From Thinking as Property to Thinking in Common: A Note on the Vocabulary of Appropriation in Martin Lenz’ “Socializing Minds”

Abstract

That we think our own thoughts and that in thinking these thoughts we are with ourselves, independent of others, is a persistent belief. Martin Lenz unsettles this belief in his volume “Socializing Minds” by showing how Spinoza, Locke and Hume already envisioned and to a certain extent conceptualized more relational or intersubjective ways of how we think. Especially his reconstruction of Spinoza’s theory of the mind as a “metaphysical model” goes far in laying the ground for a strong relational account of mental activities. This short commentary is guided by the assumption that a critical reading of certain terms, can help to strengthen such an endeavor. It examines the notion of appropriation and its connection to property in the construction of the subject to be found in the margins of Lenz’s chapter on Spinoza as a Lockean trace, which risks precluding the philosophical and political alternative Spinoza’s anti-dualism has to offer. Finally, one such alternative tendency in Spinoza’s philosophy is envisaged, which could strengthen Lenz’s account.