Spinoza began the Political Treatise (TP) in 1675 or 1676. In the last letter we have from him, from 1676, he discusses the work and describes its first six chapters. During 1674 and 1675 he had returned to the Ethics, making final preparation for its publication, which was in the end delayed. He then turned to the new treatise, which remained incomplete at his death on 21 February 1677. The TP was to be a purely political tract, building on the final five chapters of the Theological-Political Treatise (TTP). It was written at the urging of a friend and aggravated by the political urgencies of the 1670s as well as out of his deep concern for stability and peace.
The early 1670s witnessed a Dutch political upheaval that led to political assassinations and the replacement of the liberal regime with a more repressive one. In 1672, with the invasion of French and German armies and the capture of Utrecht and several other cities, the era of the liberal pensionary Jan de Witt came to an end. De Witt and his brother were murdered by a hysterical, uncontrolled mob in a hideous fashion. Whether Spinoza knew de Witt personally and how he was viewed by the statesman are matters of dispute. We have a report that in a rare show of emotion, Spinoza was ready to denounce publicly the barbarity of the de Witt assassination until restrained by his landlord in The Hague. True or not, the tale reflects something about the desperate situation and the danger that Spinoza confronted in the wake of the publication of the TTP and as he worked to complete his systematic philosophy. His fame extended throughout Europe; he was sought, feared, and doubtless hated. By 1674 the TTP had been censored often and recently by the Court of Holland as a threat to religion and the church. Its printing, distribution, or sale was to be severely punished. Also in 1674 Van den Enden, who was in Paris, was arrested, tried, and hanged. One can imagine the fears that ran through Spinoza’s mind in such a climate of repression and violence. Increasingly, he was alone—old friends like Simon de Vries and Pieter Balling having died, others including Koerbagh, de Witt, and Van den Enden executed as the result of persecution and fear. It is not surprising that Spinoza’s thoughts turned to politics.
Spinoza set as his task the analysis of various types of constitution and their suitability for producing peace and stability. His world was filled with increasing fear and repression; it provided him personally with fame but forced him to confront the spectacle of public violence. It was a world that seemed to demand the stern but wise hand of reason and science to examine its structure and to identify how peace might best be achieved. To give a rational argument for the preeminent character of a democratic polity: this was the Political Treatise’s primary purpose. It was to build on his understanding of human psychology and human nature, the content of Ethics II and III, and to derive an account of the most suitable constitution, a liberal democracy.
What we have of the Political Treatise consists of eleven chapters: two on monarchy, three on aristocracy, an incomplete chapter on democracy, and five introductory chapters dealing with natural right, sovereignty, and the highest aims of the state. Building on the foundation of his psychology and social psychology, Spinoza explores the advantages and disadvantages of the traditional modes of political organization. Like Hobbes, he founds the social compact in the self-interest, natural power, and rights of its participants. Sovereignty is constituted naturally, by the agreement of individuals who, with hopes and fears, seek defense from assault and a stable, tranquil situation, a condition of peace and opportunity for well-being. In Hobbes, individuals leave the state of nature in order to establish the civil state; in Spinoza, on the contrary, individuals are in both the state of nature and the civil state at once, as is the sovereign. The authority of the latter rests precisely on the surplus of its power over that of its citizens.
Spinoza, however, unlike Hobbes, argues that the best form of government is a democracy, in which citizens grant sovereignty to themselves as one mind, who vote on all law and whose will is in fact the will of the people. Spinoza realized that real states can only approximate the democratic ideal, and the Political Treatise occupies itself with accounts of how real states of the three basic kinds can best serve the purposes of the ideal democratic model. Monarchies, for example, should not be absolute; rather the ruler’s power should be qualified through the activity of a strong council. The best actual monarchy, that is, should be a constitutional monarchy, a judgment that Spinoza makes knowing full well the long Dutch history concerning the Prince of Orange and the role of the stadtholder. Similarly, when Spinoza turns to an aristocratic or oligarchic form of government, he describes a state with three bodies—legislative, executive, and judicial—with a system of a division of power, checks and balances, and a sufficiently large class of patricians to act wisely and honestly for the benefit of all. Ultimately, whether an actual government is democratic, aristocratic, or monarchical, the aim is the same; the well-being of all. This means that freedom and toleration are essential, as long as they are compatible with the state’s peace and security.
As one turns to the Political Treatise and its relation to the Theological-Political Treatise, a number of issues surface. Clearly, the TTP is more polemical and is devoted substantially to theological issues, biblical interpretation, and clerical authority. But the Political Treatise is still concerned with a natural, rational understanding of human nature, and the ways that actual forms of government serve or do not serve the natural flourishing of human life. In the TTP Spinoza focuses on ecclesiastical power and repression. In the Political Treatise he turns to the power of citizens, their passions and their interests, and the way such power can harm or benefit life in the state. There is reason to believe that Spinoza’s thinking does not change in the two works but rather has a different emphasis and takes a different shape. The TTP was an interruption in the preparation of the Ethics for publication; the Political Treatise is its philosophical and systematic development. Each has its special place in Spinoza’s life and philosophical career.
M.L.M.