Da superstição ao autoritarismo segundo a lógica das paixões: o exemplo de Alexandre no prefácio do Tratado teológico-político

Based on cases of superstition performed by Alexander the Great, which Spinoza analyses in the preface to Theologico-political Treatise, we will try to show that the path between the propensity to superstition that affects all human beings (a universal fact) and the establishment of an authoritarian government (a particular fact) can be fully understood within a “logic of the passions”. We will understand authoritarianism as the exacerbation of authority and political violence. For this, our main assumption is the thesis, taken from the Marilena Chaui’s PhD, Introduction to the reading of Spinoza, that a political form (the form of an imperium) is an individuality and, therefore, everything that respects an individual being, especially the theory of conatus, is applicable to a state (imperium).