Multitude (philosophy)

Multitude is a term in philosophy referring to a collective of people defined not by a shared identity, but by a common mode of existence. The concept has deep roots in historical texts. In ancient philosophy, thinkers explored the nature and role of "the many", typically in social and political contexts. Niccolò Machiavelli treated the multitude pragmatically, focusing on the passions and employing a form of realism near the dawn of early modern philosophy. The concept gained prominence in the 17th century through the work of Thomas Hobbes and Baruch Spinoza, who developed the term as part of their broader engagements with contemporary events and intellectual history, using increasingly technical language.

Focusing on mechanism in philosophy amid the Scientific Revolution, Hobbes sought to apply principles of classical mechanics to model human behavior and political organization. He conceptualized the multitude as an unstable pre-political mass. He argued that it benefited from cohesion and unification, which required the force of a social contract with a sovereign authority. At the time, there were debates over absolute monarchy, which culminated in English Civil War.

In the prosperous, tolerant, and unstable Dutch Republic, Spinoza recognized the multitude's immanent potential for rational self-organization and collective power, arguably seeing it as foundational to democratic agency. However, he held reservations about its volatility, grounded in his theory of the affects. He stressed that the multitude's inadequate understanding made it liable to control by superstition or charismatic authority.

In contemporary philosophy, thinkers revived the concept mostly from Spinoza, while also drawing on the work of Karl Marx. Together, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri reinterpreted the multitude more globally as a plural, autonomous, and radically democratic, even revolutionary, subject. They saw it as capable of resisting imperialism and the exploitation of labor, and of transforming political systems and institutions more broadly.

Ancient and medieval background

Whether as a term or concept, the multitude is mentioned in general, philosophical, and religious texts from antiquity, including ancient philosophy. For example, it is mentioned in the Bible as well as in texts attributed to Thucydides, Plato (e.g., Euthyphro), Aristotle, Polybius, and Cicero. It is also mentioned in medieval philosophy texts, for example, in the works of Averroes.

Early modern philosophy

The term entered into the lexicon of early modern philosophy when it was used by thinkers like Machiavelli, Hobbes (in De Cive), and Spinoza (especially in the Tractatus Politicus or TP). Machiavelli and Spinoza wrote about the multitude with vacillating admiration and contempt.Template:Sfn Spinoza wrote about it in a historical context of war and civil instability, which informed and motivated his work.Template:Sfn

Hobbes

During the Scientific Revolution and against the English Civil War's background of personal rule, Hobbes saw the multitude as though through the mechanics of Galileo Galilei, a disorganized mass requiring the force of sovereign authority to unify. Hobbes theorized the multitude as a rabble that needed to enact a social contract with a monarch, thus making them a people. Until then, such individuals retained the capacity for political self-determination.

Spinoza

In Spinoza's political philosophy, multitude or Template:Sfn is a key concept that is essential to his systematic in its historical context.Template:Sfn Spinoza apparently derived the term from engaging with Hobbes, for whom it was also a technical term, but with whom he differed.Template:Sfn It appears primarily in his mature political philosophy in the TP, though there are several connotatively negative instances in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (TTP).Template:SfnmTemplate:Efn

In the TP, multitude more technically (and without the same degree of negative connotation) referred to a great aggregate of people, whether or not politically organized, who are often led more by affect than reason, too often by "common affect" but at best "as if by one mind" as in a "union of minds".Template:Sfn For Curley, the main thesis of Spinoza's moral and political philosophy is that what is most useful to us is "living in a community with other people, and binding ourselves to our fellow citizens ... 'to make us one people'".Template:SfnTemplate:Efn But to do so rationally and virtuously is a supreme challenge.Template:SfnTemplate:Efn The individual's task in the Ethics—to overcome bondage to the passions—became the task of the entire community in Spinoza's political philosophy.Template:Sfn

"Multitude" followed Spinoza's somewhat distinct but comparable use of or "crowd" in earlier works.Template:SfnTemplate:Efn In the TP, is largely replaced by multitude, ("ordinary people" or "plebeians"), or ("people").Template:SfnTemplate:Efn It has been translated with negative connotations as "the mob", "the rabble", or "the vulgar", but Curley advised against these translations with the exception of "the mob" in some political contexts.Template:Sfn Curley wrote that Spinoza often applied the term not only to people whose capacity and views he considered unreliable, but also in contrast to philosophers.Template:Sfn However, Spinoza also occasionally wrote of a " of philosophers".Template:Sfn Curley generally translated as "the common people".Template:Sfn

Spinoza's interpreters

Spinoza's concept of the multitude is distinct from its later, radically democratic or even revolutionary interpretation by Hardt and Negri, which forms a counterweight to Spinoza's more negative dispositions toward the .Template:Sfn On the Right, Leo Strauss emphasized Spinoza's fear of the masses in his more general understanding of political philosophy as a manual for the elite.Template:Sfn Indeed, Spinoza asked unprepared commoners not to read his TTP, arguing that it would exceed their limitations and be misinterpreted (though he is arguably most positive about democracy in this work).Template:Sfnm

Strauss's orientation may be seen in some secondary literature on Spinoza, including that of Raia Prokhovnik, Alexandre Matheron, Steven B. Smith, and Étienne Balibar (to some extent).Template:Sfn Matheron, Prokhovnik, and Smith argued that Spinoza ultimately rejected democracy in the TP.Template:Sfn Matheron and Prokhovnik argued that he may have endorsed aristocracy as the best possibility, given the antinomy (or at least the unresolved tension) he identified between democracy and reason.Template:Sfn Smith identified this aristocracy as a philosophical clerisy.Template:Sfn Ericka Tucker cast doubt on this interpretation.Template:Efn Curley cautioned that "many" or "probably most" contemporary Spinoza scholars reject Strauss's views.Template:Sfn

Balibar was more nuanced.Template:Sfn He merely agreed that Spinoza expressed fear of the labile masses.Template:Sfn But Balibar proposed that Spinoza's pro-democratic arguments, though marred, nonetheless stood.Template:Sfn

Tucker acknowledged substantial evidence throughout Spinoza's work supporting broad consensus about his fears, but she cautioned that Spinoza's attitude toward the multitude was complex and vacillating, as well as deeply connected with his views on democracy.Template:Sfn She proposed that Spinoza ultimately developed a theory of the multitude as something to be understood, not feared, to sustain institutions, peace, and prosperity within democratic states.Template:Sfn

Spinoza's historical context

Spinoza's concerns were animated by civil instability in the Dutch Republic, specifically during the First Stadtholderless Period and in the aftermath of the .Template:Sfn A , if strained, period of "new freedom" and tolerance was disrupted by riots and war, including the Anglo-Dutch Wars and Franco-Dutch War.Template:Sfn This culminated in the lynching of the De Witt brothers of the Loevestein faction, against whom the Calvinists of the Dutch Reformed Church and Orangists were allied.Template:Sfn

Spinoza was convinced that Calvinist ministers deliberately fomented moral panics among their congregations.Template:Sfn He wrote to Henry Oldenburg in 1665 that he worked to counter the "prejudices of theologians", citing them as "the main obstacles to ... philosoph[izing]".Template:Sfnm Thus he sought to "expos[e] such prejudices and remov[e] them from the minds of sensible people".Template:Sfnm He aimed to "vindicate completely" the freedom to philosophize, "for here it is in every way suppressed by the excessive authority and egotism of the preachers".Template:SfnmTemplate:Efn

Spinoza's works

Selected Spinoza works relating to the multitude or

Title (Abbreviation)	Date
Tractatus de intellectus emendatione (TIE)	1656/1657–Template:SfnTemplate:Efn
Ethica ordine geometrico demonstrata (E)	1660s–1675Template:SfnTemplate:Efn
Tractatus theologico-politicus (TTP)	1665–1669Template:Sfn
Tractatus politicus (TP)	1675–Template:SfnTemplate:Efn

Young Spinoza hoped for the improvement of common people in the Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione (TIE), who he referred to as the before better theorizing the "multitude" in the TP.Template:Sfn His attitudes changed over time, as may be seen in his work.Template:Sfn These complex changes reflected both the logical refinement of his thought and the developing events of his historical context.Template:Sfn

In mid-1660s Amsterdam, Spinoza became fearful amid civil instability, including riots, throughout the United Provinces. In attending to politics, his fear arguably settled into resignation as he began to consider the situation in terms of the role of the multitude.Template:Sfn He sought to understand the affects (or the confused ideas) of the people.Template:Sfn His aim was to help establish peaceful governance and to help the state develop more stable institutions.Template:Sfn

Spinoza used in a distinctly slighting way in the Ethics and TTP,Template:Sfnm among other texts. He wrote in the Ethics that the is "terrifying if unafraid", showing a concern for crowd psychology.Template:SfnmTemplate:Efn Balibar, Warren Montag, Justin Steinberg, and Tucker read Spinoza as deliberately ambiguous here, referring to the fear of the masses as that which they felt and inspired.Template:Sfnm

Tractatus de intellectus emendatione (TIE)

In the TIE, Spinoza expressed concern and hope for the .Template:Sfn He sought to identify the path to the good life, or eudaimonia.Template:Sfn He considered the immediate or ostentatious materialistic concerns of the Template:Sfn and recommended the pursuit of knowledge and love of God, "the end for which I [myself] strive".Template:Sfn He regarded the more with concern than disapproval, and he held out the hope that "many should acquire [this view] along with me".Template:Sfn He argued that the improvement of education, medicine, and social order would be not only virtuous, but also instrumental in raising the to higher things and better capabilities.Template:Sfn

Tractatus theologico-politicus (TTP)

Spinoza paused work on the Ethics to begin the TTP.Template:Sfn In writing the TTP, Spinoza had become fearful of the amid riots and civil instability, as well as wars.Template:Sfn These events were marked by political factionalism and culminated in the .Template:Sfn Spinoza was specifically concerned about the excessive role of religion in politics and the threat to philosophy or freedom of thought.Template:Sfn

Democracy was the "most natural" and "best" form of state in Spinoza's TTP.Template:Sfn He argued that it was the kind of most likely to result in freedom and peace, which he elevated as the chief aims of the state.Template:Sfn Tucker noted that democracy requires "the people, the masses, the ".Template:Sfn Many thus observed as an apparent tension in Spinoza's political philosophy that the must give rise to the "best" state.Template:Sfn

Tractatus politicus (TP)

Spinoza's mature political theory in the TP made reference to his theories of affects and power from the Ethics.Template:Sfn "Multitude" became a properly technical term in the TP, and Spinoza sought to frame a path by which the multitude (like individuals in the Ethics) could be ruled less by fear.Template:Sfn

Whereas in the TTP democracy was the "freest" or "most natural" government, in the TP it became the "most absolute" or "best" because it best preserved natural rights and had the most power of any .Template:Sfn However, the purpose of the state was no longer freedom, but rather prosperity and stability, requiring absolute power.Template:Sfn Thus many twentieth-century commentators felt Spinoza effectively abandoned democracy.Template:Sfn

Tucker and others instead saw Spinoza as developing his theories of affects, power, and the multitude.Template:Sfn In Spinoza's typical, semantically revisionist sense, argued J. Steinberg, this "absolute" power was simply that of a sovereign as in principle greater than that of the church, as defined in relation to (and sometimes constrained by) that of the multitude, and as necessarily limited or finite in an immanent and naturalistic sense (i.e., in the same way as is rendered in the Ethics, though Spinoza specifically clarified that "Kings are not Gods, but men").Template:Sfn

For Spinoza, the multitude's power simply arose from that of individuals in their aggregation and organization.Template:Sfn He argued that natural right was coextensive with power and drew relations between the individual and the sovereign, and between the multitude and the entire state.Template:Sfn

In Spinoza's account, the multitude's power was determined not only by its individuals in number, but also by their mode of agreement.Template:Sfn Passive affects like fear and less adequate ideas were disempowering. Active affects like joy united the multitude, and along with more adequate ideas were more empowering.Template:Sfn To empower more of the multitude, Spinoza recommended democracy, however broadly conceived, as the best form of government.Template:Sfn He proposed large, deliberative, popular councils for its institutions, postulating their epistemic advantage.Template:Sfn

Contemporary philosophy

Since the 20th century, the concept has been revived within broadly Marxist philosophy to describe a new model of resistance against global systems of power. Hardt and Negri describe it as such in Empire (2000), expanding upon this description in Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (2004). Other theorists to use the term include those associated with Autonomism, like Sylvère Lotringer and Paolo Virno. Still others are connected with the eponymous French journal , including Template:Ill and Template:Ill.

Hardt and Negri

Negri describes the multitude in his The Savage Anomaly as an unmediated, revolutionary, immanent, and positive collective social subject which can found a "nonmystified" form of democracy (p. 194). In his more recent writings with Michael Hardt, however, he does not so much offer a direct definition, but presents the concept through a series of mediations. In Empire it is mediated by the concept of Empire (the new global constitution that Negri and Hardt describe as a copy of Polybius's description of Roman government):

New figures of struggle and new subjectivities are produced in the conjecture of events, in the universal nomadism ... . They are not posed merely against the imperial system—they are not simply negative forces. They also express, nourish, and develop positively their own constituent projects. ... This constituent aspect of the movement of the multitude, in its myriad faces, is really the positive terrain of the historical construction of Empire, ... an antagonistic and creative positivity. The deterritorializing power of the multitude is the productive force that sustains Empire and at the same time the force that calls for and makes necessary its destruction.

They were vague as to this "positive" or "constituent" aspect of the multitude:

Certainly, there must be a moment when reappropriation [of wealth from capital] and self-organization [of the multitude] reach a threshold and configure a real event. This is when the political is really affirmed—when the genesis is complete and self-valorization, the cooperative convergence of subjects, and the proletarian management of production become a constituent power. ... We do not have any models to offer for this event. Only the multitude through its practical experimentation will offer the models and determine when and how the possible becomes real.

In their sequel Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire they still refrain from a clear definition of the concept but approach the concept through mediation of a host of "contemporary" phenomena, most importantly the new type of postmodern war they postulate and the history of post-WWII resistance movements. It remains a rather vague concept which is assigned a revolutionary potential without much theoretical substantiation apart from a generic potential of love.

Criticism

In the Introduction to Virno's A Grammar of the Multitude, Lotringer criticized Hardt's and Negri's use of the concept for its ostensible return to dialectical dualism.

See also

• Commoner
• Crowd psychology
• Feeding the multitude
• Global citizens movement
• Hoi polloi
• Mass movement
• Mass society
• Multiplicity
• People
• Pluralism
• Social movement

References

Bibliography

Primary texts (with commentary)

• Spinoza, Baruch. 1985. Vol. I, The Collected Works of Spinoza, ed. and trans. Edwin Curley. Second printing with corrections, 1988. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Template:ISBN (hbk).
• Spinoza, Baruch. 2016. Vol. II, The Collected Works of Spinoza, ed. and trans. Edwin Curley. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Template:ISBN (hbk).

Other texts

• Balibar, Etienne. 1994. Masses, Classes, Ideas: Studies on Politics and Philosophy Before and After Marx, trans. James Swenson. London and New York: Routledge. Template:ISBN (hbk). Template:ISBN (pbk).
• Campos, Andre Santos, ed and intro. 2015. Spinoza: Basic Concepts. Exeter: Imprint Academic. Template:ISBN (hbk).
• Montag, Warren. 1999. Bodies, Masses, Power: Spinoza and His Contemporaries. London and New York: Verso Books. Template:ISBN (hbk).
• Tucker, Ericka. 2015. "Multitude". Spinoza: Basic Concepts, ed. and intro. Andre Santos Campos, 129–141. Exeter: Imprint Academic. Template:ISBN (hbk).
• Steinberg, Diane. 2009. "Knowledge in Spinoza's Ethics". The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza's Ethics, ed. Template:Ill, intro. Olli Koistinen and Valtteri Viljanen, 140–166. The Cambridge Companions to Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Digitally republished in 2010. Template:ISBN (hbk). Template:ISBN (pbk).
• Steinberg, Justin. 2018. "Spinoza and Political Absolutism". Spinoza's Political Treatise: A Critical Guide, eds. and intro. Yitzhak Y. Melamed and Hasana Sharp, 179–189. Cambridge Critical Guides. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Template:ISBN (hbk).
• Steinberg, Justin. 2009. "Spinoza on Civil Liberation". Journal of the History of Philosophy. 47(1):35–58. Johns Hopkins University Press. .
• van Bunge, Wiep, Template:Ill, Piet Steenbakkers, and Jeroen van de Ven, eds. 2024. The Bloomsbury Handbook of Spinoza, 2nd ed. London, New York, and Dublin: Bloomsbury Academic. Template:ISBN (hbk). Template:ISBN (ebk). Template:ISBN (ePDF).

External links

• Hardt & Negri's 'Multitude': the worst of both worlds by Thomas N. Hale and Anne-Marie Slaughter
• The Multitude Project
• Approximations: Towards an Ontological Definition of the Multitude by Antonio Negri
• Template:Webarchive
• Raymond van de Wiel, "Remote History Re-emerges: The Multitude and Stoicism," (February 2007) [A critical history of the Multitude]
• Warren Montag, "Who's afraid of the Multitude? Between the Individual and the State," The South Atlantic Quarterly 104:4 (Fall 2005).
• Template:Webarchive
• Joseph Choonara, "Marx or the multitude?," International Socialism: A quarterly journal of socialist theory, issue 105 (Winter 2005) [review of Hardt and Negri's book Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire].
• Paolo Virno, A Grammar of the Multitude: For an Analysis of Contemporary Forms of Life, Semiotext[e] (6 Feb 2004) Template:ISBN
• Nicolas Colin and Henri Verdier, "The Economics of the Multitude", ParisTech Review (7 June 2012) [interview following their book L'Age de la Multitude].
• Jacopo Galimberti, "What does a multitude look like?", in The Nomos of Images. Manifestation and Iconology of Law, Template:Catalog lookup link, 3 December 2015, https://nomoi.hypotheses.org/263