Abstract

SAGREDO AGUAYO, Fernando. The Aporia of Sovereign Suicide: The Principle of Self-Destruction as a Limiting Notion in Spinoza's Ethics. Eidos [online]. 2019, n.31, pp.12-37. ISSN 1692-8857.

Suicide or spinozian interfictium is at first sight a marginal category in Spinoza's thought. The vast philosophical production on who has been considered the philosopher of the "savage anomaly" or at the same time the "cheerful affects" thinker, ignores or, in the best-case scenario, obliquely addresses the notions of death and suicide. The paradox is complete because the rejection towards the thought of death contrasts with the profuse questioning of the aforesaid category in its Ethics. The goal of this article is to show that the negative expression of suicide, as pure impossibility and servitude with respect to external causes is however, less literal and clear when some central elements of its most emblematic work are incorporated in its analysis. Liberty, Need, and Substance, among others, are concepts that from suicide get tensioned showing the own limits of the geometric order insinuated by Spinoza.

Keywords : Spinoza; suicide; sovereignty; liberty; voluntary servitude; imagination.

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