Most comparisons of Thomas Hobbes and Baruch Spinoza focus on the difference in understanding of natural right. We argue that Hobbes also places more weight on a rudimentary and exclusive education of the public by the state. We show that the difference is related to deeper disagreements over the prospect of Enlightenment. Hobbes is more sanguine than Spinoza about using the state to make people rational. Spinoza considers misguided an overemphasis on publicly educating everyone out of superstition—public education is important, (...) but modes of superstition may remain and must be offset by institutions and a civil religion. The differences are confirmed by Spinoza’s interest in the philosopher who stands apart and whose flourishing may be protected, but not simply brought about, by rudimentary public education. Spinoza’s openness to a wisdom-loving elite in a democracy also sets up an interesting parallel with Thomas Jefferson’s own commitment to the natural aristocracy needed to sustain republicanism. In demonstrating the 17th century philosopher’s skepticism toward using the state exclusively to promote rationality, even as he recognizes the importance of a sovereign pedagogical role and the protection of philosophy, we move to suggest that Spinoza is relevant to contemporary debates about public education and may reinvigorate moral and political discourse in a liberal democracy. (shrink)

Antony Gormley's Another Place and Olafur Eliasson's Your watercolour machine exemplify passages and combinations of smooth and striated space as beings of sensation on planes of technical and aesthetic composition. They are frames which striate the smoothness of light, water, molten iron, etc., using scientific planes of reference. Smooth and striated mix as boundaries between visitors’ bodies and installation become permeable. Optic becomes tactile, becomes haptic, generative engagement. Both artists experiment with the interface between striated and smooth to encourage visitors (...) to experiment and experience sensation. The installations are liquid spaces; forms of perpetual non-permanence which affect and react with others’ behaviours in processes of co-emergence. (shrink)