Philosophical Foundations of the Best Form of Government: A Reading of Tractatus politicus of Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677)
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This article aims to read in the context of the (Counter-)Reformation the Tractatus politicus, one of Spinoza’s posthumous works, as a sort of Testament politique for democracy. Most of studies, which find in Spinoza a democrat, tend to term Spinoza’s political philosophy an optimistic theory of “multitude.” Antonio Negri’s works represent the view. But some recent studies underline Spinoza’s ambivalence about the multitude. I think the latter view is quite closer to a right reading of the text, in so far as this reading does not lead to a pretension that Spinoza was in fact skeptical about the political possibility of the multitude, or that “meager fragments” in TP referring to the multitude show at most the author’s shift in position on the question in the last years of his life. For this task, it is crucial to see what philosophical foundations his theory of democracy is constructed on. One of the remarkable things in Spinozan political theory is his way of defining form of government. Differently from classical theorists who have classified forms of government after the test of who is the possessor of sovereignty, he distinguishes them according to the manner of transfer of each one’s rights to civil society: Democracy is a form of government, in which cura Reipublicae is entrusted ex communi consensu to the council composed ex communi multitudine; Aristocracy, to the council composed ex quibusdam tantum selectis; Lastly, monarchy, to one man. Whatever the form of government may be, it is very clear for Spinoza that the legitimacy of political power depends from the beginning on the contractarian cession of natural rights of the whole members of civil society. Conceived as a multitude, the subjects as a whole can possess the channels for their interests to be taken into consideration in practice. The second of our findings is that Spinoza’s political theory is deduced from his understanding of the human beings’ “common nature.” For him, human beings are to be recognized as creatures with passions, without taking granted the moral dispositions of human rational faculty. The citizens can only be “guided by those passions whence the republic has most advantage.” But it was very important, for it is by devising the best frame of institutions that the government can be cum virtute. It is on this philosophical basis that Spinoza believed democracy to be the best form of government to achieve the end of civil society.
Abstract
This article aims to read in the context of the (Counter-)Reformation the Tractatus politicus, one of Spinoza’s posthumous works, as a sort of Testament politique for democracy. Most of studies, which find in Spinoza a democrat, tend to term Spinoza’s political philosophy an optimistic theory of “multitude.” Antonio Negri’s works represent the view. But some recent studies underline Spinoza’s ambivalence about the multitude. I think the latter view is quite closer to a right reading of the text, in so far as this reading does not lead to a pretension that Spinoza was in fact skeptical about the political possibility of the multitude, or that “meager fragments” in TP referring to the multitude show at most the author’s shift in position on the question in the last years of his life. For this task, it is crucial to see what philosophical foundations his theory of democracy is constructed on. One of the remarkable things in Spinozan political theory is his way of defining form of government. Differently from classical theorists who have classified forms of government after the test of who is the possessor of sovereignty, he distinguishes them according to the manner of transfer of each one’s rights to civil society: Democracy is a form of government, in which cura Reipublicae is entrusted ex communi consensu to the council composed ex communi multitudine; Aristocracy, to the council composed ex quibusdam tantum selectis; Lastly, monarchy, to one man. Whatever the form of government may be, it is very clear for Spinoza that the legitimacy of political power depends from the beginning on the contractarian cession of natural rights of the whole members of civil society. Conceived as a multitude, the subjects as a whole can possess the channels for their interests to be taken into consideration in practice. The second of our findings is that Spinoza’s political theory is deduced from his understanding of the human beings’ “common nature.” For him, human beings are to be recognized as creatures with passions, without taking granted the moral dispositions of human rational faculty. The citizens can only be “guided by those passions whence the republic has most advantage.” But it was very important, for it is by devising the best frame of institutions that the government can be cum virtute. It is on this philosophical basis that Spinoza believed democracy to be the best form of government to achieve the end of civil society.
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