A crowd; the source of political wisdom and virtue. In a republic, the object of the statesman's adoration. "In a multitude of consellors there is wisdom," saith the proverb. If many men of equal individual wisdom are wiser than any one of them, it must be that they acquire the excess of wisdom by the mere act of getting together. Whence comes it? Obviously from nowhere -- as well say that a range of mountains is higher than the single mountains composing it. A multitude is as wise as its wisest member if it obey him; if not, it is no wiser than its most foolish.
A great number of persons collected together; a numerous collection of persons; a crowd; an assembly.
A crowd in which one finds political wisdom and virtue, based on the theory that a range of mountains is higher than the single mountains composing it.
Multitude is a term of Spinoza's taken up by political theorists Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri in the international best-seller Empire (2000) and expanded upon in their recent (2004). Adopted in polemic opposition to the term "the people," (as well as to related figures of political subjectivity such as "class") which is associated by Hardt & Negri (and by other Italian and French political thinkers associated with Autonomist Marxism and its sequelae, including Sylvère Lotringer, Paolo Virno, and thinkers connected with the eponymous review Multitudes) with the work of Thomas Hobbes. The term refers to the population of the world who Hardt and Negri believe are increasingly networked and as such have the potential of overthrowing "Empire" and establishing genuine democracy.
