Spinoza and Urban Imagination: Resilience as the Persistence of Hope

This paper introduces Spinozist thought in informing the issues and complexities presented by the city.Drawing on various definitions of the city as a process characterized by complexity and multiplicity, I intend to reinterpret and approximate the city as a concept to Spinoza's notion of an individual where persistence, or what he terms as conatus, establishes itself as the individuating principle.Here, the gap between the individual and the city could be addressed through the philosopher's notion of imagination.By turning from the metaphysical and ontological signification of the individual in juxtaposition to the city as a process to a hopeful social configuration of ethical relations aided by the imagination, I demonstrate the relevance of Spinoza's thought in conceiving and philosophizing about the city.This includes its individuating principle, relational and affective capacities, and the notion of resilience as a double constitution of hope and fear, shaping our perception and imagination of the urban.