°Trajectories 2
In response to offblog queries - ok, I was being a little obscure in the most recent post on Lucretius, the series of which are here. So, let me put a blunter point on it.
Machiavelli reads Lucretius > Spinoza reads Machiavelli (but not, I think, Lucretius) > Althusser and Negri read Spinoza and Machiavelli, likely also Lucretius but for the most part this reading will be vectored by way of the first two, and the differences will be retained.
De Rerum Natura is a scathing critique of res publica and the civitas Romana. Machiavelli is the adaption of Lucretian materialism to the service of the Prince, vir, and the constitution of the nation-state. Or, to put it another way: Machiavelli grants Lucretian materialism as the world in which the Prince must move to acquire autorictas, virtu, to grasp fortuna, and so forth. The reference here, I think, is Ceasar - a Lucretian materialism shorn of its political conclusions.
Obviously, this is abbreviating what should be, and elsewhere is, a more lengthy elaboration.
But perhaps it suffices to also refer back to this post, the context in which the spear - or, in the translation I have before me, the dart - makes an appearance in DRM.
[…] the universe is not bounded in any direction. If it were, it would necessarily have a limit somewhere. But clearly a thing cannot have a limit unless there is something outside to limit it, so that the eye can follow it up to a certain point and not beyond. Since you must admit that there is nothing outside the universe, it can have no limit and is accordingly without end or measure. […]
Suppose for a moment that the whole of space were bounded and that someone made his way t its uttermost boundary and threw a flying dart. Do you choose to suppose that the missile, hurled with might and main, would speed along the course on which it was aimed? Or do you think that something would block the way and stop it? You must assume one alternative or the other. But neither of them leaves you a loophole. Both force you to admit that the universe continues without end. Whether there is some obstacle lying on the boundary line that prevents the dart from going farther on its course or whether it flies beyond, it cannot in fact have started from the boundary.
With this argument I will pursue you. Wherever you may place the ultimate limit of things, I will ask you: ‘Well then, what does happen to the dart?’ The upshop is that boundary cannot stand firm anywhere, and final escape from this conclusion is precluded by the limitless possibility of running away from it.
In other words, I prefer Lucretius sans or to Machiavelli, and very much doubt (as Negri argues in “Alma Venus”) that Spinoza “transforms” the legacy of Lucretian materialism in a way that might me fruitfully followed.
