What Kind of Democrat Was Spinoza

What Kind of Democrat Was Spinoza?
Author(s): Steven B. Smith

Source: Political Theory, Vol. 33, No. 1 (Feb., 2005), pp. 6-27
Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.
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WHAT KIND OF DEMOCRAT WAS SPINOZA?
STEVEN B. SMITH
Yale University
Spinoza's Ethics is rarely read as a work of political theory. Its formidable geometric stru
and its author's commitment to a kind of metaphysical determinism do not seem promising m
rialsfrom which tofashion a theory of democratic self-government. Yet impressions can misle
A close reading of the Ethics reveals it to be an impassioned, deeply political book. Its aim i
only to liberate the individualfrom false beliefs and systems of power but also to enable us to
in concert as members of a democratic community. Above all, the work represents a celebr
of individuality and the joys of life in all its plenitude. The Ethics provides Spinoza's cle
answer to the question "What is afree people (libera multitudo)? " only briefly alluded to a
end of his unfinished Political Treatise.
Keywords: agency; parallelism empowerment; conatus; exemplar; rational nature
It is generally agreed that Spinoza was, if not the first, at least one of the
first modern political writers to embrace democracy, but there is considerable
disagreement over what kind of democrat he was. Was Spinoza an advocate
of liberal or constitutional democracy; that is, a popular government based on
the sovereignty of the people but that allowed ample freedom for individuals
to think what they like and say what they think?' Or was he an authoritarian,
even a collectivist, who failed to recognize any legal or political institutions
to which the sovereign is accountable?2 Or did he support some kind of fed-
eral constitution along the lines of other Dutch republicans like Pieter de la
Court and Jan de Witt?3
There is, unfortunately, no clear or conclusive answer to these questions.
Spinoza's democratic theory was, to some degree, a work in progress. He
never completed a systematic treatise on government like Hobbes's Levia-
than or Rousseau's Social Contract. His two major political testaments, the
Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (TTP) and the Tractatus Politicus (TP) are
often treated as a unit, but as Etienne Balibar has noted, these works seem "to
belong to two entirely different worlds."4 The TTP is a pioneering work of
POLITICAL THEORY, Vol. 33 No. 1, February 2005 6-27

DOI: 10.1177/0090591704268640
c 2005 Sage Publications

6
Smith / WHAT KIND OF DEMOCRAT WAS SPINOZA? 7
biblical criticism that is in turns both subversive and accommodatin

goal is an exploration of the sources of popular superstition for the pu
reducing (not eliminating) the influence of religion on public life. A
Spinoza addresses democracy as "the most natural" regime, his pri
interest is less with forms of nment than with liberating phi
from the tyranny of ecclesiastical control. Politics remains very much
mental to the freedom to philosophize (libertatemphilosophandi) (TT
3; xx, 222).6
The TP is a very different kind of animal. It is a work with systemat
rations that seems to mirror the architectonic ambitions of the Ethics
concerned less with the immediate situation of the Dutch Republic, a
with attempting to survey the range of constitutions (monarchy, arist
democracy) that have been and ever will be revealed in experience (TP
The themes of revelation, prophecy, and miracles make way for a mor
retical account of the causes of the preservation and decay of regimes.
would seem to be the place where at last the reader could glimpse S
finished political doctrine, but, alas, the work is bound to disappoint
ished at the time of his death, the work breaks off just where it ought to
with Spinoza's exposition of the democratic system of government.
It is only in the Ethics that Spinoza develops a working theory of
cratic self-government and the virtues necessary to sustain it.9 To be s
Ethics has not typically been read as a political book. The image of t
passed down in countless textbooks and introductory courses in phi
is that of the Ethics as a work of pure thought concerned exclusively w
issues of metaphysics and epistemology. Only rarely has it been con
as a work of democratic theory.1I Spinoza himself is partly respons
this misunderstanding. There are many obstacles standing in the way
sidering the Ethics to be a work of political theory at all. Consider som
following.
First, Spinoza is famous for adopting a doctrine of metaphysical deter-
minism that seems at odds with any conception of human agency on which a
theory of democracy must rest. Spinoza often writes as if freedom is an illu-
sion of the mind that will be dispelled the more we come to understand the
true causes of things. "Experience itself," he writes, "teaches that men
believe themselves free because they are conscious of their own actions, and
ignorant of the causes by which they are determined" (IIIp2sii). Human
beings are completely integrated into the causal order of nature that as such
admits of no exceptions. It is part of Spinoza's strategy to deflate human pre-
tensions of exceptionalism. There is no "kingdom within a kingdom," no
imperium in imperio. Our minds and bodies are a part of the same causal
order as everything else in nature, from the lowest to the highest.
8 POLITICAL THEORY / February 2005
Next, the Ethics is often regarded as an example of the revival of Stoicism

in early modern moral philosophy. This is believed to follow from the pre-
mises of Spinoza's naturalism. He seems less impressed by the human ability
to control and dominate nature than by our dependence on and embedded-
ness within it. The purpose of Stoic ethics has often been seen as deeply apo-
litical, if not antipolitical, concerned more with the inner life of the individual
than the public life of the citizen. The point of the Ethics, which is that there is
a reason for everything, is to help the reader to adapt uncomplainingly to
what cannot be other than what is. Freedom for the Stoic means at most rec-
ognition of and adaptation to necessity. Spinoza often seems to counsel
acquiesence to the harsh realities of existence rather than demanding that
those conditions be altered."
As if this were not enough, the Ethics has also been accused of lacking any
historical sense. The model for doing philosophy is clearly drawn from
Euclid's Elements where conclusion is said to follow from premise in the
manner of a strict geometrical proof. This manner of exposition is revealing.
Spinoza writes about political affairs not from the standpoint of a citizen or a
statesman but as a scientist-mathematician. He sees things not from below
but from above, viewing nature sub specie aeternitatis-from a God's eye
point of view, as it were. Political phenomena, where they appear, are said to
be deduced from the eternal order of nature. "I shall consider human actions
and appetites," he writes, "just as if it were a question of lines, planes, and
bodies" (IVpref/138). The Ethics appears to be the classic expression of
metaphysics as "the view from nowhere.""2
For all of the above reasons, the Ethics would not seem to be promising
material from which to fashion a theory of democracy. But impressions can
mislead. The stereotypic image of Spinoza as a pure philosopher disengaged
from experience could not be further from the truth. A close reading of the
Ethics shows it to be an impassioned work drawing on a wide range of human
experience-historical, political, even autobiographical-to make its case.
What on the surface appears to be a bloodless chain of propositions reveals
itself to be in the word of Gilles Deleuze: "a broken chain, discontinuous,
subterranean, volcanic, which at irregular intervals comes to interrupt the
chain of demonstrative elements." 13 The Ethics is a passionate, deeply politi-
cal book. Its aim is not only to liberate the individual from false beliefs and
superstitions but also to empower us to act as members of a democratic com-
munity whose freedom is actually enhanced by joining with others for the
sake of increasing our common freedom. The Ethics is a democratic
manifesto through and through.
DOES SPINOZA DENY HUMAN AGENCY?
Any theory of democracy presupposes some conception of free

agency without which self-government would be an oxymoron. Desp
fact that the final part of the Ethics is titled "Of Human Freedom" and
work as a whole can be read as a tribute to the free individual, there is
the book that appears to deny this central quality of free agency. Spino
pains throughout the book to deflate the pretension to think of our
the center of the moral universe.'4
There is much evidence in the Ethics denying that we are or can
truly free. The belief that we possess some unique quality of agency is
be a sign of hubris that Spinoza chalks up to the power of the imaginati
a "fiction" of the mind to believe that we are free because we have a
and desires, whereas our appetites and desires are merely the resu
antecedent causes. In a letter to Schuller, Spinoza reiterates his defin
freedom according to which "a thing is called free which exists fr
necessity of its nature alone" (Idef7).
Beginning from this equation of freedom with the order of nec
Spinoza poses the following thought experiment: What might a stone t
it possessed the powers of will and consciousness? "Now this stone, si
conscious only of its endeavor and is not at all indifferent, will surely
is completely free and that it continues in motion for no other reason t
it so wishes. This, then," Spinoza continues, "is that human freedom
all men boast of possessing, and which consists solely in this, that m
conscious of their desires and unaware of the causes by which they are
mined.""15 Freedom seems to be here an example of a false or "inad
idea generated by our ignorance of natural causes.
Spinoza returns to this point in the Ethics in the context of his debat
Descartes concerning the independence of the mind. Descartes had fa
argued that the mind is its own substance apart from the body, while
maintains that there is but one substance of which mind and body are
The idea that the will is an independent seat of action is based on a f
self-deception arising from inadequate knowledge (IIp35). "To expla
matter more fully," he writes,
This, then, is their idea of freedom-that they do not know any cause of their ac
They [the Cartesians] say, of course, that human actions depend on the will, but these
only words for which they have no idea. For all are ignorant of what the will is, and ho
moves the Body; those who boast of something else, who feign seats and dwelling p
of the soul, usually provoke either ridicule or disgust. (IIp35s)
The dependent character of the mind, the fact that it is embedded within
the causal order of nature, leads Spinoza to deny the very possibility of the
freedom of the will: "In the Mind there is no absolute, or free will, but the
Mind is determined to will this or that by a cause which is also determined by
another, and this again by another, and so to infinity" (IIp48). Spinoza goes
on to explain this point by means of the following "demonstration": "The
Mind is a certain and determinate mode of thinking and so cannot be a free
cause of its own actions, or cannot have an absolute faculty of willing and not
willing. Rather, it must be determined to willing this or that by a cause which
is also determined by another, and this cause again by another, and so on"
(IIp48d).
Note that Spinoza is not denying that we possess such a thing as the will
that can decide to do this rather than that. He is not committed to the kind of
materialism that denies the importance of all mental predicates. He is only
saying that the will is itself part of a causal chain that must be considered as
the outcome of an infinity of prior circumstances. The fact that we desire this
and not that is not a freestanding choice but the outcome of a whole range of
antecedent conditions of which the will is but a determination.
FREEDOM AND REASON
The idea of the mind's embeddedness in nature would appear to d

the minimal condition of freedom that presupposes our ability to wi
resist natural processes. Freedom presupposes choice, and choice im
negation of necessity. Beings governed by necessity alone are not c
freedom much less morality since the essence of morality resides in
ity to choose between moral and immoral courses of action.
attempt to naturalize freedom seems at first glance a monstrous perv
the term.
But this is not the whole story. The Ethics does not so much deny
sibility of freedom as it does, somewhat polemically, attack a parti
ory of it. Freedom is not, as Spinoza understands it, a property of
cial faculty called the will but a predicate of reason. We are free to t
that we are rational beings and are capable of acting on reasons. R
necessity are by no means incompatible. The syllogism, the very
ment of rationality, is also an expression of the purest necessity. It c
other than it is. Yet far from being a state of servitude, the capacity
clearly represents mind at its freest. To reason clearly, to draw c
from premise, is the mark of a free mind. The antithesis of freed
necessity but slavery where this means dependence on unacknowle
confused ideas. The Ethics provides the canonical case of f

understood as rational choice. Exactly what does this mean?
Spinoza often presents himself as a pure naturalist for whom a
tion must be couched in strictly causal terms. At times he appears
almost malicious glee in showing how behavior that we believe to
our own control is in fact due to bodily, physical, or even psychol
cesses that we only poorly understand. Even what appear to be
mental events such as speaking or remaining quiet, he suggests, are
that we do but things that happen to us. "Experience teaches all to
he writes, "that men have nothing less in their power than their
can do nothing less than moderate their appetites" (IIIp2sii).
What is true of speech is also true of a whole range of activitie
generally ascribe to conscious human reasons and intentions:
So the infant believes he freely wants the milk; the angry child that he wants ven
and the timid, flight. So the drunk believes it is from a free decision of the Mind
speaks the things he later, when sober, wishes he had not said. So the madman, the
terbox, the child, and a great many people of this kind believe they speak from a f
sion of the Mind, when really they cannot contain their impulse to speak. (IIIp
Contemporary antinaturalists would take passages such as the

evidence that Spinoza sought to replace a moral language based on
choice, and responsibility with a scientific language of causes an
For them, explanation in terms of causes is radically incompati
explanation in terms of first-person states such as intentions a
Antinaturalists differ among themselves about whether determini
ally at odds with freedom or merely irrelevant to it. For some, the
language of causality is simply incommensurable with the moral l
free choice so that the attempt to replace the one by the other rests on
category mistake. For others, we cannot rule out the possibility o
science of human behavior; it is only that such an account, if s
would forever doom our moral vocabulary of praise and blame,
responsibility.16
Spinoza denies both implications of the antinaturalist argumen
first place, he is by no means as committed to eliminating menta
from the explanation of human action as he is to seeing the mental
the physical world as occupying two different, albeit related, ord
sality. Explanations in terms of causes and explanations in terms
are not incompatible forms of explanation; both are forms of casu
tion, the one in terms of bodies in motion and the other in terms of
beliefs. Spinoza remains a strict determinist; he maintains that r
beliefs follow their own causal patterns that parallel relations among
events. This is often referred to as the doctrine of mind-body parallelism

according to which "the order and connection of ideas is the same as the order
and connection of things" (IIp7).
The use of the term parallelism to describe this relation is misleading.17 It
implies that there are two sets of events-mind events and body events-
which occur independently and at equidistance from each other. Spinoza's
point is not that body events and mind events represent two independent
series, but rather that they are the same event describable in two different lan-
guages, a language of bodies in motion and a language of reasons and beliefs.
He is a mind-body compatibilist; that is to say, body explanations and mind
explanations are not in competition with one another but are equal aspects of
a unified science of human behavior.18
The following is an everyday example. The act of hitting a golf ball can be
described as a bodily event requiring hand-eye coordination and a set of
physical skills, and it can be described as an intentional act requiring knowl-
edge of the course, club selection, ball placement, and the like. These are not
two separate activities, but one activity described from two points of view.
We are simultaneously embodied creatures whose actions can be described
in terms of certain universal laws of motion and rational creatures whose
behavior expresses our reasons, beliefs, and other first-person states. "The
Mind and the Body," he writes, "are one and the same thing, which is con-
ceived now under the attribute of Thought, now under the attribute of Exten-
sion" (IIIp2d; emphasis added).
Spinoza's solution, then, to the notoriously intractable mind-body prob-
lem is to show that it is not a problem at all. It is a mistake, he believes, to
regard mind and body as two substances that causally interact with one
another. They are rather coequal modes of the same substance that require
two different conceptual vocabularies to explain them, one appropriate to
bodies in motion and the other to minds with reasons and beliefs. His solution
is a form of ontological monism coupled with conceptual dualism.19 Mental
events and physical events are strictly correlated with each other and cannot
be used to render one of the terms superfluous. There is no priority of the
material over the mental. His point is that mind and body are equal compo-
nents and neither can be said to have explanatory priority over the other. "By
his strict parallelism," Gilles Deleuze writes, "Spinoza refuses any analogy,
any eminence, any kind of superiority of one series over another, and any
ideal action that presupposes preeminence.'"20
At the same time, the author of the Ethics was by no means attempting to
eliminate the language of freedom and responsibility from our moral vocabu-
lary. Freedom and determinism, as suggested above, are not so much
opposed as mutually supportive of one another. To the extent that

stand the causes of our behavior, the better able we are to take c
them. Spinoza may have been a determinist, but he was not a fa
understand the causes for something is not to render us helpless
before it. Rather such knowledge leads to an increase in our sens
and agency. It increases our capacity for self-direction and auton
More than any other philosopher, with the possible exception
Spinoza attributes a genuinely transformative and emancipatory
knowledge. When I understand the cause for some piece of com
habitual behavior, I am in a better position to control for it in the fu
knowledge also increases my sense of responsibility, as the mor
stand the causes of my actions, the greater is my ability to choose w
do. Knowledge, then, is not simply a passive affect but an active pow
fully articulated within the causal order of which it is a part. Far fr
ing our zone of freedom, Spinoza makes freedom synonymous w
tional control that we exercise over our behavior by making it m
gently express our desires and purposes; in the language of the Ethi
free "when something happens in us, or outside us, of which w
adequate cause" (IIIdef2).
AN ODE TO JOY
There have always been defenders of the attempt to read the Ethic
piece of behavioristic psychology. It is easy to extract passages, such as
of those above, that appear to eliminate all aspects of mental causation
like Gilbert Ryle's famous attack on the Cartesian theory of "the ghost in
machine" in The Concept of Mind.21 But while Spinoza sometimes seem
give a thoroughly naturalistic account of human nature, this does not beg
describe the central role he attributes to the ideas of action, agency, and
dom in the Ethics.
The central concept of Spinoza's moral psychology is the idea of the

conatus.22 Conatus is a Latin term that can be translated variously as "trying,"
"striving," "endeavoring," or "attempting." To say that we are conative
beings is to suggest that we are beings with a desire or endeavor to achieve
something, to preserve ourselves, to persevere in our being. Rather than seek-
ing to reduce human behavior to so many efficient causes, the concept of the
conatus is thoroughly teleological.23 Our desire to persevere is always a
desire for something or to be something; it points to some futural condition, a
yet-to-be-realized state of possible being. Since "to be" always means "to be
something," our conatus contains a desire to enhance our sense of power, to

be self-determining. It might be best rendered by our contemporary term
empowerment.
Spinoza derives his theory of the conatus from his account of the power of
the affects. "No one to my knowledge," he boldly asserts, "has determined
the nature and power of the Affects, nor what, on the other hand, the Mind can
do to moderate them" (IIIpref/l37). He takes issue here with "the celebrated
Descartes" for his belief that the mind can exercise control over the passions.
Descartes is said to share the same fallacy as the ancient Stoics who likewise
believed that the passions depend on the will and that we have the power to
command them (Vpref/277).
The power of the affects comes to light in Spinoza's claim that each being
is characterized by a desire to persevere in its existence and to resist domina-
tion or invasion by the other beings that surround it. Spinoza introduces his
conatus doctrine with the following string of propositions:
Each thing, as far as it can by its own power, strives to persevere in its being. (IIIp6)
The striving by which each thing strives to persevere in its being is nothing but the actual
essence of the thing. (IIIp7)
The striving by which each thing strives to persevere in its being involves no finite time,
but an indefinite time. (IIIp8)
Both insofar as the Mind has clear and distinct ideas, and insofar as it has confused ideas,
it strives, for an indefinite duration, to persevere in its being and it is conscious of this
striving it has. (IIIp9)
It is often claimed that Spinoza's conatus doctrine shows the imprint of

Hobbes.24 Each thinker clearly makes self-preservation an absolute moral
priority and each seeks to derive the doctrine from a physics of bodies in
motion. Like Hobbes, Spinoza takes the natural state of all beings to be one of
permanent conflict, not to say war. But their common point of origin also
conceals fundamental differences. The desire for self-preservation is at the
root of the Hobbesian doctrine of the state of nature. Each person seeking to
preserve himself necessarily becomes the enemy of every other seeking to do
the same. The desire for self-preservation becomes a zero-sum game that is
only intensified by the presence of psychological dispositions like competi-
tion, diffidence, and glory.25
Like Hobbes's doctrine, Spinoza's conatus doctrine has often been called
a form of psychological egoism, but unlike Hobbes's work, it contains an
aspiration to something beyond mere survival. As the above passages sug-
gest, the conatus is tied in the first instance to the need for self-preservation,
but self-preservation also includes such things as the enhancement of the
powers of mind, an increase in our capacity for self-reflection, and th

sition of adequate ideas, things that point beyond the persistence of ou
ical well-being toward some notion of rational perfection. Unlike
who denied that there is a highest good for all that we do, Spinoza
with a conception of the rational perfection of human nature. Accor
IIIp8, this idea of rational perfection consists of an aspiration to imm
or to a kind of "indefinite time." We are constituted by a desire not m
exist but to exist in some sense beyond ourselves, nullum tempusfinitu
indefinitum involvit. It is rational to desire what contributes to our
nite" existence, immortality being but the highest form of self-preserv
There is within the conatus what could be called an erotic desire to trans-
form and even transcend the conditions of our own mortality. By an erotic
desire I mean one that seeks fulfillment or satisfaction in something outside
or beyond itself. Reason contains an erotic component insofar as the end it
pursues is at least partially constituted by reason itself. Reason is more than
just calculating means to ends; it has a transformational ability to project and
give shape to ends. Similar to an image from Plato's Symposium is the image
throughout the Ethics of a kind of ladder of love leading from the most basic
forms of sexual desire to the most exalted form of spiritualized love.27
Our conatus may indeed grow out of a biological desire for self-preserva-
tion, but it contains the presence of an urge, however poorly understood, to
live rationally or intelligently. We desire not just to live but to enjoy the full-
ness or plenitude of life. Spinoza regards this desire as the foundation of all
the virtues. Consider the following propositions:
The more each one strives, and is able, to seek his own advantage, i.e., to preserve his
being, the more he is endowed with virtue. (IVp20)
The striving to preserve oneself is the first and only foundation of virtue. For no other
principle can be conceived prior to this one and no virtue can be conceived without it.
(IVp22c)
Acting absolutely from virtue is nothing else in us but acting, living, and preserving our
being (these three signify the same thing) by the guidance of reason, from the foundation
of seeking one's own advantage. (IVp24)
These passages are frequently taken as a form of psychological egoism.

The term egoism describes little of Spinoza's Ethics, but the term individual-
ism does. The Ethics is nothing if not an ode to the joys of life. Joy and sad-
ness, and love and hate are the great ethical polarities around which the work
is structured. What increases our capacity for free action or agency is said to
be a cause of joy (laetitia), and what diminishes it is said to be the source of
sadness (tristia) (IIIp 1).
These ethical terms such as "joy" and "sadness" are not only subjective
dispositions but also are tied to the presence of conditions that allow us to
exercise our capacity for freedom. By the term "good" Spinoza means "every
kind of Joy, and whatever leads to it," whereas by "evil" he understands
"every kind of Sadness and whatever frustrates longing" (IIp39s). What con-
tributes to our sense of empowerment or the agent's "power of acting"
(agendi potentiam) is what fulfills our conatus (IIIp53). The question is
under what circumstances is this power best fulfilled.
Spinoza was scarcely alone in trying to derive ethics from egoism and
finding a foundation for virtue in self-interest. He belongs to the great tradi-
tion of individualism in political theory and to that of the moralistes in ethics,
if by that is meant his aim was not to lay down rules of conduct for moral
behavior but to cut through the layers of inherited custom and convention to
uncover the deeper wellsprings of human behavior. Not only were his great
precursors here Machiavelli and Hobbes but his successors were Hume,
Balzac, Flaubert, and Nietzsche.28
EXEMPLARY NATURE
The transition from the conatus understood as a first-order desire to

achieve preservation to the conatus understood as a second-order desire to
achieve a sense of "indefinite" existence or agendi potentiam is provided in
Spinoza's reference to an "idea" or "model" of human nature. "We desire,"
Spinoza writes, "to form an idea of man or model (exemplar) of human
nature to which we may look" (IVpref/208). The use of this term exemplar is
unique in the Ethics. This is the only place in which it occurs, although I agree
with Curley that its uniqueness gives it added importance.29 The use of the
term exemplar testifies to a "Platonic" dimension in Spinoza's thought that
seems to transcend its Hobbesian premises. It provides a standard that allows
us to judge the quality of our own lives and to identify the obstacles that stand
in the way of achieving this standard. This standard of human nature, I further
contend, is only fully developed in Spinoza's theory of the democratic state.
The model of human nature to which Spinoza alludes above is developed
by means of a reflection on desire. "Desire," he reaffirms, "is the very essence
of man, a striving by which a man strives to persevere in his being" (IVp 18d).
The presence of desire testifies to a lack or insufficiency on our part. As finite,
limited modes we can never be truly self-sufficient, but we live in more or less
continuous need of the other modes existing around us to satisfy the condi-
tions of existence. It is our very neediness that makes it rational for us to
cooperate with others in order to compensate for our deficiencies.

nothing particularly controversial about this, and Spinoza even ale
reader that he will explain these matters by departing from his "cumb
geometric order" (IVpl8s).
Yet even within the same proposition or set of propositions, Spinoza
duces a second line of argument. Not only is it to our advantage to c
with others for our mutual convenience but doing so elevates us to mo
rational beings. "The foundation of virtue," he writes, "is the very str
preserve our own being" (IVp 18s). Although he initially raises the b
utility, the joining with others in society represents an enhancement o
fection of our rational nature and powers of agency. At times he sugg
this is merely an additive relation. Two persons working together c
duce an individual twice as powerful as each. But he goes on to argu
kind of moral transformation occurs:
To man there is nothing more useful than man. Man, I say, can wish for nothing more
helpful to the preservation of his being than that all should so agree in all things that the
Minds and Bodies of all would compose, as it were, one Mind and one Body; that all
should strive together, as far as they can, to preserve their being; and that all, together,
should seek for themselves the common advantage of all. (IVp 18s; emphasis added)
"From this," he concludes, "that men who are governed by reason ... want
nothing for themselves that they do not desire for other men. Hence they are
just, honest, and honorable" (IVp 1l8s).
The idea that society is responsible for affecting a moral transformation of
human beings is reiterated in the TP. The difference, he notes there, between
the state of nature and the civil state is the difference between a condition
where everyone is out for themselves alone and one where all live and work,
as it were, from "one mind":
Since reason teaches men to practice morality, and to be of tranquil and friendly disposi-
tion ... and since, it is impossible for a people to be guided as if by one mind (una veluti
mente) as is required by a state unless the state has laws that have been established in con-
formity with the precepts of reason. (TP, ii, 21; vi, 1)
Spinoza has moved quickly-perhaps too quickly-from the desire to

preserve ourselves to the desire to live with others in a state of harmony and
agreement as if we were all made up of one mind and body. Is this the exem-
plar of human nature that he promises to reveal? Does the desire to preserve
one's being require one to live una veluti mente? Spinoza hopes to account
for this transition in the series of propositions and corollaries that culminates
in his theory of civil society. Every person, he asserts, exists "by the highest
right of nature" and does what follows from "the necessity of nature" (IVp37s2).
This passage clearly recalls the argument from both the TTP and the TP in
which Spinoza derives the origins of civil society from natural right. Natural
right, he argues, is identical with each being's power to act and exist (TP, ii,
3). Natural right is formally equivalent to power. It is by virtue of the sover-
eign right of nature that each being exercises its power as far as it can, or as
Spinoza puts it in one of his most memorable formulations, "Thus it is by sov-
ereign natural right that fish inhabit the water and the big ones eat the smaller
ones" (ITP, xvi, 173). It is in order to avoid being eaten alive that we enter
civil society.30
So far, Spinoza's reasoning is perfectly Hobbesian. Each person, fearful
of every other person, agrees to give up some portion of his natural liberty for
the sake of mutual security and advantage. It is not because we are rational
but because of fear of harm that we agree to enter society. Fear is still the pas-
sion to be reckoned upon. In the state of nature there is no such thing as good
and bad, just and unjust; only in society are these terms regulated by common
agreement. We agree to live under laws sustained by common agreement and
those who obey these laws are deemed citizens (IVp37s2).
But even as Spinoza accepts Hobbesian premises, we see him depart from
Hobbesian conclusions. The purpose of civil society is not simply safe,
peaceful, and commodious living but the attainment of our rational nature,
living under laws that we have made for ourselves. By rational nature
Spinoza means not just the capacity to enter into agreements to ensure our
mutual advantage but sharing with others in a common way of life. "Only
insofar as men live according to the guidance of reason must they always
agree in nature," he writes (IVp35). Conflict and disagreement are caused by
the affects, but "insofar as men live according to the guidance of reason, they
must always agree among themselves" (IVpl8d).
The idea that rational beings "always agree among themselves" is by no
means a self-evident proposition. To be sure, in activities governed by com-
mon rules we are more likely to find agreement than in those where the stan-
dards of evaluation are unsettled or constantly subject to dispute. Yet it is not
clear why Spinoza believes that if people are equally rational they all neces-
sarily seek agreement; that is, they share not only the same nature but also the
desire for the same things, and even think the same thoughts. Do all rational
minds really think alike? The attainment of our rational nature appears to
obliterate all the individual differences between persons that make us human.
Could this possibly be Spinoza's intent?
THE DEMOCRATIC SOUL
The idea of rational nature-"the model of human nature to which

look"-seems to presuppose a strong view of democracy, one in wh
cite another passage, "the Minds and Bodies of all would compose, as
one Mind and one Body" (IVp 1 8s). This passage sounds almost as if
proof-text for Rousseau's theory of the general will in the Social C
where the freedom of each contributor is said to be enhanced by joini
others.3? For both Spinoza and Rousseau, only in a democratic rep
where the laws are made by all can one's actions acquire the force of m
for only there can individual interests and desires be melded into a si
A person who follows his or her own affects is not free. Freedom
acting from the laws of reason, or only when we act rationally are
governing. We are only truly active, truly alive, when we allow our
be led by reason (IVp35d).
There is, then, a strongly democratic character to Spinoza's Ethi
democratic polity is one in which all persons follow the laws to whi
member has contributed. This view is confirmed near the end of part
the work. "A man who is guided by reason is more free in a state
lives according to a common decision (ex communi decreto), than in
where he obeys only himself' (IVp73). The idea that freedom is rea
membership in a community of rational agents is confirmed by the f
"demonstration":
A man who is guided by reason is not led to obey by fear, but insofar as he strives to pre-
serve his being from the dictate of reason, i.e., insofar as he strives to live freely, desires to
maintain the principle of common life and common advantage. Consequently, he desires
to live according to the common decision of the state. Therefore, a man who is guided by
reason desires, in order to live more freely, to keep the common laws of the state.
(IVp73d)
On the basis of this and the "one Mind and one Body" passage cited above,
it is arguable that there is a deeply communitarian dimension to Spinoza's
theory of democracy. Beginning with a hard core of self-interest, he tries to
demonstrate the rationality of social cooperation. It follows that rational per-
sons will always seek out the company of others for the sake of enhancing
their power and mutual freedom. Spinoza gives this conception of freedom a
communitarian twist. Freedom is achieved only inside a community of ra-
tional persons. This follows from the premise that free persons are united not
just by relations of utility but by bonds of friendship (amicitia). "Only free
men," he remarks, "are very useful to one another, are joined to one another
by the greatest necessity of friendship, and strive to benefit one another with
equal eagerness for love" (IVp71 d).
There is much in Spinoza's theory of the social contract and civil society
that could strike the reader as dangerously antiliberal. Underlying his views
on the unity of rational nature is the belief that no person, at least no rational
person, ever desires for himself something that is not simultaneously desired
for all others. This is the formula of generalization or impartiality that Rous-
seau and later Kant would make into a test for justice. A rational person can-
not desire something for which reasons cannot be given (IVp72s).32
Spinoza's belief is that if persons are equally rational, they will be motivated
by the same desires and the same ends, and that there is some kind of har-
mony of interests that follows necessarily from the unity of our rational
nature (IVp36).
But why should equal rationality lead to harmony and community? Will
not conflicts of interest inevitably arise, even among people who are alike in
rationality? Competition for scarce resources would seem to be a permanent
cause of enmity and conflict. The desire for honor and rank is another source
of conflict. Furthermore, the statement at IVp35 that rational persons "must
always agree among themselves" appears to sanction harmony over differ-
ence and the subordination of the individual to the unity of a rational consen-
sus. This conception of rational nature leaves little room for the expressions
of individual differences and personality that are essential to a more liberal
conception of the self.33
VIVE LA DIFFERENCE
We seem to have reached an impasse. The attainment of the exemplar for

which we strive appears to lead to an obliteration of the self or at least of all
those features of individual personality that make us discrete human beings.
Is this truly the end of the road? Spinoza's account of rational nature comes to
a head in the final book of the Ethics with his account of the intellectual love
of God (amor dei intellectualis).34
The love of God is described as the highest good desired by reason
(IVp28; Vp20). It consists of a passionate relation between the knower and
God so much so that the individual becomes entirely absorbed within the
object of contemplation. Knowledge of God (or nature) is not only the high-
est form of knowledge; it is our highest good insofar as the object of knowl-
edge is eternal. It represents our passage from a state of bondage and depend-
ence to that of autonomy and self-determination. What began as a desire to
preserve ourselves and seek our own advantage has led us to a des
beyond ourselves and enter the province of eternity (Vp23, p32).
The kind of union with God for which we strive is the result of what
Spinoza calls knowledge of the "third kind" (IIp40s2; Vp33). He identifies
this knowledge with a kind of intellectual intuition (scientia intuitiva)
because it derives not from the imagination but from the mind alone. It is
important to note first that this type of intellectual intuition is not based on
inner feeling or mystical experience-what the Germans call
Gefiihlsreligion. It is based not on prayer, supplication, or holy books but on
an immediate apprehension of individual essences, of the natures of things.
The third kind of knowledge is ultimately knowledge not of the general or
formal attributes of God as substance but of individual things and events in
their particularity. Only knowledge of the individual concrete is real (Vp24).
Most important, the third kind of knowledge is not merely abstract or the-
oretical. It contains a high degree of self-consciousness and reflexivity.
Thinking that does not take into account the thinker is not true thinking.
Knowledge of the self, of the being that thinks, is the basis for all knowledge.
"He who understands himself and his affects," Spinoza writes, "clearly and
distinctly loves God" (Vpl5). Of course to understand oneself means to
understand the whole of which one is only a part, but it is ultimately self-
knowledge that provides for Spinoza the greatest "satisfaction of mind"
(Vp27).
The difficulty with Spinoza's conception of the third kind of knowledge is
that it is unattainable, at least for most human beings. The most obvious rea-
son for this is that the power of the passions remains strong. Our passions-
our likes and dislikes, desires and aversions-are what distinguish us and
provide a permanent ground for moral differentiation (IVp33-34). We are not
only rational beings but also imaginative and affective ones. Spinoza is more
impressed by the diversity than the equality of our desires. His model of ratio-
nality, taken from Euclid, leaves little room for variety or diversity of opin-
ion. But if reason unites, the passions divide. So long as we remain embodied
creatures, so long will we remain unique finite modes, each with our own
individual capacities and attributes.
Spinoza often writes about the affects as a source of such negative pas-
sions as envy and conflict, but he also recognizes that our affects can be a
source of joy and gladness. It is not the affects as such that Spinoza deplores
but only those gloomy dispositions and states of mind that lead us to sadness
and the mortification of life. It is our affects, not our reason, that distinguish
us and make us who we are. At the start of the TP he offers a stern rebuke to
"philosophers," most likely the Stoics, who treat the passions as vices to be
deplored rather than the natural state of embodied beings. Rather than enjoin-
ing us to "deride, deplore, and revile" the affects, Spinoza wants us to enjoy
and cultivate them and to celebrate life as it exists rather than "to sing the
praises of a human nature nowhere to be found" (TP, i, 1).
We can no more rid ourselves of our affects than we can cease to eat or
sleep. The point is not to engage on a fruitless program of instinctual repres-

sion but to redirect the affects in ways that enhance our power and capacity
for self-determination (IIIdef3). There is nothing of either the Puritan or the
ascetic in Spinoza, but a great deal of the humanist who loves nothing more
than the pleasures of life, especially the joys of laughter and friendship.
"Nothing forbids our pleasure," he writes, "but a savage and sad superstition.
For why is it more proper to relieve our hunger and thirst than to rid ourselves
of melancholy?" (IVp45s).
The Ethics is nothing if not a tribute to the joys of individuality and the
pleasures deriving from a wide range of different activities and enjoyments.
In a beautifully worded passage testifying to a highly cultivated aesthetic
sense, we read,
It is the part of a wise man ... to refresh and restore himself in moderation and with pleas-
ant food and drink, with scents, with the beauty of green plants, with decoration, music,
sports, the theatre, and other things of this kind, which anyone can use without injury to
another. For the human body is composed of a great many parts of different natures,
which constantly require new and varied nourishment, so that the whole Body may be
equally capable of all things which can follow from its nature, and hence, so that the Mind
also may be equally capable of understanding many things. (IVp45s)
Spinoza's statement here that the body is composed of "many parts of dif-
ferent natures" bespeaks his awareness of the great variety of human plea-
sures and the different sources of satisfaction. His references to good food
and drink, the arts and beautiful objects, demonstrate an approval of a broad
range of joys and pleasures. He appears to reject a monistic view of human
flourishing, the one-size-fits-all model of the good life. Instead his awareness
of diversity both within and between human beings not only indicates an
appreciation of the role of human freedom but makes the Ethics an important,
although frequently unacknowledged, source of moral pluralism.
LIBERA MULTITUDO
We now go back to our initial question: What kind of demo

Spinoza? It is important to classify him in the first instance as part of
ist school growing out of Machiavelli's claim to grasp the "effectual t
things by viewing human beings as they are and not as they ough
chastises as purely utopian his predecessors (and some of our con
ies) who believe in the possibility of a community of purel
deliberators. The result of such speculation, he caustically avers,
duce not ethics but a species of "satire" (TP, i, 1). Every commun
composed of persons with passionately held and mutually antagon
ceptions of the good. The task of the statesman is to legislate for th
and irrational alike and everyone else in between. The idea that a
be induced to live by reason alone is said to be no more than "dream
poets' golden age or of a fairy tale" (TP, i, 5).
Spinoza's realism derives from his awareness of the ubiqui
affects. It is the power of the affects that leads each individual o
struggle with others to preserve their identity so far as they are abl
affect can be restrained only by the power of another affect, the str
sued by Spinoza is one of checking and balancing the passions ag
another. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition in the l
Madison's Federalist #51. It is because of the strength of the pas
Spinoza is led to view the natural order as one of deep, even intrac
flict. We are differently capacitated because of our very differen
temperaments, and attachments. This natural diversity constitutes
tive ground for any possible political life (IVp35s).
Recognizing the power of the passions did not lead Spinoza to
about politics. Although he is officially committed to the view that
ple who are governed by reason are free, he realizes that such an
must be relaxed in considering collective life. People can be said t
when they recognize their need to unite under common laws for
mutual protection. A state, like an individual, is a concatenation of f
aims at its own self-preservation. "The best condition of a comm
he writes, "is easily discovered from the purpose of political orde
simply peace and the security of life" (TP, v, 2).
It is not the case, as some readers of Spinoza have maintained, tha
pose of politics is simply to control the passions and to contain conf
were so, he would be little different from Hobbes. Spinoza adds his
ifier to the view that peace is simply the absence of war: "For peace
mere absence of war, but a virtue based on strength of mind (ex a
tudine); since obedience is the steadfast will to do what the genera
the commonwealth requires" (TP, v, 4). Only when a people are
"strength of mind" do they acquire "a truly human existence" (TP
Spinoza goes even further in distinguishing his best regime fro
Hobbes. While Hobbes had maintained that fear is the passion to b
upon, Spinoza suggests that hope is the overriding passion of a "free people"
(libera multitudo):
A free people is led more by hope than by fear, a conquered people more by fear than by
hope; for the former seeks to improve its life, the latter seeks only to avoid death. The for-
mer, I say, seeks to live for itself, the latter is compelled to belong to its conqueror; that is
why I call the second enslaved and the first free. Thus the aim of a state acquired by the
right of war is to oppress men, and to make them slaves rather than subjects. (TP, v, 6; TTP,
xx, 241)
The core of Spinoza's democratic theory is this idea of the free people, one
who "seeks to live for itself." To be sure, he does not say much about the insti-
tutional arrangements by which a libera multitudo will live. Will a free peo-
ple govern itself collectively or only through its representatives? If the latter,
how will its representatives be chosen? Will they be chosen from the body of
the people or from some patrician class? Nor does Spinoza say how free citi-
zens are to be created. The TP breaks off inconclusively before it can answer
such questions. Eighty lines ... then silence.35
Spinoza's idea of a free people does not require the same kind of intellec-
tual and moral perfectionism associated with acquisition of knowledge of the
third kind. A free people is not a community of philosophers. Even the best
democracy will be composed of different individuals, with different natures,
and different degrees of understanding. A free person may be one capable of
living by reason alone, but a free people is one that can discover the means to
restrain the passions by a modified system of checks and balances. Democ-
racy is simply the regime most consistent with the natural diversity of the
affects. The purpose of democracy, then, is not to overcome or obliterate
diversity. Individuality is not a fate to be bemoaned but a joy to be embraced.
The freedom that comes from enhancing and expanding the powers of our
minds and bodies is the supreme good for an individual. The Ethics is not
only a testimony to that freedom; it is an expression of it.
NOTES
1. Steven B. Smith, Spinoza, Liberalism, and the Question of Jewish Identity (New Have
CT: Yale University Press, 1997); see also Hillel Fradkin, "The 'Separation' of Religion and Po
tics: Spinoza's Paradoxes," Review of Politics 4 (1988): 603-27; and Richard Popkin Spino
(Oxford, UK: Oneworld, 2004), 76.
2. Jos6 Faur, "Spinoza and the Secularization of Western Society," in In the Shadow of Hi
tory: Jews and Conversos at the Dawn of Modernity (Albany: SUNY, 1992), 142-75, esp. 172
75; for the authoritarian dimension of Spinoza, see also Stanley Rosen, "Spinoza's Argument
Political Freedom," Cardozo Law Review 2 (2003): 729-40.
3. Jonathan Israel, The Radical Enlightenment: The Making ofModernity, 1650-1750

York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 262-64; and Hans Blom, "Virtue and Republic
Spinoza's Political Philosophy in the Context of the Dutch Republic," in Republike
Republikanismus im Europa der Friihen Neuzeit, ed. H. G. Koenigsberger (Munc
Oldenbourg, 1988), 195-212.
4. Etienne Balibar, Spinoza and Politics, trans. Peter Snowden (London: Verso, 199
5. See Leo Strauss, "How to Read Spinoza's 'Theologico-Political Treatise,' " in Pe
tion and the Art of Writing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 142-201, esp. 1
the issues of the rhetoric and the audience for the TTP has recently been discussed by
Tosel, Spinoza ou le crepescule de la servitude (Paris: Aubier, 1984), 50-56; Steven Fr
"Politics and Rhetoric: The Intended Audience of Spinoza's 'Tractatus Theologico-Poli
Review of Metaphysics 52 (June 1999): 897-924; and Michael Rosenthal, "Persuasive P
Rhetoric and the Interpretation of Spinoza's 'Theologico-Political Treatise,' " Arch
Geschichte der Philosophie 3 (2003): 249-68.
6. Spinoza, Theologico-Political Treatise, trans. Samuel Shirley (Indianapolis: Ha
2001); references are to the chapter and page number.
7. Spinoza, "Political Treatise," in The Political Works, trans. A. G. Wernham (Oxford
Clarendon, 1958); references are to chapter and section number
8. For a recent attempt to read the TP as introducing "a comprehensive theory of democ
see Willi Goetschel, Spinoza's Modernity: Mendelssohn, Lessing, and Heine (Madison: Un
sity of Wisconsin Press, 2004), 66-81; I approve of the author's efforts to take the TP se
but I do not believe that the final unfinished portion on democracy provides what it is the
set out to do.
9. The translation used is Edwin Curley, ed., The Collected Works of Spinoza, vol. 1 (Prince-
ton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985); citations to the Ethics refer to the part (= Roman
numeral), proposition (= p), demonstration (= d), scholium (= s), corollary (= c), appendix (= ap),
preface (= pref), and definition (= def). Page numbers refer to the Gebhardt edition of the Spinoza
Opera, 4 vols. (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1925).
10. For some notable exceptions, see Alexandre Matheron, Individu et communautd chez
Spinoza (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1988), 287-354; Balibar, Spinoza and Politics, 76-98; Steven
B. Smith, Spinoza's Book of Life: Freedom and Redemption in the "Ethics" (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 2003), 123-53.
11. For the conception of Spinoza as a Stoic, see P. O. Kristeller, "Stoic and Neoplatonic
Sources of Spinoza's 'Ethics,' " History of European Ideas 5 (1984): 1-15; Susan James,
"Spinoza the Stoic," in The Rise of Modern Philosophy: The New and Traditional Philosophies
from Machiavelli to Leibniz, ed. Tom Sorell (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 289-
316; and Martha Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of the Emotions (Cam-
bridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 500-10.
12. Stuart Hampshire, Spinoza (New York: Penguin, 1975), 192: "The barrier between twen-
tieth-century readers and Spinoza is the conception of historical change which is associated with
the methodical study of history; this is something which neither Spinoza nor Hobbes nor any phi-
losopher of their age fully envisaged." Hampshire does not explain why this stricture disables
Spinoza's political philosophy but not his ethics or his philosophy of mind. In point of fact,
Spinoza has a deeper historical sense than is generally imagined, see Andr6 Tosel, "Y-a-t-il une
philosophie du progris historique de Spinoza?" in Spinoza: Issues and Directions, ed. Edwin
Curley and Pierre-Francois Moreau (Leiden: Brill, 1990), 306-26; James C. Morrison, "Spinoza
and History," in The Philosophy of Baruch Spinoza, ed. Richard Kennington (Washington, DC:
Catholic University Press of America, 1980), 173-95; and Norman O. Brown, "Philosophy and
Prophecy: Spinoza's Hermeneutics," Political Theory 14 (1986): 195-213.
13. Gilles Deleuze, "Spinoza and the Three 'Ethics,' " in The New Spinoza, ed. Warren
Montag and Ted Stolze (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 27; the idea that the
Ethics contains complex layers of rhetoric and self-concealment was pioneered by Harry A.
Wolfson, "Behind the Geometrical Method," in Spinoza: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed.
Marjorie Grene (Garden City: Doubleday, 1973), 3-24; and Ephraim Shmueli, "The Geometrical
Method, Personal Caution, and the Idea of Tolerance," in Spinoza: New Perspectives, ed. Robert
W. Shahan and J. I. Biro (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1978), 197-215.
14. The "anti-humanist" reading of Spinoza is principally associated with Louis Althusser,
"Sur Spinoza," in Elements d'autocritique (Paris: Hachette, 1974), 65-83; for a provocative
restatement of this thesis, see Yitzhak Melamed, "Spinoza's Anti-Humanism" (unpublished).
15. Letter #58 to G. H. Schuller, The Letters, trans. Samuel Shirley (Indianapolis: Hackett,
1995), 284.
16. For a useful survey of the issues involved, see Richard Bernstein, Praxis andAction (Phil-
adelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971), 230-304; for a more recent overview of some
of the analytical literature, see Timothy O'Connor, ed., Agents, Causes, and Events: Essays on
Indeterminism and Free Will (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).
17. R. G. Collingwood, The New Leviathan, ed. David Boucher (Oxford, UK: Clarendon,
1992), 8-9.
18. See Marx Wartofsky, "Action and Passion: Spinoza's Construction of a Scientific Psy-
chology," in Spinoza: A Collection of Critical Essays, 329-53.
19. Roger Scruton, Spinoza (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1986), 58; see also Don-
ald Davidson, "Spinoza's Causal Theory of the Affects," in Desire and Affect: Spinoza as Psy-
chologist, ed. Yirmiyahu Yovel (New York: Little Room Press, 1999), 103.
20. Gilles Deleuze, Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza, trans. Martin Joughin (New
York: Zone, 1990), 107-11.
21. Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1949), 11-18.
22. It is not altogether clear whether Spinoza restricts his conatus doctrine to animate objects
or whether it is intended to have an even broader usage. He presents it initially not as a psycholog-
ical postulate but as a general consequence of his physics of motion and rest; see David
Lachterman, "The Physics of Spinoza's 'Ethics,' " in Spinoza: New Perspectives, 71-111.
23. The debate over Spinoza's use of teleological language has been hotly contested; for a
strong denial that Spinoza has any right to the use of teleological terms, see Jonathan Bennett, A
Study ofSpinoza's Ethics (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1984), 213-26; Bennett's claims have been dis-
puted by Edwin Curley, "On Bennett's Spinoza: The Issue of Teleology," in Spinoza: Issues and
Directions, 39-52; for a strong defense of Spinoza's use of teleology, see Martin Linn, "Teleol-
ogy and Human Action in Spinoza" (unpublished).
24. Spinoza's relation to Hobbes remains a deeply vexed problem, but for some of the better
treatments see, Leo Strauss, Spinoza's Critique of Religion, trans. E. M. Sinclair (New York:
Schocken, 1965), 229-38; Hillel Gilden, "Spinoza and the Political Problem," in Spinoza: A Col-
lection of Critical Essays, 377-87; Edwin Curley, "Kissinger, Spinoza, and Genghis Khan," in
The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza, ed. Don Garrett (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press, 1996), 315-42; and Alexandre Matheron, "Le 'droit du plus fort': Hobbes contre Spinoza,"
Revue philosohique de la France et de l'etranger 110 (1985): 149-76.
25. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Edwin Curley (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994), xiii, 6; cita-
tions refer to chapter and section number.
26. Yirmiyahu Yovel, "Transcending Mere Survival: From Conatus to Conatus Intelligendi,"
in Desire and Affect: Spinoza as Psychologist, 45-61.
27. For this point, see Steven B. Smith, "A Fool for Love: Thoughts on I. B. Singer's
Spinoza," Iyyun 51 (2002): 41-50.
28. Nietzsche declared his enthusiasm for Spinoza in a letter to Franz Overbeck: "I h
precursor and what a precursor! I hardly knew Spinoza and that I should have turned to him
now was inspired by 'instinct.' Not only is his overall tendency like mine-but in five main p
of his doctrine I recognize myself"; see Walter Kaufmann, ed., The Portable Nietzsch
York: Viking, 1965), 92.
29. Edwin Curley, "Spinoza's Moral Philosophy," in Spinoza: A Collection of C
Essays, 354-76, esp. 363-65; see also Michael Rosenthal, "Why Spinoza Chose the Heb
History of Political Thought 18 (1997): 207-41.
30. The biblical and Talmudic sources of Spinoza's image have been explored in Warr
Harvey, "Big Fish--Little Fish" (unpublished); the most obvious biblical source for S
view is Job 41; see also Pirke Avot, trans. Leonard Kravitz and Kerry M. Olitzky (New
UAHC, 1993), iii, 2: "Pray for the welfare of the government, for were it not for the fear of
ple would swallow each other alive." See Hobbes, Leviathan, xxviii, 27.
31. See Walter Eckstein, "Rousseau and Spinoza: Their Political Theories and Their Co
tions of Freedom," Journal of the History of Ideas 3 (1944): 259-91; and Paul Vernihre,
et la pensde francaise avant la revolution, vol. 2 (Paris: PUF, 1954), 475-94.
32. For the Kantian overtones of this formula, see Spinoza, Collected Works, 587.
33. For a recent consideration of some of these themes, see Stuart Hampshire, Justice Is
flict (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000).
34. The fifth and final part of the Ethics has been widely derided by contemporary p
phers. An extreme, albeit telling, example is Bennett, who calls Spinoza's views here "un
gible" and "pretty certainly worthless," " rubbish which causes others to write rubbish"; Be
A Study ofSpinoza's "Ethics," 372, 374; for a more sympathetic reading of some of the sa
sages, see Yirmiyahu Yovel, "The Third Kind of Knowledge as Alternative Salvatio
Spinoza: Issues and Directions, 157-75; and Lee Rice, "Love of God in Spinoza," Jewish T
in Spinoza's Philosophy, ed. Heidi Raven and Lenn Goodman (Albany: SUNY Press, 20
106; for a (perhaps) surprising appreciation, see also Louis Althusser, "The Only Material
dition," The New Spinoza, 3-19, esp. 7-10.
35. Goetschel overstates again when he remarks, "Breaking off at this point the Po
Treatise does not necessarily signal a failure in the argument. Instead, the interruption sugg
critical resistance to a premature closure"; Goetschel, Spinoza and Modernity, 81.
Steven B. Smith is Alfred Cowles Professor of Political Science and Master of Branfo
College at Yale University. His most recent work, Spinoza's Book of Life: Freedom a
Redemption in the "Ethics", was published in 2003.

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What Kind of Democrat Was Spinoza

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What Kind of Democrat Was Spinoza?

Author(s): Steven B. Smith

Keywords: agency; parallelism empowerment; conatus; exemplar; rational nature

POLITICAL THEORY, Vol. 33 No. 1, February 2005 6-27

c 2005 Sage Publications

biblical criticism that is in turns both subversive and accommodatin

Next, the Ethics is often regarded as an example of the revival of Stoicism

DOES SPINOZA DENY HUMAN AGENCY?

Any theory of democracy presupposes some conception of free

FREEDOM AND REASON

The idea of the mind's embeddedness in nature would appear to d

confused ideas. The Ethics provides the canonical case of f

Contemporary antinaturalists would take passages such as the

events. This is often referred to as the doctrine of mind-body parallelism

opposed as mutually supportive of one another. To the extent that

The central concept of Spinoza's moral psychology is the idea of the

something," our conatus contains a desire to enhance our sense of power, to

It is often claimed that Spinoza's conatus doctrine shows the imprint of

powers of mind, an increase in our capacity for self-reflection, and th

These passages are frequently taken as a form of psychological egoism.

The transition from the conatus understood as a first-order desire to

cooperate with others in order to compensate for our deficiencies.

Spinoza has moved quickly-perhaps too quickly-from the desire to

THE DEMOCRATIC SOUL

The idea of rational nature-"the model of human nature to which

We seem to have reached an impasse. The attainment of the exemplar for

sleep. The point is not to engage on a fruitless program of instinctual repres-

We now go back to our initial question: What kind of demo

3. Jonathan Israel, The Radical Enlightenment: The Making ofModernity, 1650-1750

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