Why did spinoza write the ttp

Despite its potential for harm, Spinoza thinks that religion can perform a positive social function. It can help to breed an obedient spirit, making people pliable to civil law—in this way religion plays a role in bolstering the state e. For instance, the ceremonial laws and practices of the Jews helped to foster and preserve cohesion among an ignorant, nomadic populace TTP Ch. Religion also seems to play a crucial role in promoting compliance with the law. The salutary function of religion is undermined when sectarianism emerges.

When groups like the Pharisees begin to regard themselves as special, disparaging and persecuting other groups, civil order is disrupted. In order to prevent such fissures, Spinoza puts forth a universal or civil religion that captures the moral core of a plurality of faiths, to which all citizens can subscribe, irrespective of what other private beliefs they hold TTP 14, —3.

Like Rousseau after him, Spinoza thought that a universal public religion could bolster civic solidarity, channeling religious passions into social benefits.

Spinoza is often remembered for his contribution to the liberal tradition, due, in large part, to his defense of the freedoms of thought and speech in TTP How can Spinoza be a liberal about religious practice while also defending the view that the state maintains full right over matters of religion TTP, Ch.

There are three things worth noting here. Rather, it is essentially a defense of the freedom to philosophize; freedom of worship is at best an incidental byproduct of this primary aim. Sovereign authority over religious expression concerns only the former, leaving the latter the domain of the individual, for reasons that we will examine in a moment.

Both of these positions can be understood as lending support to the Arminian cause against Calvinist Theocrats Nadler , The sovereign retains full discretion to determine which actions are acceptable and what forms of speech are seditious.

Since right is coextensive with power, lacking the power to control beliefs entails lacking the right to do so. However, since Spinoza admits that beliefs can be influenced in myriad ways, even if not fully controlled, this argument amounts to a rather restricted defense of freedom of conscience.

Next, the argument shifts from considering what the sovereign can do to what it would be practical or prudent for a sovereign to do. Spinoza offers a battery of pragmatic reasons in defense of non-interference. Men are naturally inclined to express what they believe ibid. Rosenthal and So, however common attempts to regulate the beliefs, speech, and behavior of others may be, it is politically unstable to do so. Moreover, Spinoza argues that it is often the least wise and the most obnoxious who initiate moral crusades, and just as it is often the wisest and most peace-loving who are the targets of such campaigns TTP 20, — It is worth noting that these arguments in defense of civil liberties are thoroughly pragmatic; they rely on psychological principles and empirical observations to illustrate the instability and imprudence of oppressive governance see Steinberg b.

They are not principled arguments that depend on rights or the intrinsic value of liberty, much to the frustration of some commentators Feuer ; Curley Spinoza introduces the contract in Chapter 16, when considering how people escape the pre-civil condition. E IVP37S2. He also cites the establishment of the Hebrew state, with Moses as the absolute sovereign, as an historical example of a social contract TTP 19, The social contract seems to confer nearly boundless authority on the sovereign.

However, if Spinoza really relies upon the social contract as a source of legitimacy, several problems arise. First of all, it seems unlikely that such a contract could ever have been formed, since the legitimating strength of a social contract depends on farsighted rationality that Spinoza clearly thinks most people lack see Den Uyl But even if such a contract were possible, a much greater problem remains for Spinoza.

What is this right that is surrendered or transferred? Others have tried to reinterpret the contract in a way that is makes it consistent with his naturalism. This power in inalienable. Perhaps the best way to understand what it means to possess or give up one potestas is in psychological terms. These passages can be understood as supporting the view that power is not transferred by way of a speech act, but rather by standing in the psychological thrall of the sovereign. Sovereignty is the product of psychological deference rather than the formal transference of rights or titles.

Some evidence in support of this psychological interpretation comes in TTP 17, where Spinoza claims that sovereign power or authority derives from the will of its subjects to obey TTP 17, —10; cf. There are places in the text, however, when Spinoza seems to imply that we have obligations to the sovereign irrespective of our psychological or motivational state.

In some of these instances, a careful reading reveals that nothing of the sort is implied. Still, there are other places when he does imply that de facto obedience is neither necessary nor sufficient for establishing the legitimacy of a civil body.

For instance, he claims that the sovereign alone has right over religious matters such as interpreting Scripture, excommunicating heretics, and making provisions for the poor TTP 19, - 40 , despite the fact that the church had, in fact, been exercising power in these matters. One might wonder why Spinoza, having published the TTP in , spent the last years of his life until his death in working on a second political treatise that covers some of the same ground as the first.

It is tempting to suppose that he must have come to reject many of his earlier views. However, with the possible exception of his view of the social contract see 4. Rather, the TP is distinguished from the earlier treatise chiefly by its aims and rhetorical style. Whereas the TTP was an occasional piece, written for an audience of liberal Christian theologians to address the problems posed by officious Calvinist theocrats, the TP is concerned with the general organization of the state and was written for philosophers.

Balibar , The TP is a fitting sequel to the Ethics Matheron Whereas the Ethics reveals the path to individual freedom, the TP reveals the extent to which individual freedom depends on civil institutions Steinberg a. The work can be divided into three sections.

In the first section roughly through Chapter 4 , Spinoza discusses the metaphysical basis of the state and the natural limits of state power. In the second section Chapter 5 , Spinoza lays out the general aims of the state. And in the third section Chapter 6 to the end , Spinoza gives specific recommendations for how various regime forms—monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy—are to be constituted so as to satisfy the aims of the state as set out in section two.

In the early chapters of the TP, Spinoza puts forth his naturalistic program, beginning with the premise that the state, like everything else, is a natural thing res naturalis , governed by the laws of nature see Bartuschat , It has seemed to some e. This view is supported by the fact that virtually no mention of a social contract is made in the later treatise Wernham , 25; Matheron At the very least, this passage illustrates a break with the ultra-rational conception of the social contract that appears to lie behind some of the claims of the TTP.

They stand under the right or power of the sovereign, because they are held psychologically in its sway. But what exactly does it mean to deduce the foundations of the state from the nature of men?

E IVP5dem. The state is thus an unintended, but salutary, outcome of the natural interplay of human passions.

In this sense, the civil condition is a natural condition. However, Spinoza says precious little about the process of civil formation itself in the TP, making such an interpretation deeply underdetermined, at best. While one can, like Den Uyl ibid. Here his concern is just to delineate the general aim of the state on the basis of which he can give more fine-grained recommendations relative to regime forms see 4. To grasp what Spinoza means here we must try to understand what he means by peace.

It is one thing for a state to persist or to avoid the ravages of war, it is quite another for the state to flourish. Spinoza makes this point by way of an organic metaphor:. This is perhaps the central normative question of the TP see Steinberg ; Steinberg a. Spinoza addresses this question by way of offering institutional recommendations for each regime type.

To see how Spinoza provides a general response to the question of how peace or civic agreement is promoted, we must bear in mind that the relation of agreement comes in degrees see Blom ; Steinberg A society of free men would be a perfect union EIVP67— However, the free man exists only as an ideal; all actual men are imperfectly rational.

The concern of the state is to bring it about that the actual relationships between people most closely approximate the ideal society of free men. That is, the aim of the state is to make irrational, selfish men as rational and virtuous as possible. Civil rationality is the product of a republican set of institutions that encourage broad participation, public deliberation, and the adoption of a variety of accountability-promoting mechanisms.

A rationally organized state will not only promote the common good, in so doing it will also strengthen the civic commitment of its citizens; this is one key way in which the state contributes to the reorientation of the affects of its citizens and increases the level of agreement between citizens, the product of which is harmony or peace Steinberg ; Steinberg a. Given that the fundamental aim of the state is peace, the question that Spinoza seeks to address in chapters 6 and 7 of the Political Treatise is how a monarchy is to be organized so as to be maximally peaceful.

He begins by repeating the claim that men are largely irrational and selfish. And since the passions of common men must be regulated, it is tempting to suppose, as Hobbes does, that heavy-handed governance is required. This is because the King is likely to look after his advantage alone, neglecting the general welfare, which will ultimately result in the weakening of the civitas. In order to overcome this condition, it is essential for there to be constitutional checks on the behavior of the monarch.

For instance, Spinoza writes that in a properly constituted state:. Ultimately, a model monarchy will be a constitutional monarchy that will strongly resemble a democracy. Spinoza discusses two types of aristocracy and the best forms of each. The first is a centralized aristocracy that appears to have been modeled on the Venetian Republic McShea , ; Haitsma Mulier The second is a decentralized aristocracy, in which sovereignty is held by several cities.

Spinoza argues, in proto-Madisonian fashion, that the council of patricians must be sizable so as to reduce the potential for factionalism e. Absoluteness thus indicates a norm very much like peace, the cardinal civil norm; so to say that one regime form is more absolute than another amounts to declaring its superiority. While Spinoza clearly indicates that aristocracies are, on the whole and in most cases, superior to monarchies, a more interesting and somewhat more vexed question is how aristocracies compare with democracies.

Feuer and Melamed However, this advantage is offset by the biased, self-serving practices of most patricians ibid. And since Spinoza claims that democracy is the most absolute form of regime e. Ultimately, though, Spinoza is less interested in rank-ordering regimes than he is in determining how each regime-type must be organized in order to maximize freedom and the common good. Spinoza had barely begun writing the first of what would likely have been two chapters on democracy when he died on February 21, His conception of democracy includes any system of popular governance in which the governing members acquire the right to participate by virtue of their civil status rather than by election.

This conception of democracy is broad enough to include even variants of timocracy. What is particularly interesting is how Spinoza defends these democratic features, since this gives us insight into how democracies are to be defended in general. In the TTP Spinoza seems to provides both principled and instrumental arguments in favor of democracy. In the TP, Spinoza focuses exclusively on the instrumental defense, highlighting what has recently been called the epistemic advantage of democracy, i.

At issue in this debate is whether Spinoza was more of a collectivist or an individualist. Some of the strongest evidence in support of the conception of the state as an individual comes from the so-called physical digression between IIP13 and IIP14, where Spinoza directly discusses individuality.

Here, once again, Spinoza delineates a picture of composite, higher-order individuals, opening up the possibility of viewing the state itself as an individual. Others who have espoused this view include Meinecke and Blom This interpretation has been challenged in a number of ways. The problem with this objection is that there is no reason to suppose that all individuals are characterized by complete integration of parts. Matheron, for instance, describes the state as complex individual whose parts are only integrated to a limited degree , It is perfectly consistent to recognize the discrete individuality of humans while allowing that, under certain conditions of association, individuals can simultaneously be members of larger units.

One can be both a collectivist and an individualist. If we assume that all individuals are singular things for a helpful discussion of the relationship between these concepts, see D. Garrett , then the fact that states can ostensibly be destroyed by their parts i. This is a forceful objection. Specifically, Spinoza could explain cases of apparent civil self-destruction by maintaining that they occur only at the hands of poorly-integrated individuals who stand, at least to some degree, outside of the body politic.

A third challenge to the collectivist interpretation is that if the state is an individual, it should have a mind of its own. This is consistent with the claim, noted above, that integration into a larger union is itself a matter of degree.

Ultimately, it seems to me that far less hinges on the success or failure of the collectivist interpretation than has been assumed by its opponents. The primary concern expressed by critics like Den Uyl and Barbone seems to be that Spinoza not be understood as treating the state as an individual with its own interests that might trump the interests of its constituents. Isaiah Berlin condemned Spinoza along with other positive liberty theorists precisely because he took Spinoza to be reifying the state and putting state interests above individual interests But even if the state is an individual, it does not follow that its interests would supersede the interests of its citizens.

In short, the collectivist can embrace the normative primacy of the individual human being. If this is allowed, the matter of whether the state is a literal or merely metaphorical individual seems to matter far less than many scholars have supposed. Further complicating the assessment is the fact that Spinoza and Spinozism remained a bugbear throughout Europe for much of the late 17 th and 18 th centuries, during which time Spinozism was widely associated with atheism.

However, the TTP was read, discussed, and condemned in the decades following its publication. The critical reception tended to focus on the perceived anti-religious features of the work—for instance, the refutation of miracles and the denial of the divine origin of the Pentateuch—but the naturalistic account of right and law and the arguments for the freedom to philosophize also provoked debate. The doctrine had its critics see e.

Citations refer to the chapter, followed by page number e. Curley All Latin passages refer to Spinoza Opera , ed. Carl Gebhardt, 4 vols. Heidelberg: Carl Winter, I wish to thank Michael Rosenthal, Steven B.

Smith, and an anonymous reviewer for many helpful comments and suggestions. Historical Background 1. The Tractatus Theologico-Politicus 3. The Tractatus Politicus 4. He introduces this concept in TTP 16, where he boldly writes: By the right and order of nature I merely mean the rules determining the nature of each individual thing by which we conceive it is determined naturally to exist and to behave in a certain way.

For example fish are determined by nature to swim and big fish to eat little ones, and therefore it is by sovereign natural right that fish have possession of the water and that big fish eat small fish. For it is certain that nature, considered wholly in itself, has a sovereign right to do everything that it can do, i.

TTP 16, ; cf. The Tractatus Theologico-Politicus As indicated above, throughout the seventeenth century the United Provinces were torn apart by disputes concerning, among other things, the political authority of the church. The Tractatus Politicus One might wonder why Spinoza, having published the TTP in , spent the last years of his life until his death in working on a second political treatise that covers some of the same ground as the first.

Spinoza makes this point by way of an organic metaphor: So when we say that the best state is one where men pass their lives in harmony, I am speaking of human life, which is characterized not just by the circulation of the blood and other features common to animals, but especially by reason, the true virtue and life of the mind.

A rationally organized state will not only promote the common good, in so doing it will also strengthen the civic commitment of its citizens; this is one key way in which the state contributes to the reorientation of the affects of its citizens and increases the level of agreement between citizens, the product of which is harmony or peace Steinberg ; Steinberg a 4.

For instance, Spinoza writes that in a properly constituted state: The king…whether motivated by fear of the people or by his desire to win over the greater part of an armed populace, or whether he is led by nobility of spirit to have regard to the public interest, will always ratify the opinion that is supported by most votes-i. Machiavelli, Niccolo, , The Prince , Trans. Russell Price, Ed. Spinoza, Benedictus de. Spinoza Opera. Carl Gebhardt. Heidelberg: Carl Winter Press.

Mendelssohn, Moses, , Jerusalem , Trans. Even the notion of libertas philosophandi 'freedom to philosophize' , which, according to the full title, would be the book's central concern, is not free from ambiguity. In any case, it is far from obvious in what way that notion provides an organizing principle for the book as a whole. Indeed, one of the questions could be to what extent the book is a whole, given the fact that Spinoza presents the book as a collection of 'some treatises' aliquot dissertationes.

As a result, a 'critical guide' is needed. One would expect a critical guide to the TTP to provide teachers and students with reading help. More specifically, one would want an overall analysis and a thorough discussion of certain key notions. Preferably there would also be an assessment of the relation to Spinoza's other works, especially the Ethics and the Political Treatise. Particularly one would want information on the context.

It is my view indeed that with the TTP Spinoza intervened in certain very specific political debates concerning the relation of Holland to the other provinces, the Dutch political system, the position of the Dutch Reformed Church as a 'public' Church, and the future of the United Provinces, even if large parts of the book were probably written with a different purpose.

Finally, a 'critical guide' should contain a critical review of the relevant secondary literature. I am sorry to say that, despite the high level of scholarship displayed throughout this volume and the absolute originality of some of the contributions, this 'critical guide' to the TTP hardly meets those expectations.

Edwin Curley, to whom the volume is dedicated, contributes a fine article on 'Spinoza's exchange with Albert Burgh,' which culminates with a discussion of superstition, concluding that, after all, Spinoza finds it desirable for the state to sponsor a religion he himself believes to be superstitious.

In Curley's view the 'universal creed' serves as the common denominator of all religious sects that is, basically superstitious beliefs and not as a philosophically purified religion. This is a good point, although it does little to solve the problem of the relation between superstition and 'true religion. Accordingly, it would not be the precise contents of a belief that makes it superstitious, but the feelings associated with it.

Piet Steenbakkers gives an excellent introduction to the historical aspects of the book: the history of its publication, the philological problems etc. This is exactly the type of article one would want for this type of book. In 'Spinoza on Ibn Ezra's "secret of the twelve",' Warren Zev Harvey illuminates a detail in Spinoza's discussion of the authenticity of the Pentateuch. At the end he draws an interesting parallel with Hobbes, which would deserve a closer study. For a critical guide the point is of minor significance.

Daniel Lasker draws attention to the polemical literature against the Christians written by Jews and former conversos , and against the Jews written by Christians 'Reflections of the medieval Jewish-Christian debates in the Theological-Political Treatise and the Epistles '.

His general point that Spinoza's rejection of the Jewish faith did not lead him to be completely sympathetic with the Christian faith is valid. His more particular point, that Spinoza's arguments against both the one and the other derive from that polemical literature, may be an overstatement and in any case wants further proof. After all, many of the points held by Spinoza against orthodox Christianity were also made by Socinians and other Christian sects.

Moreover, Spinoza's discussion of Christianity is also determined by a political concern, the Christian religion being a source of social and political discord and even civil wars e.

Although therefore Spinoza verbally endorses the Christian religion, he must de-emphasize particular theological points e. My impression is that he used whatever arguments could be found.

Among the more original contributions to this volume is the article by Yitzhak Melamed, one of the editors, on 'The metaphysics of the Theological-Political Treatise. If the TTP does contain a defence of the 'freedom to philosophize', we should know what kind of philosophy is vindicated: any philosophy, Spinoza's own philosophy as a whole, or, as I believe, any philosophy which arrives at conclusions similar to Spinoza's -- more particularly those conclusions most contemporaries saw as 'atheist' or as implying 'atheism.

Melamed discusses the first and, rather too briefly, the third point, but surprisingly does not say much about the second point, which to my mind is the most important of all because it implies that God cannot be a lawgiver which in turn would imply that all religious, moral and political authority is of human origin.

Spinoza's argument in ch. Donald Rutherford's contribution to the volume is 'Spinoza's conception of law: metaphysics and ethics'. Spinoza discusses 'law' and particularly 'divine law' in ch. Indeed, as I already pointed out, if God cannot be a lawgiver, all authority has a human origin and must be explicable by psychological and sociological laws. Moreover, the three monotheist religions would be radically false.

It seems to me and I have argued for it elsewhere that the idea that there can be no divine lawgiver provides the conceptual link between the various arguments that compose the TTP. Rutherford provides a detailed and clever analysis, trying to reduce the law of God to the 'law of reason', which, according to him, must be a 'law' in the sense of a binding precept because reason defines our nature.

But, first of all, the divine law as discussed in ch. Moreover, in the Political Treatise Spinoza explicitly denies that reason has 'authority' imperium , TP ii, , which probably also explains why he usually does not speak of 'the laws of reason' but of the 'lessons of reason' dictamina rationis -- prudential rules which, given a certain end, suggest a course of action without containing any obligation.

Finally, the notion of human nature as a normative concept does not fit easily in Spinoza's general philosophy. Even if my nature would be rational which according to Spinoza it is not, for that matter, men being primarily passionate beings , I am under no 'natural' obligation to live according to the lessons of reason -- the fool is as 'natural' as the sage TTP xvi, III, If Spinoza's line were as Rutherford claims, Spinoza would be part of the Grotian tradition of natural law and natural right, which he rejects in TTP ch.

In 'Getting his hands dirty: Spinoza's criticism of the rebel,' Michael Della Rocca moves from a specific question 'to what extent the actions of a rebel can be justified' to one of the fundamental problems of Spinoza's philosophy in general 'to what extent is moral criticism justified'.

According to Spinoza the state enhances our power, so a rebellious act, whose end is by definition to destroy the power of the state, would be inherently inconsistent.