The Enlightenment

In this paper I will focus on the political ideas of Benedictus de Spinoza as written down in his Theologico-Political Treatise (TTP) and his Political Treatise (TP), especially his idea about tolerance that is linked with freedom of thought and freedom of expression. This idea of tolerance has to be seen as an invention in the social field and was linked with the discovery of reason.

The philosophy of Baruch Spinoza (1632-77) has come to be seen in recent years as a basis for a radical democratic political program by political philosophers such as Etienne Balibar, Antonio Negri and Paolo Virno, and as the core of a “radical Enlightenment” by the historian of ideas Jonathan Israel. Here, we discuss fundamental elements of Spinoza’s political thought, as set out in his Theological- Political Treatise of 1670, a work combining a critical account of religious thought, Scripture and history with a theory of the state. While Spinoza affirms freedom of thought, and advocates a form of democracy, his arguments are politically and socially conservative, tied to the defense of the Dutch bourgeois republic.

2010

Spinoza's Theological-Political Treatise was published anonymously in 1670 and immediately provoked huge debate. Its main goal was to claim that the freedom of philosophizing can be allowed in a free republic and that it cannot be abolished without also destroying the peace and piety of that republic. Spinoza criticizes the traditional claims of revelation and offers a social contract theory in which he praises democracy as the most natural form of government. This Critical Guide to the Treatise presents new essays by well-known scholars in the field and covers a broad range of topics, including the political theory and the metaphysics of the work, religious toleration, the reception of the text by other early modern philosophers, and the relation of the text to Jewish thought.

The goal of this essay is to offer an alternative account to the view that political freedom and philosophical freedom are consistent, harmonious, and mutually reinforcing. Certainly, freedom is central to Spinoza's political thought, but to understand it properly, we need to explain how it alleviates, rather than encourages, superstition among the nonrational multitude. In light of his belief in the permanency of irrationality and superstition, Spinoza does not hope to expunge illusions from political life. Advocating freedom is an attempt to adapt the facts of the imagination to the needs of our political order and create stability. The belief in freedom-that is, the belief that we are individual actors who decide our actions and determine our fate-is the most powerful and abiding illusion in politics.

2012

However, this has not been a realignment of people, or of demographic coalitions, or of interest groups; it has rather been the realignment of ideas. Since before the French Revolution, and the composition of the Déclaration des droits de l'Homme et du Citoyen, the idea of universal human reason was always tied to the concept of universal, human emancipation. Yet today, the forces of emancipation are reluctant to draw their inspiration from the notion of universal human rationality. As such, the projects of political emancipation have, themselves, become increasingly particularized and tied to the struggles of specific cultural, social, racial, and gender identities. At their base, all political disagreements are really disagreements about metaphysics. Only this fact can illuminate the broad political trends and traditions which span multiple epochs and civilizations. Namely, there are substantive disagreements about the proper order for society because there are diverging views about the actual order of reality. Is it any wonder that

2010

Spinoza's Theological-Political Treatise was published anonymously in 1670 and immediately provoked huge debate. Its main goal was to claim that the freedom of philosophizing can be allowed in a free republic and that it cannot be abolished without also destroying the peace and piety of that republic. Spinoza criticizes the traditional claims of revelation and offers a social contract theory in which he praises democracy as the most natural form of government. This Critical Guide to the Treatise presents new essays by well-known scholars in the field and covers a broad range of topics, including the political theory and the metaphysics of the work, religious toleration, the reception of the text by other early modern philosophers, and the relation of the text to Jewish thought.

is article analyzes Spinoza's unique version of the theological-political problem, which he sought to address in his classic treatise. By elucidating Spinoza's relation to his main interlocutors-Maimonides, Machiavelli, and Hobbes-the article extrapolates Spinoza's concepts of religion and politics. According to Spinoza, religion and politics are the two most basic human responses to the instability of human existence and fortune. Religion connects phenomena by omens that it then interprets and stabilizes by means of ritual, whereas politics seeks causal connections culled from experience in order to create political structures that would provide peace and security. Politics is more rational than religion in its mode of connecting events, but it is still not a science in the sense that metaphysics is. Contrary to the common reading of Spinoza, it is argued here that his concept of politics cannot be deduced from his 'Ethics' and that the 'eological-Political Treatise' provides a model of political reasoning for conditions of relative ignorance. Metaphysics deduces causal connections from the essence of things, but due to the incompleteness of human knowledge there is no escaping the need for politics as an empirical resource for conducting our lives in relative ignorance regarding the interconnectedness of phenomena. is duality of the human response to the contingencies of fortune explains the ongoing need for a political theology.

Roczniki Filozoficzne, 2022

TOLERANCE OR FREEDOM OF THOUGHT AND SPEECH? When Oldenburg, in his letter of September 1665, asks why Spinoza turns his thoughts to theological questions, the latter replies that the great turmoil and in particular the present war encourage him to philosophize and to observe human nature better. 1 However, the prejudices of theologians are an obstacle to this, the common people do not stop accusing him of atheism, and he wants to stand up for the freedom of philosophizing and saying what we think, a freedom that is suppressed by "the preachers with their excessive authority and aggressiveness." 2 Spinoza's ideas on tolerance are embedded in his ideas on democracy and the freedom of philosophizing, two aspects dealt with in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (TTP; 1670). Of course, religion is an important theme in a reflection linking theology and politics, yet in this work, freedom of religion is discussed only on the margins. One might even wonder whether tolerance towards religion is a theme for Spinoza at all. Either way, one should distinguish between freedom of thought and freedom of religion, as Jonathan Israel writes. 3 Between these two kinds of

Praxis Filosofica, 40, enero-junio 2015: 11-34

This paper aims at contributing to a better understanding of Spinoza’s most conspicuous political doctrines: his rejection of classical contractualism, his doctrine of the equivalence of right and power, his description of the limits of government either as logical limitations or as restrictions, not of power, but of impotence, and his defence of democracy as the most natural and most rational form of the state. Also, two alleged paradoxes that permeate Spinoza’s political thought are solved: the conflict between a naturalistic approach and a discourse whose purpose is to shed light on the grounds of political legitimacy, and the tension between the dynamics of freedom and the dynamics of power. Far from obsolete, Spinoza’s political philosophy comes to light as able to meet the demands of the contemporary world.