Obéissance et connaissance. Notes à partir de quelques interprétations du Traité théologico-politique

In this paper, we analyze the link that can be established between imagination and obedience in Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise in order to evaluate the efficacy of knowledge in the processes of individual and collective emancipation. Taking as conceptual reference some of the most significant French commentators of Spinoza in the second half of the twentieth century, we begin by examining the constitutive role played by imagination in the act of obedience. In the light of Claude Lefort’s concept of theologico-political, we will then examine the conditions that make possible the intervention of knowledge in the very space of imagination. Our hypothesis is that an accurate analysis of the way in which modes of knowledge are institutionalized can clarify how it penetrates imagination and generates the emergence of individual and collective emancipation.