways
for the general idea that sociality informs (and forms) individual
identity.12 Vygotsky’s social learning theory, Davidov’s theory of activity,
the social psychology of George H. Mead, systems and process theories,
and hermeneutics, among other theoretical strands, have assisted
researchers in constructing a description of philosophical inquiry with
children that is neither one-dimensional (precluding the individual or the
collective) nor simplistic (refusing to analyse the connections between
these two realms). It is generally accepted that individual reasoning results
from a complex process of internalisation of collective speech/thinking.
Communal discussion implies adjustments in an individual’s mode of
thinking, just as self-correction and interventions that improve the
reasoning applied by an individual in a philosophical dialogue promote
the development of the student group as a whole.
Thinking is a process that relies on a system of signs, socially shared
meanings and forms of communication. Individual body-minds participate
in that system being both its products and partial producers. Turning our
attention to individuation or to the transindividual nature of individuals
allows us to focus not on what one is or thinks, but on the processes of
individual/collective thinking that lead to temporarily stable personal/
social forms. From this perspective, the practice of philosophy with
children can be interpreted as a unique relational space where personal and
communal intellectual transformations are rapidly and intensely experienced. As a systematic communicative process, philosophical dialogues
with children can be said to correspond to transindividual systems of
thinking that contribute to the formation of individuals. Of course, the same
claim could be made about any number of social influences operating on
the individual, including for example, groups of friends, the family, various
social institutions, and the media. In order to identify what is unique about
the formative process of the practice of philosophy with children we need
to understand what sort of individuating system it is. The distinction
between imagination and reason is central to our response to this question.
IMAGINATION AND REASON AS TRANSINDIVIDUAL SYSTEMS
Imagination and reason are, for Spinoza, forms of knowledge through
which we understand the world around us. They are also thinking
r 2011 The Author
Journal compilation r 2011 Journal of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain
Transindividuality and Philosophical Enquiry in Schools
257
processes through which distinct kinds of sociality and individuality are
engendered. Against the conventional view of imagination as creative,
Spinoza defines it as inadequate knowledge that is a function of the
various alterations that the body undergoes in its interactions with its
immediate environment. It is considered inadequate because the reality
that immediate awareness grasps is local, partial, and non-causal.
Spinoza claims that ‘as our bodies retain traces of the changes brought
about by other bodies, the mind regards the other bodies as present even
when they no longer exist’ (EII P17 D, C). Imagination consists in the
mind regarding bodies in this way. Its inadequacy resides in the confused
perception that we have of other bodies and our own since we are aware of
the effects of other bodies on our own but not of the true causes of these
effects. The contents of imaginary knowledge are, therefore, like
‘conclusions without premises’ (EII P28 D).
Imaginative knowledge derives primarily from memory, which is a result
of the fortuitous order of affections experienced by our bodies (EII P18 S).
It operates through accidental and unexamined associations: ‘when our
body has once been affected by two or more bodies at the same time, when
the mind subsequently imagines one of them, it will immediately recollect
the others also’ (EII P18). Furthermore, in future encounters, when the
body is affected by one of the affects that occurred simultaneously in the
past, it will also be affected by the others (EIII P14). These associations
created by imagination explain, for instance, why we love or hate certain
things out of sympathy or antipathy without understanding the causes of
our feelings (EIII P15 S). Operating via contiguity or similarity,
imaginative associations thus expose us to accidental and arbitrary affects.
Another central mechanism of imaginary life is affective imitation.
Spinoza appeals to the notion of affective imitation in order to account for
the way in which the resemblances individuals perceive between
themselves and others form the basis of imaginary identifications. Spinoza
explains that ‘if we imagine a thing like us, toward which we have had no
affect, to be affected with some affect, we are thereby affected with a like
affect’ (EIII P27). This affective mimetism is, for Spinoza, an automatic
or pre-reflexive mechanism—it does not involve any comparative thought
between us and the things we imagine to be similar to us. Moreover,
because, for Spinoza, the mind’s initial ideas or imaginings are not a
reflection of the body’s affections, but are these affections under the
attribute of thought, it is our whole psychophysical state that is modified as
we interact with external bodies. Thus, we cannot help but affectively
imitate others because to be affected by the affects of others with whom
we identify just is to express a certain state of our body and mind like that
of the affecting individual. This mimetic principle constitutes the affective
basis of pre-conscious social bonds. Imaginative processes are thus not
only the result of personal and idiosyncratic experiences, but also of
shared socio-cultural contents, inherited conceptions and collective
fictions that are affectively reproduced through sociability.
Spinoza maintains that true or adequate understanding entails a
transition from the knowledge of the immediacy of bodily alterations to
r 2011 The Author
Journal compilation r 2011 Journal of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain
258
J. Merçon and A. Armstrong
the knowledge of the corporeal and mental causal order, that is, to reason.
This transition is facilitated by the fact that imagination and reason are
distinct but not opposed forms of understanding.13 Rational thinking is
considered adequate because causal explanations are produced—this form
of understanding offers, for Spinoza, a genetic description of things. Thus,
instead of reproducing in idea the body’s responses to the immediate
surroundings, the human individual can think of the causal extensional
order so as to understand the very genesis of its own bodily affects. When
the mind incorporates its causes or the genesis of its ideas and bodily
modifications, the individual becomes a complete or adequate cause of its
thoughts. As Heidi Ravven points out, it is not that one’s thinking of
reality is then transformed but ‘it is the very reality of one’s mind that
changes’ (Ravven, 2002, p. 239). In other words, in thinking adequately,
the mind does not mirror or represent an external reality. Rather, the
individual really becomes more integrated into the causal order of nature
and is able to identify with an increasingly inclusive perspective.
When the mind knows according to reason, it is ‘determined internally,
from the fact that it regards a number of things at once, to understand their
agreements, differences, and oppositions’ (EII P29 S). Reason and
imagination are ways of relating to the world, and imply different qualities
of individual and collective life. In this sense, Balibar (1997, pp. 30–31)
suggests that both imagination and reason are not to be conceived as
faculties of the mind, but as ‘transindividual systems’ in which different
minds are mutually implicated. Imagination and reason as such are
processes and the individuals involved correspond to moments in these
processes, at different levels of integration.
In the case of reason, integration is enhanced. As ideas become
increasingly adequate, individuation, that is, what separates or distinguishes individuals is correspondingly diminished. Individuals are thus
able to understand and experience the world not so much as a series of
physical/psychological self-contained units, but from an increasingly
expansive, inclusive and common perspective. Nevertheless, as Amelie
Rorty argues, it is important to note that in this process individuality is not
extinguished, but, indeed, enhanced: in diminishing what separates them;
namely, inadequate ideas, individuals do not diminish their individuality
(Rorty, 2001, pp. 289–290). In fact, individuality—one’s singularity and
self-determining power—is augmented in direct proportion to the decrease
of differentiation, as the inadequate ideas that separate individuals are
absorbed into the co-determinative system of adequate ideas.
This striking paradox describes what occurs in the most engaging
philosophical inquiries with children. When rational thinking is intensely
shared and communal understanding allows each individual to expand
their own ideas, the group becomes an increasingly integrated whole, with
each member participating in a shared thinking process, which is enhanced
by the contribution of different individual perspectives. Unity and
plurality become complementary. Thinking as a social process fosters
self-determination or individuality, just as the increase in individual
intellectual power promotes social cohesion through the linking threads of
r 2011 The Author
Journal compilation r 2011 Journal of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain
Transindividuality and Philosophical Enquiry in Schools
259
dialogue. Thinking and understanding are actively shared while personal
contributions remain noticeably singular. It is in this sense that Ann Sharp
asserts that ‘the success of the community is compatible with, and
dependent on, the unique expression of individuality’ (Sharp, 1991, p. 33).
On a similar note, Gabriela Traverso suggests that the community of
inquiry involves two interdependent dimensions: one refers to ‘the
development that each individual gains on her or his own thanks to the
interaction with the rest of the group’, and the other to ‘the strengthening
of the community as a function of the interpersonal enrichment gained
from dialogue’ (Traverso, 1997, p. 21).
In a circular manner, the perception and experience of corporeal/mental
boundaries is a product of our understanding of reality just as the
perception and experience of divisions and continuities (in)form our
thinking. In this sense, collective philosophical dialogues with children
serve to question and reconfigure conventional limits between interiority
and exteriority. As thinking becomes increasingly communal the
participation of others functions as an important condition for one’s
own intellectual empowerment. In other words, one’s ‘interiority’ and
empowerment is a result of sociality and can be said to be expanded
through shared thinking processes. Conversely, the more one exercises
one’s own thinking, actively participating in philosophical dialogues, the
more ‘exterior’ dialogues become a part of one’s ‘interior’ processes.
Philosophical dialogues foster the externalisation of active thinking, just
as shared active thinking is internalised by individuals through
philosophical inquiry (see Jenkins, 1988). It is this reciprocal dynamic
between individual empowerment and social integration that differentiates
philosophical communities of inquiry from other forms of socialisation
and sociality. The formative influence of the various social institutions
(family, neighbourhood, church and nation) that shape individuality is
often not correlated with individual empowerment and the strengthening
of individual autonomy. From Spinoza’s point of view, this is because
such forms of belonging are often parochial, narrow and exclusive and so
fail to foster the broadening of individual understanding to encompass the
widest possible web of relations. What facilitates the enlargement of
individual understanding in philosophical dialogue is the practice and
procedure of inquiry.
Laurance Splitter argues that whilst communities—with their bonds of
trust, collaboration, risk-taking and a sense of common purpose—can be
formed and developed without inquiry, inquiry in schools depends on the
formation of a dialogic community in order to occur (Splitter, 2007, pp.
12–13). This is explained by the fact that inquiry as a mode of thinking has
a dialogical structure and as such is ‘problem-focused, self-correcting,
empathetic and multi-perspectival’ (p. 13). Moreover, Karin Murris claims
that what distinguishes philosophical inquiry from similar theme or
problem focused forms of collective inquiry is that it entails reflection
about thinking itself, that is, about the very procedures of the dialogue
(Murris, 2008, p. 670). Meta-thinking, or what Lipman calls ‘complex
thinking’ (Lipman, 1996, pp. 23–24), is an essential characteristic of the
r 2011 The Author
Journal compilation r 2011 Journal of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain
260
J. Merçon and A. Armstrong
type of dialogue that takes place in collective philosophical inquiries with
children. Reflecting on dialogue as a process, on how thoughts are being
expressed by others and oneself, is a way of reinforcing the rational, nonautomatic and open-to-scrutiny nature of inquiry (Murris and Haynes,
2000). Dialogues about the criteria and procedures involved in formulating and choosing a question for discussion, about how speech should be
distributed, about the facilitation performed by teachers, and other metadialogical issues prevents automatic thinking; that is, thinking that merely
passively reproduces authoritative opinion or proceeds by accidental
associations. By the same token, meta-dialogical reflection also strengthens active or rational thought; that is, thinking that understands its own
mental and material conditions and is, in that sense, self-generated.
CONCLUSION: THE POLITICS OF THINKING
What kind of community is formed in and by the systematic practice of
philosophising with children? Due to the social nature of our bodily/
mental affects, to our finitude as modes of Nature, and to our limited
understanding, imaginative knowledge is an ineradicable dimension of all
human communities. On the other hand, knowledge will never be
exclusively immediate, reactive or restricted to automatic responses to our
physical and psychological environment. A completely irrational community is as unimaginable as a totally rational one. Philosophy with
children fosters more rational communities, that is, forms of sociability in
which affective reason plays a significant role in the reciprocal dynamic
between self-determination and cooperative integration. Philosophy with
children can be said to facilitate the transition from more passive and
imaginary forms of sociality to more active and rational forms of
community. How should we understand this transition?
Let us consider, for instance, the influential role exercised by teachers
and facilitators in the classroom. In the traditional classroom teachers are
the primary source of authority both with respect to children’s behaviour
in class and with respect to their thinking. We can say, then, that student’s
identities are partially shaped by images/ideas that explicitly or implicitly
derive from the teacher (who in turn complexly embodies ideas from
certain institutions and pedagogical theories). Students respond (either
positively or negatively) to what is imagined as the teacher’s expectations:
identities are constructed in relation to what students perceive as the
model they are expected to conform to in thought and action. Modelling
and authoritative expectations, often reinforced by rewards and punishments, are an important imaginary and affective component of all
classroom communities, including philosophical communities of inquiry.
Although the traditional classroom relies on techniques of external
regulation of students in order to promote obedience to authority and
cooperative behaviour, and therefore involves a degree of passivity, it
would be wrong to construe this passivity as a hindrance to the
development of active, rational thought. On the contrary, passivity, that
r 2011 The Author
Journal compilation r 2011 Journal of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain
Transindividuality and Philosophical Enquiry in Schools
261
is, the external regulation of student’s desires and powers that is achieved
by encouraging imaginary identification with a model, serves as an
enabling condition for the development of individual and collective
power. Imaginary identification and unexamined affective bonds function
here to promote a form of non-rational connectivity that serves to
strengthen and build cooperative and harmonious relations. From
Spinoza’s perspective, cooperative and mutually beneficial relations
between individuals can be said to accord with reason, even if they don’t
follow from a rational understanding of one’s advantage, because such
relations ensure that individuals are more likely to experience joyful
passions, and to act on the basis of desires born of joy. Spinoza explains
the link between joyful passions and reason in the Ethics. Joy, he says,
. . . agrees with reason (for it consists in this, that a man’s power of acting
is increased or aided, and is not a passion except insofar as the man’s
power of acting is not increased to the point where he conceived himself
and his actions adequately. So if a man affected with Joy were led to such
a great perfection that he conceived himself and his actions adequately, he
would be capable—indeed more capable of the same actions to which he
is now determined from affects which are passions (EIVP59D).
In this passage Spinoza indicates that there is only a small gap separating
joyful passive affections from adequate activity. External material
circumstances can bring about a passive increase of our powers, and this
passive increase can bring us to brink of more adequate understanding and
action. The establishment of cooperative and cohesive relations by passive
means nevertheless ensures that individuals have something in common
and Spinoza tells us that ‘the mind is more capable of perceiving many
things adequately as its body has many things in common with other
bodies.’ (EIIP39). To participate in a community, and to enjoy harmonious
relation with others who ‘agree with our nature’ (EIVAppVII) is to be
affected in ways that increase our capacities for rational thought and
action. In other words, the degree of activity and independence individuals
enjoy depends on supportive interactions and favourable external
influences. In short, for Spinoza, passive and active power are complexly
related rather than opposed.
On the basis of this general description of the complex interweaving of
passive and active power in Spinoza’s thinking, we can examine in more
detail the relation between the practice of philosophy in the classroom and
the imaginative and affective interrelations that are the social basis and
condition for this practice. Our claim would be that the practice of
philosophy contributes to the creation of more active and rational forms of
community by means of an immanent critique of, and reflection on, those
imaginary preconditions. The immanent critique of the epistemic and
social processes that encompass the practice of philosophy with children is
what prevents the community from being predominantly constituted by
coercive forms of power, dogmatic opinions, and social automatisms.
Moreover, this meta-reflection or complex thinking allows intrinsic
r 2011 The Author
Journal compilation r 2011 Journal of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain
262
J. Merçon and A. Armstrong
rational mechanisms to self-regulate individuals and the group, setting the
directions for personal and social transformation. Reason, for Spinoza, is
equivalent to the active understanding of the causes that shape one’s body
and mind. In this sense, thinking about what, how and why we think
promotes the understanding of how philosophy individuates at the same
time that it participates in the formation of more active and selfdetermined communities.
From a spinozist perspective, we could affirm that the more rational
processes such as ‘philosophy for children’ are shared, the more the
individuals and social groups that are engendered by these processes exert
their singular powers in a more compatible way. Breaking from a tradition
of ethical and political polarities, Spinoza explicitly advocates for a
relational conception in which the individual’s rational pursuit of her/his
own advantage is not the foundation of conflict or unsociability, but the
same movement through which more virtuous communities are formed. In
their operation as transindividual systems, philosophical inquiries with
children engender forms of integration based on mutual convenience: each
individual’s striving to expand their own power is reinforced by the
conatus of others, thus mutually engaging in empowering interactions
without suppressing their self-determination. In communities constructed
through the practice of philosophy, the growing autonomy of the
individual (greater self-determination and singularity) is reciprocal to
closer association with other individuals.
In conclusion, we can now note how the epistemological, ethical and
political realms are inextricably linked in transindividual systems.
Individuals and social formations—their corporeal conducts and associated forms of understanding—are constituted in/by relational networks
of imaginary and rational ideas. The practice of philosophical inquiries
with children offers us a compelling example of how shared reason
operates as an individuating system whereby knowledge and affect,
interiority and exteriority, individuality and collectivity can be experienced in action/thought as reciprocal or complementary aspects of the
same process. The communities that derive from these philosophical
educational experiences are evidence of the interdependent movement
between a growing unity and a flourishing plurality: a common world in
which many worlds co-exist.14
Correspondence: Juliana Merçon, Calle Argentina 70, Depto. 4, Col.
Benito Juarez, Xalapa, Veracruz, C.P. 91070, Mexico. Aurelia Armstrong,
School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics, The University of
Queensland, St. Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia.
Emails: juliana.mercon@uqconnect.edu.au; a.armstrong@uq.edu.au
NOTES
1. Plato’s archetypal forms (which give priority to the invariants outside the individual) are the
inspiration for this long standing tradition.
r 2011 The Author
Journal compilation r 2011 Journal of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain
Transindividuality and Philosophical Enquiry in Schools
263
2. From the Greek
hylo-, which means wood, thus matter, and morphic, from morjZ, morphe¯,
that is, form. The priority given by Aristotle to the inner perfection of the individual is the
ancient touchstone for this conception of individuality.
3. By individuation we mean that individuals become separated from the environment, which is
made of numerous other inanimate and living individuals.
4. Affect (affectus) is a central concept in Spinoza’s philosophy. It is, simultaneously, an affection
(affectio) of the body that increases or decreases, aids or restrains its power to act, and the idea of
this affection. Extension and intellect, materiality and thought are indissolubly involved in the
notion of affect. An affect is thus a passage from a lesser to a greater or from a greater to a lesser
corporeal power to act just as it is, at the same time, a transition in our power to think.
5. Some of those who see Spinoza’s philosophy as primarily rationalist include G. H. Parkinson
(1953), Alan Donagan (1988), and Steven B. Smith (1997).
6. Louis Althusser (1976), for instance, attributes to Spinozism a privileged role in the prehistory of
dialectical materialism. Other commentators who understand Spinozism as fundamentally
materialist in orientation include Alexandre Matheron (1988); Pierre Macherey (1979); and
Antonio Negri (1991).
7. ‘The mind and the body are one and the same individual, which is conceived now under the
attribute of thought, now under the attribute of extension’ (EII P21 S). The following abbreviated
notation will be used to refer to Spinoza’s Ethics: EI (II, III, IV, V) for Ethics, Part I (Roman
numerals refer to the Parts of the Ethics); A for axiom; C for corollary; D for demonstration (or
definition if followed by an Arabic numeral); L for lemma; P for proposition; Pref. for preface; S
for scholium (Arabic numerals denote the lemma, proposition or scholium number); and, Ap for
appendix. Citations from the Ethics are quoted from The Ethics and Other Works. A Spinoza
Reader (Spinoza, 1994 [1677]).
8. Substance is what ‘is in itself and is conceived through itself, that is, that whose concept does not
require the concept of another thing, from which it must be formed’ (EI D3). In this sense, there
is only one substance for Spinoza, namely God or Nature. The identification of God with Nature
entails the rejection of any anthropomorphic projection onto God. Spinoza’s God has no will and
no goals—it is simply the matrix of law governed relations, or Nature.
9. ‘The idea of the mind and the mind itself are one and the same thing’ (EII P21 S).
10. Spinoza understands adequate knowledge as Aristotle does: knowing a thing adequately
corresponds to knowing its causes. The more we understand how things are determined the more
we are able to act effectively within causal networks.
11. For a more detailed discussion about Spinoza’s conception of relational individuality and the
challenge it poses to the distinction between activity and passivity, see Armstrong, 2009.
12. See, for instance, Lipman, 1996; Margolis, 1996; Kohan, 1996; Kennedy, 1999; Splitter, 2007;
and Stoyanova and Kennedy, 2010.
13. It is beyond the scope of this paper to demonstrate how imagination and reason are contiguous
forms of knowledge in Spinoza’s system. For more on that topic see Genevieve Lloyd’s Spinoza
and the Ethics (Lloyd, 1996), and ‘Spinoza and the Education of the Imagination’ (Lloyd, 1998).
14. This paper was produced under the auspices of The University of Queensland.
REFERENCES
Althusser, L. (1976) Essays in Self-Criticism, G. Lock, trans (London, Humanities Press).
Armstrong, A. (2009) Autonomy and the Relational Individual in Spinoza and Feminism, in: M.
Gatens (ed.) Rereading the Canon: Feminist Interpretations of Benedict Spinoza (University
Park, PA, Penn State University Press), pp. 43–63.
Balibar, E. (1997) Spinoza: From Individuality to Transindividuality (Delft, Eburon).
Donagan, A. (1988) Spinoza (Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press).
Jenkins, T. J. O. (1988) Philosophy for Children, Values, 2.3, pp. 33–36.
Jonas, H. (1973) Spinoza and the Theory of Organism, in: M. Greene (ed.) Spinoza: A Collection
of Critical Essays (Notre Dame, IN, University of Notre Dame Press), pp. 259–278.
Kennedy, D. (1999) Thinking for Oneself and With Others, Analytic Teaching, 20, pp. 40–49.
Kohan, W. (1996) The Social Aspect of the Mind in Pixie, in: R. Reed and A. Sharp (eds) Studies
in Philosophy for Children. Pixie (Madrid, Ediciones de la Torre), pp. 174–191.
r 2011 The Author
Journal compilation r 2011 Journal of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain
264
J. Merçon and A. Armstrong
Lipman, M. (1996) Natasha. Vygotskian Dialogues (New York, Teachers College Press).
Lloyd, G. (1996) Spinoza and the Ethics (London, Routledge).
Lloyd, G. (1998) Spinoza and the Education of the Imagination, in: A. Rorty (ed.) Philosophers on
Education: New Historical Perspectives (London, Routledge), pp. 157–172.
Macherey, P. (1979) Hegel ou Spinoza (Paris, Maspero).
Margolis, A. (1996) A Comparison Between the Philosophy for Children Approach and the
Cultural-Historical and Activity Approaches: Psychological and Educational Foundations, in:
M. Lipman, Natasha. Vygotskian Dialogues (New York, Teachers College Press), pp. 119–135.
Matheron, A. (1988) Individu et Communaute´ chez Spinoza (Paris, Les Éditions de Minuit).
Murris, K. and Haynes, J. (2000) Storywise: Thinking Through Stories (Newport, Dialogue
Works).
Murris, K. (2008) Philosophy with Children, the Stingray and the Educative Value of
Disequilibrium, Journal of Philosophy of Education, 42.3–4, pp. 667–685.
Negri, A. (1991) The Savage Anomaly: The Power of Spinoza’s Metaphysics and Politics, M.
Hardt, trans (Minneapolis, MN, University of Minnesota Press).
Norris, C. (2006) Spinoza and the Conflict of Interpretations. Paper presented at the Wandering
with Spinoza Conference (Melbourne, Victorian College of the Arts).
Parkinson, G. H. (1953) Spinoza’s Theory of Knowledge (Oxford, Claredon Press).
Ravven, H. (2002) Spinoza’s Individualism Reconsidered. Some Lessons from the Short Treatise
on God, Man, and His Well-being, in: G. Segal and Y. Yovel (eds) Spinoza (Aldershot/
Burlington, VT, Ashgate/Dartmouth), pp. 237–264.
Rorty, A. (2001) The Two Faces of Spinoza, in: G. Lloyd (ed.) Spinoza. Critical Assessments of
Leading Philosophers, Vol. II (London, Routledge), pp. 279–290.
Sharp, A. M. (1991) The Community of Inquiry: Education for Democracy, Thinking, 9.2,
pp. 31–37.
Simondon, G. (2005) L’individuation à la Lumie`re des Notions de Forme et d’Information.
Collection Krisis, edn. 2. (Grenoble, Jérôme Millon).
Smith, S. B. (1997) Spinoza, Liberalism and the Question of the Jewish Identity (New Haven, CT,
Yale University Press).
Spinoza, B. (1994) [1677] The Ethics and Other Works. A Spinoza Reader, E. Curley, ed. and trans
(Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press).
Splitter, L. (2007) Do the Groups to Which I Belong Make Me Me? Reflections on Community
and Identity, Theory and Research in Education, 5.3, pp. 93–114.
Stoyanova, N. and Kennedy, D. (2010) Between Chaos and Entropy: Community of Inquiry from
a Systems Perspective, Complicity: An International Journal of Complexity and Education, 7.2,
pp. 1–15.
Traverso, G. (1997) Community and Hermeneutic Rationality, Analytic Teaching, 17.2, pp. 86–92.
r 2011 The Author
Journal compilation r 2011 Journal of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain
Aurelia Armstrong