Health as an event: affects, bodies, and collectivities in Spinoza’s philosophy

Abstract

This essay explores a speculative encounter between the philosophy of Baruch de Spinoza and the multifaceted field of health. In Spinoza’s thinking, health is understood as an event—a relational dynamic in which bodies, affects, and ideas interact to expand the power to exist. Far from being a fixed state, health emerges as a collective practice rooted in conatus, the innate inclination to persevere in existence, and in the composition of encounters that expand or restrict vital powers. More than a biomedical category or merely technical concept, health is presented as a dynamic process of intersections between human and non-human forces, intertwining subjectivities, materialities, and affective ecologies. Enriched by Isabelle Stengers’ critique of the hegemony of modern medicine, which often silences other practices of healing and care, this perspective reimagines health beyond technical reductionism. It challenges the epistemic monopoly of biomedicine and its tendency to universalize definitions of illness and normality, proposing an ecology of care in which different knowledge and experiences intertwine in a horizon of composition and experimentation. By embracing imagination as a creative force, Spinoza and Stengers inspire a redefinition of health as an ethical and cosmopolitical process, in which care becomes the art of composing more habitable and joyful worlds. In this sense, the act of caring is not reduced to the application of technical protocols, but manifests as a political and existential gesture that affirms more powerful and plural ways of life.