Baruch Spinoza Esay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Dutch-Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) was one of the most influential proponents of rationalism in the seventeenth century. Spinoza was born in Amsterdam to a Jewish family, but he was accused of heresy and expelled from the Jewish community in 1656. Of his three major works, the Theologico-political Treatise (1670), Ethics (1677), and the Political Treatise (1677), only the first was published during his lifetime. His thought is at the crossroads of often conflicting cultural matrices (Hebraism, Classic and Humanistic philosophy, the Scientific Revolution, and Republicanism), and his originality lies not only in his challenge to early modern philosophy but also in the alternative he proposed to the emerging possessive individualism and Cartesian anthropology. Spinoza seldom discloses his sources, thus it is important to note the tribute he pays to the atomist tradition over the philosophical “trifles” of ancient Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle and the great debt he recognizes to Italian political theorist Niccolò Machiavelli.

Spinoza takes a position within the natural law tradition but also against contractualism. From his original concept of god as substance—impersonal, nonanthropomorphic, and nontranscendental—Spinoza draws the concept of jus sive potentia (right as power): Every single existing thing participates in the very same power of substance, and therefore, as he states in Theologico-political Treatise, “the right of the individual is coextensive with its determinate power” (potentia). According to him, power lies not in potential but only in act. Power is the grounding principle of each thing’s conatus—the tendency of everything (inanimate objects, as well as animals or men) to preserve its own being.

Because the conatus represents the very essence of beings, Spinoza concludes that it is impossible for men to abandon their own natural power and form a state by means of a social contract. He states, “the difference between Hobbes and myself [ . . . ] consists in this, that I always preserve the natural right in its entirety, and I hold that the sovereign power in a State has right over a subject only in proportion to the excess of its power over that of a subject” (Spinoza 2002, 891).

Spinoza points out that the state has its origin not only in human reason but also in affect, especially indignation. The fundamental right to resist lies at the very heart of the relationship between sovereign and subject. The sovereign doesn’t derive his right from a divine authority but is continually exposed to the right and power of the multitude over whom he rules.

While in Theologico-political Treatise Spinoza still makes use of the language of social contract, in Political Treatise he does not employ this concept and explains the formation of the state only through the constitutive dynamics of the multitude, which he sees as the real sovereign. In fact, the positive role that he gives the multitude is an attack on established political tradition. If for English political philosopher Thomas Hobbes the multitude was the natural, rebellious, and monstrous subject of politics, something to be disciplined and transformed into a people under the legitimate power of a sovereign, for Spinoza it is nothing less than the true sovereign subject, no matter the form of government. As a consequence of this, because the right of the state lies solely in the power of the multitude, for Spinoza, the most “absolute” form of government is democracy.

Bibliography:

Balibar, Etienne. Spinoza and Politics. London:Verso, 2008.
Deleuze, Gilles. Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza. New York: Zone Books, 1992.
Macherey, Pierre. Hegel ou Spinoza. Paris: Libraire François Maspero, 1979.
Montag,Warren. Bodies, Masses, and Power: Spinoza and His Contemporaries. London: Verso, 1999.
Spinoza, Baruch. Complete Works, translated by Samuel Shirley. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2002.

This example Baruch Spinoza Esay is published for educational and informational purposes only. If you need a custom essay or research paper on this topic please use our writing services. EssayEmpire.com offers reliable custom essay writing services that can help you to receive high grades and impress your professors with the quality of each essay or research paper you hand in.