Non-Essentialist, Activity-Grounded Lifeforms

Abstract In this chapter, I argue for an activity-grounded conception of lifeform in Spinoza’s system. On this conception, lifeforms are constituted through agreement in activity—it’s not that human activities agree because they are grounded in a human morphology; rather, it’s that certain activities are human just insofar as they all agree. The activities at stake are multiply realizable through the morphological level, allowing for a notion of lifeform that’s compatible with Spinoza’s gradualism about morphology. Agreement in activity provides Spinoza with a concrete (if, admittedly, underexplained) ground for lifeform, and avoids the issues that come from looking to morphology to do the job. I argue that an activity-grounded reading tracks Spinoza’s use of lifeform-related concepts, and that it results in a treatment of lifeforms as dynamic, mutable, and non-essentialist.