Spinoza's Philosophy of Divine Order: Ben Stahlberg

A M E R I C A N U N I V E R S I T Y S T U D I E S
Spinoza’s Philosophy
of Divine Order
B E N S TA H L B E R G
While Spinoza is often interpreted as an early secular or liberal thinker, this
book argues that such interpretations neglect the senses of order and author-
ity that are at the heart of Spinoza’s idea of God. For Spinoza, God is an orga-
nized and directed totality of all that exists. God is entirely immanent to this
totality, to such an extent that all things are fundamentally of God. Appre-
ciating the full extent to which God permeates and orders every aspect of
reality, allows the full sense of Spinoza’s theories of tolerance and the social
contract to come into view. Rather than assuming that human beings
involved in political relationships are independent, autonomous individu-
als, for Spinoza they are parts of a larger whole subject to distinct natural
laws. Spinoza maintains that such laws manifest themselves equally and iden-
tically in the seemingly distinct realms of religion and politics. In this
respect, Spinoza’s theories of religion and biblical interpretation are not prop-
erly secular in character but rather blur the standard boundary between the
religious and the political as they try to recognize and codify the inviolable
laws of nature—or God.
BEN STAHLBERG received his Ph.D. from Syracuse University in New York.
He is currently Senior Lecturer of Religion at Colgate University in Hamilton,
New York.
A M E R I C A N
U N I V E R S I T Y
S T U D I E S
of Divine Order
SERIES VII
THEOLOGY AND RELIGION
VOL. 353
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of Divine Order
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Stahlberg, Ben.
Spinoza’s philosophy of divine order / Ben Stahlberg.
pages cm. — (American University studies VII. Theology and religion; Vol. 353)
Includes bibliographical references.
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T able of Contents
Notations and Abbreviations vii

Introduction 1
General Overview 1
Outline 5
The Problem of Agency 9
Chapter One: “The Face of the Whole Universe”: Spinoza’s Idea of God 15
Introduction: God’s Self-Causal Nature 15
Substance 16
Natura Naturans—Natura Naturata 21
The Conditions of Pantheism 23
The Problem of “Finite Modes” 34
Real Distinctions 40
Chapter Two: “A Kingdom Within a Kingdom”: Spinoza on the
Individual and the Idea of the Will 51
Introduction: The Problem of the Individual 51
Mind and Body 52
The Order of Desire 62
Common Notions 69
The “Idea” of the Will 74
vi | spinoza ’ s philosophy of divine order
Chapter Three: “Nothing More Useful than Man…”: Spinoza on Politics 83

Introduction 83
Nature’s Laws 84
Reasons for the Political Body 92
The Freedom of Obedience 98
The Conditions of Toleration 110
Chapter Four: “The Supreme Reward of the Divine Law”:
Law and Religion in Spinoza 117
Introduction 117
Spinoza’s Theocracy 119
The Love of God 128
Spinoza’s Idea of Hebrew 142
The Politics of Biblical Interpretation 147
Conclusion: “Man Is God to Man” 155
Strauss 157
Levinas 161
Scripture, Servitude, and Sovereignty 168
Notes 177
Bibliography 197
Notations and
Abbreviations
All parenthetical quotations of Spinoza are taken from Samuel Shirley’s Complete
Works of Spinoza. As all “Propositions” from the Ethics are italicized in the text
they are left so when quoted. To clarify which of Spinoza’s texts these quotations
are drawn from I refer to the specific text within the parentheses by the following
abbreviations:
TI—Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect

ST—Short Treatise on God, Man, and Well-Being
PCP—Principles of Cartesian Philosophy
E—Ethics
TTP—Theological-Political Treatise
TP—Political Treatise
HG—Hebrew Grammar
L—The Letters
All Latin quotations from Spinoza are taken from Bendicti de Spinoza opera philo-
sophica omina. Edited by August Firedrich Gfroeer. Stuttgart: J.B. Mezleri, 1830.
All biblical quotations are, unless otherwise noted, taken from The Jewish
Study Bible (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
Introduction
General Overview
This book argues that the thought of Baruch de Spinoza—or Benedcit de Spi-
noza1—is best understood as a philosophy of divine order. By order, I mean an
organized and directed totality, caused only by itself, and with nothing falling out-
side of its purview. For Spinoza, such an order is divine precisely because of its
infinite, solely-caused character, and thus he equates it with God—along with
Nature and substance. This book is an attempt to delineate the many aspects and
implications of Spinoza’s conception of divine order, particularly with regard to
how human beings should live.
It is especially in light of this last concern that I argue that Spinoza’s idea of
divine order should be understood as a re-examination of what we take an individ-
ual to be. That is, insofar as Spinoza is interested in describing a rationally ordered
totality of all that is, one that interprets all particular parts of that totality as first
and foremost parts of that whole, he is also interested in overcoming the idea that
the human individual is any kind of substance of its own. Human beings are not
entities in their own right, argues Spinoza, but specific modifications of God’s
existence. The importance of this point is not only metaphysical, of course, but
ethical, political, and religious as well.
2 | spinoza ’ s philosophy of divine order
While many hold that Spinoza was an early Enlightenment philosopher who
paved the way for later forms of philosophical and political liberalism,2 I argue
here that this picture of Spinoza leaves a great deal of his thought either under-
developed or obscured. Specifically, interpretations of Spinoza that focus simply
on his views of autonomy, tolerance, and freedom of thought neglect the ways in
which these ideals are highly—indeed, decisively—qualified by their place within
Spinoza’s conception of God, and the order that God instills. It is crucial to see
how Spinoza is concerned with overcoming the idea that human beings are, prin-
cipally, individuals who choose (or have the ability to choose) courses of action
based on reasons or interests that they possess. To the extent that this central
critique goes unrecognized, a large theme within Spinoza’s thought lies obscured.
For Spinoza, the free or rational life is also the obedient one—obedient not just to
the dictates of reason but in our obligation to one another, and even the political
and religious structures that bring us together.
The idea that Spinoza sees freedom as a form of obedience runs counter to
a great many interpretations of Spinoza, and this is especially so when we con-
sider the concrete implications of such obedience. Indeed, many argue that the
whole point of the rational life for Spinoza is to move away from any regard for
particulars to a pure concern for universals. A good example of this interpreta-
tion is Rebecca Goldstein’s recent Betraying Spinoza: The Radical Jew who Gave
us Modernity. Goldstein argues that Spinoza’s philosophy is best characterized as
a form of “radical objectivity.”3 The things that most people see as constitutive of
their lives—“one’s own family and history, one’s racial, religious, cultural, sexual,
or national identity”—are, for Goldstein’s Spinoza, mere accidents to which too
many have “lingering emotional attachments.”4 Indeed, Goldstein goes so far as to
argue that any aspiration to an “extraphilosophical intimacy”—including her own
book—“amounts to a betrayal of his vision.”5
While Goldstein is obviously right to focus her attention on Spinoza’s critique
of the particular and the personal, she does not (in my view) appreciate the fact
that the purpose of Spinoza’s critique is not to realize a transcendence of particu-
larity but to change the terms and conditions by which it is understood. Of course,
it is undoubtedly the case that “the priority of that fascinating singularity, that
problematic and precious ‘I,’ is, for Spinoza a symptom of passivity, the accep-
tance of the contingently given.”6 In addition, Goldstein is also quite correct to
emphasize Spinoza’s insistence that this passivity “weakens our capacities, drains
and stunts us, impedes our driving force to persist in our being to flourish in the
world.”7 But what goes missing in Goldstein’s account is any description of what
that very world is—of what it means to persist in a being that is “ours.” While Spi-
noza certainly prizes objective, philosophical knowledge, he does so not because
i n t r o d u c t i o n | 3
he wishes to discount particular religious and political commitments. Indeed, it is

the argument of this book that Spinoza sees the importance of philosophy to lie
principally in its ability to disclose to us the exact nature and significance of these
commitments—commitments which are valuable in themselves, independent of
some sort of philosophical legitimacy.
Thus, in this book I read the entirety of Spinoza’s work together, in order to see
how Spinoza’s moral and political ideas are informed by his theories of philosophy
and ontology, and vice versa. There is, in the literature on Spinoza, a general sense
that these are separate domains within his thought that should generally be con-
sidered in isolation from one another. Sometimes this argument is made explicitly,
as Menachem Lorberbaum has done,8 while other times it is more implicit, as in
the work of Steven B. Smith. Although Smith asserts that the Theologico-Political
Treatise (1670); hereafter TTP) and the Ethics (1677) are each parts of “a complex
whole,” he insists at the same time that the TTP “was intended as an exercise in
public philosophy,” whereas the Ethics, by contrast, “is an intensely private, deeply
introspective book.”9 For Smith, while one text looks out, to the public world, the
other looks within, to “the moral and psychological conditions of liberty.”10
Such an approach to Spinoza, with its implicit delineation of the public from
the private, is not entirely unmerited, but taken too far it can conceal more than it
reveals. Nonetheless, a dichotomy between philosophy (or ontology) and political
theory is widespread in the secondary literature in Spinoza, even amongst those
who offer interpretations of Spinoza radically different than Smith’s. Indeed, this
tacit compartmentalization of Spinoza’s work is often due to the strikingly differ-
ent ways in which Spinoza’s political philosophy is interpreted. For example, many
thinkers, such as Smith and Lewis Feuer, regard Spinoza as one of the earliest
intellectual fathers of the tradition of democratic liberalism. As such, they are
inclined to treat Spinoza’s epistemology as distinct from the exclusively public
task of his political theory. On the other hand, there are many, such as Gilles
Deleuze, Etienne Balibar, Antonio Negri and Michael Hart, who present Spinoza
as putting forth a radical materialist ontology which ultimately seeks to undo the
theory of the social contract laid out in the TTP.11 For these thinkers, the TTP is
of interest only to the extent that it lies in tension with Spinoza’s later reflections
in the incomplete Political Treatise (1676). In this respect, the political philosophy
of the TTP is an important problem within Spinoza’s philosophy, a tension which
cannot be resolved—much less reconciled—with the larger philosophical themes
in Spinoza’s work.
Yet this hard separation between different disciplines in these interpretations
of Spinoza is nowhere more pronounced than in their understanding of the role of
religion in his work. One of the main problems in the interpretation of Spinoza has
been the fashion in which many inquiries that have tended either to marginalize or
completely disregard the importance of religion in his political and philosophical
positions. I argue in this book that the principal area in which Spinoza has been
mis-read is in the area of religion. Specifically, the assertion that Spinoza is an
early, secular thinker is a major stumbling block to proper understanding of his
thought. Indeed, despite the differences of opinion surrounding Spinoza’s political
thought, religion is the one area where all of the above scholars are in agreement.
The great majority of Spinoza’s interpreters present him as a thinker whose only
real interest in religion lies in effectively disabling it. Many follow the lead of
Leo Strauss12 and argue that Spinoza had no interest in developing a constructive
sense of religion, given his conception of “God” and his critique of the Bible. Any
seemingly positive statements about religion—particularly Spinoza’s conception of
“true religion” [vera religio]—cannot, from this perspective, be taken seriously. For
others, such as Etienne Balibar, Spinoza’s conceptions of desire and the multitude
put him fundamentally at odds with any religious sensibility. What is constitutive
of human beings from a Spinozist point of view, these scholars argue, is our uncon-
trollable and ceaselessly creative desire, which could not be further opposed to any
form of creedal or ecclesiastical structure.
Yet while it is quite clear that Spinoza does not subscribe to any conception
of religion as a form of “faith”—in the traditional sense of an individual’s belief
in something unconfirmable—it does not follow from this that Spinoza is not a
religious thinker. Indeed, as theorists such as Talal Asad have shown, the idea that
religion, at its root, should be equated with belief or faith is largely the product of
the confrontation of Christianity with modernity:
It has become commonplace among historians of modern Europe to say that religion
was gradually compelled to concede the domain of public power to the constitutional
state, and of public truth to natural science. But perhaps it is also possible to suggest
that in this movement we have the construction of religion as a new historical object:
anchored in personal experience, expressible belief-statements, dependent on private
institutions, and practiced in one’s spare time. This construction of religion ensures
that it is part of what is inessential to our common politics, economy, science, and
morality.13
With this in mind, it is clear that we run a great risk in discounting Spinoza’s
religiousness because he does not accord himself to the Protestant ideal of faith
or belief (particularly in something supernatural). Indeed, by construing the very
possibility of Spinoza’s religiousness in only this distinct way, we are fundamen-
tally blocked from considering not only what other conception of religion may be
in his work, but also how he may have tried to critique the prevailing conception
of religion upon which we ourselves rely. Unlike many of his interpreters, Spinoza
(I argue) is quite interested in making sure that religion plays an essential part in
“our common politics, economy, science, and morality.”
This book interprets Spinoza’s admittedly minimal conception of religion in
light of Spinoza’s idea of God, as well as how he thinks human beings should
respond to God. In his view, such a response should indeed be quite rational but
it should also be, simultaneously, communal. On the one hand, Spinoza clearly
argues that the love of God is equal to the knowledge of God—that one loves
God by pursuing God as a philosophical object of knowledge. On the other hand,
the attainment of such knowledge does not turn one “inward” or make one more
spiritually aware. Far from being a purely individualistic affair, Spinoza argues
that the true knowledge and love of God turns one outward—turns one towards
one’s community and the world at large. Thus, while Judaism and Christianity do
not demonstrate philosophical knowledge of God, they do (at their core) elicit
the love of God by encouraging basic moral concepts—what Spinoza identifies
as certain “common notions”—of love, justice, and charity toward our neighbor.
For Spinoza true religion—as well as philosophy and politics—is concerned with
the cultivation of these virtues. While such a conception of religion may seem
theologically sparse to some, or even essentially ethical to others, Spinoza insists
that it is precisely its tacit ubiquity that testifies to religion’s importance, and its
truth. As religion brings human beings together, unifying them in a common cause
and common concern for one another, the power and reason of human beings is
increased, and, as Spinoza says, “Man is God to man” (E 338).
Outline
The structure of this book is laid out as follows. As the general thesis of my
book is that Spinoza’s philosophy of divine order should be seen as not only a
re-thinking of the relationship between God and humanity but also, by extension,
as a critique of the prevailing conception of how that relationship had been widely
determined, the introduction attempts to suggest both a general conception of
the Christian theory of the individual as well as suggest some historical reasons
why Spinoza may have seen this theory as especially problematic. That is, since
the purpose of this book is to illuminate a new sense of divine order—a sense of
the world—it is necessary to sketch out the general contours of the order that
Spinoza is challenging. This account can only be inceptive, given that my primary
argument stems from a reading of Spinoza’s work, and therefore cannot account
for all complexity surrounding these issues. Nevertheless, some orientation to the
philosophical-theological background that Spinoza is challenging is necessary.
Chapter One is an argument about Spinoza’s idea of God. Here I argue that
the first and crucial step in appreciating Spinoza’s conception of divine order is
appreciating what I call Spinoza’s pantheism. Though, as I discuss in this chapter,
pantheism is not a term that Spinoza uses to describe his own philosophy, I argue
that this idea best expresses Spinoza’s insistence that God is one, self-caused, and
therefore absolutely immanent. Here I delineate the different senses of substance,
attribute, and mode as they appear in Spinoza’s work—in his early writings as well
as in his Ethics. A central part of this argument is discerning what Spinoza means
by “finite modes.” I argue that many thinkers, such as Edwin Curley14 and Aaron
Garrett15 have an overly “separatist” conception of finite modes—they see modes
as distinct from substance in some ontologically significant sense. I take issue with
this view and try to show how, especially given the geometric structure of Spinoza’s
argument, their positions are fundamentally at odds with Spinoza’s conception of
God. Specifically, given Spinoza’s idea that God is the only substance and that
substance can only be, as a logical matter, one, the position of these commentators
is much too Cartesian for Spinoza. Drawing on the work of Deleuze, I try to show
how Spinoza’s pantheism works and how it draws on the “univocal” philosophy of
Duns Scotus to do so.
The relationship between God and finite modes, is especially important
because it figures the relationship between God and human beings. I explore these
anthropological implications in the second chapter. Since human beings are not
separate from God in any real sense, I argue that human beings are parts of divine
order, and thus subject to the way in which that order is expressed.16 Of particular
importance for understanding the order brought about by God is Spinoza’s con-
ception of conatus—often translated as “power” or “desire”—and the role it plays in
unifying modes of the intellect and extension in human beings. While scholars like
Michael Della Rocca17 argue that Spinoza must have a sense of individual beings
as ontologically discrete beings of their own if they can be described as intellectual
or extended at all, I argue here that Spinoza is serious in his insistence that human
beings have no extra-modal reality apart from their being in God. It is by conatus,
I argue, that God coordinates the varying modes of thought and extension into
the formation of what we take to be individual human beings. In this respect,
conatus is something akin to a natural law that brings different sorts of modes into
relationship with one another. The sense we have of ourselves as individuals arises
from the experience of this coordination, and is thus an experience common to all
human beings.
What this means is that we, as “individuals” or “selves,” are not “kingdoms
within a kingdom” (E 277)—volitional subjects capable of willing laws or ends for
our choosing. God, or Nature, orders and structures our lives. Yet the experience
of this structure is such that all human beings have the experience of continuity
across different sorts of modes—such that all minds have bodies and vice versa.
This symmetry, brought about by God’s order, lays the basis for a kind of common
experience that we all have, as well as a kind of common knowledge that we are
all privy to. Far from being mundane or elementary, the common notions we have
of ourselves are crucially important for Spinoza, and fall into the same category of
knowledge that the common notions of justice and charity do. In this respect, the
conception of commonality, particularly common notions, which is analyzed in
this chapter is crucially important for understanding Spinoza’s theories of politics
and religion.
It is in this respect that Spinoza stands out from a great many philosophers
and theologians: he insists not only that are we a part of God, but that our rela-
tionship to God is not figured by or turned upon our individual wills. Rather,
human beings are complex organizations of modes, brought together and arranged
by God to participate in a rational order. In Chapter Three, I argue that Spino-
za’s idea of the state roughly mirrors this conception of human identity. For Spi-
noza, human beings are political creatures, as their conatus can only be increased
by entering into a communal relationship with one another. In contrast to Thomas
Hobbes, then, Spinoza sees the social contract not as a hindrance to human beings
but as an enhancement. Indeed, Spinoza sees the empowerment which is attained
through political life as rational as well as concrete. For Spinoza, political life is
more rational than a life apart from other people.
This conclusion has radical implications for Spinoza’s conceptions of sover-
eignty and freedom. In terms of sovereignty, the inherently rational nature of polit-
ical life means that life under a sovereign is also an inherently rational form of life.
As sovereigns are always interested in bringing their subjects under their control,
they are always interested in gaining their endorsement (for, Spinoza argues, how
can they guarantee the unity of their rule if their subjects oppose them?). Obedi-
ence is thus a rational form of life from which only true freedom can be attained.
Spinoza’s conceptions of tolerance and the social contract, I argue, can only be
truly understood from these conceptions of sovereignty and freedom.
Chapter Four shows how Spinoza’s conception of common notions and the
natural law of conatus codify themselves, when properly perceived, not just into a
strictly political structure but into a religious one as well. Crucial to understanding
God and how we are to respond to God, is appreciating that our response should
be, ideally, both political and religious—to the point where the two are necessarily
intertwined. Indeed, if we properly appreciate the importance and scope of sover-

eign political bodies in Spinoza, then we must recognize that Spinoza grants the
sovereign not merely temporal control over religion’s influence within the state,
but over religion as such. Focusing on Spinoza’s discussion of Moses and (what he
terms) “The Hebrew Commonwealth,” as it develops over the course of the TTP,
I argue that contrary to the widely held opinion, Spinoza is not a secular thinker
at all.
The integration of the religious and the political in Spinoza is also clear in
Spinoza’s conception of the love of God. Like Maimonides, I argue, Spinoza sees
the proper love of God to be the knowledge of God, and, also like Maimonides,
Spinoza sees this love as a kind of union with the divine. Unlike Maimonides,
however, Spinoza argues that this identity between God and human beings has a
decidedly communal character. That is, while Maimonides thinks that one loves
God most successfully “in a state of solitude and seclusion,”18 Spinoza emphasizes
that an individual’s love of God is increased through the cultivation of that love in
others. Thus, the Bible commands, simultaneously, the love of God and the love of
one’s neighbor as one’s self precisely because it attempts to illuminate this common
identity for its reader. I argue that Spinoza’s entire theory of biblical interpretation
is premised around making this identity clear. Whatever stark differences exist
between us and the authors of the Bible (and for Spinoza there are many), these
differences ultimately serve only to distinguish the simple truth of our common
moral notions. That is, it is in the juxtaposition of the strange and the familiar, the
particular and the universal, that the extraordinary prevalence and importance of
the basic principles of “true religion” are disclosed. Indeed, I argue that it was pre-
cisely his interest in conveying this ubiquity to his more philosophically-minded
friends that prompted Spinoza to write his compendium on Hebrew grammar.
In the Conclusion, I reflect on some of the theoretical implications of this
picture of Spinoza, particularly as they relate to themes in the work of Strauss
and Emmanuel Levinas. Despite what they deem to be the inherently religious
elements of Spinoza’s thought, both Strauss and Levinas recognize the good that
Spinoza thinks comes from proper biblical interpretation. Both Strauss and Levi-
nas recognize this biblical good, I aruge, because they are both—like Spinoza—
critics of the conception of human beings as autonomous or self-legislating sub-
jects. Strauss, Levinas, and Spinoza see the moral truths of the Bible as facts of
human experience which alert the individual subject to the world of a moral order
outside themselves, thereby calling their sovereignty or autonomy into question.
Yet, in contrast to Strauss and Levinas, I argue that Spinoza has a more compel-
ling account of the necessity of religious and political life in coming to understand
this fact. In the end, I suggest that—despite its own problems and limitations
—Spinoza’s theory of order is an important alternative to how we can re-think

what it means to live together and find some middle ground between the skeptical
political realism of Strauss and the unattainable ethical standards of Levinas.
The Problem of Agency
At the heart of the conception of the individual that Spinoza wants to overturn
is the idea of the volitional individual—the idea that the individual is a distinct
substance possessed of a will or the power of choice. The traditional notion of the
will, the notion to which Spinoza responds, describes the will as an individual’s
faculty of consent and resolve. From this general definition, three important points
follow. First, the will as it is generally understood is the focal point of an individ-
ual’s volitional ability; it determines what an individual may or may not endorse
or what course of action she may pursue. Second, the will is a specific faculty, one
that pursues some good determined by another faculty (such as the appetite or the
intellect) and either attains or approximates that good on the basis of a power par-
ticular to it. And finally, the will is necessarily separate from the good it pursues.
The will is in this sense fundamentally a faculty of pursuit: a faculty that is charged
with attaining, in the future, what it doesn’t have.
In his defense of what he calls “bourgeois philosophy,” the philosophy of the
European enlightenment and specifically the work of Immanuel Kant, Robert
Pippen argues that at its best such a philosophy should be understood as a philos-
ophy of freedom. For Pippen, bourgeois philosophy is:
A philosophy that explains how it is possible (whether it is possible) that individual

subjects could uniquely, qua individuals, direct the course of their own lives, why it has
become so important that we seek to achieve this state maximally, consistent with a
like liberty for all, what that means, why it is just to call on the coercive force of law
to ensure such a possibility (the protection of liberty, the “one natural right”), and so
forth.19
Pippen’s work is thus an attempt to defend this conception of the subject,

and particularly the way in which it emerged in the work of Kant and Hegel. Yet
while the sense of individual subjectivity developed in Kant and Hegel influenced
the ways in which we think about subjectivity and agency today, it is profitable to
consider how this bourgeois conception of the subject was in existence before the
Enlightenment. Hannah Arendt argues that the idea that the human individual is
possessed of, and significantly determined by, a will has its origin in the history of
Christian thought.20 While Arendt notes that Aristotle places strong emphasis on
10 | spinoza ’ s phi losophy of divine order
the volitional quality of an individual’s consent when considering his actions, this
form of “agreeing” gains its own independence as a faculty within the individual
largely in early Christian thinkers. For these thinkers, the will is that specific site
in the individual human being where the prospect of actually realizing what God
wants collapses. That is, it is in the sinfulness of the human will that God’s original
order is undone, human beings go astray, and need to turn to Christ in hope of
salvation. This sentiment is nicely summed up in Paul’s famous divulgence in his
Letter to the Romans: “I know that nothing good dwells within me, within my
flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want,
but the evil I do not want is what I do.”21
Whether or not Arendt overstates the case, it is readily apparent that the will
takes on an especially influential form in the work of Augustine. In On the Trinity,
Augustine describes the will as our faculty of attention, one that attempts to order
the direction of material actions in regard to some mental priority or goal.22 Sub-
sequently, the good will unifies the remaining, distinct Trinitarian faculties of the
self, as it arranges one’s being in accordance with what one knows. Yet such effective
instances of the will are, to Augustine’s mind, few and far between. Indeed, in his
City of God, Augustine asserts that with the descent of the human condition into
sin, all wills are improperly ordered. As Adam chose by the freedom given to him
by God to value his own will over God’s, all of humanity is subject to a sinful state
that can only be overcome by God’s grace.
The first evil act of will, since it preceded all other evil acts in man, consisted in its
falling away from the work of God to its own works than in any one work. And those
works of the will were evil because they were according to itself, and not according to
God. … The choice of will, then, is truly free only when it is not the slave of vices and
sins. God gave to the will such freedom, and, now that it has been lost through its own
fault, it cannot be restored save by him who could bestow it.23
Even though Augustine asserts here that ultimately it is only by the grace of God
that we can be liberated from the bonds of sin, the condition upon which the
reception of this grace is made possible is the choice to submit one’s will to God.
Thus, the argument of City of God describes the Christian life as a pilgrimage in
which we come to understand that our proper good can only exist in a life beyond
this one and we attempt to live our lives to bring us closer to that goal. In a later
passage that in many ways anticipates Rousseau, Augustine argues that for “the
companions in eternal peace … there is no love of a will that is personal and, so
to speak, private, but a love that rejoices in a common and immutable good.”24
For Augustine, we can only arrive at the City of God if we choose to restrain our
respective individual wills and seek out that which is truly beyond ourselves.
This conception of the will as a distinct volitional faculty that attempts to

bring the individual in line with some separate good comes to play a large role in
the development of Christian thought. While Christian theologians have differed
over the extent to which an individual can work to undo her sinful condition, all
have thought that volition and choice play a crucial role in determining one’s rela-
tionship to God. Aquinas, for one, follows Augustine clearly when he writes, “the
proper act of a free will is to choose: for we say that we have a free will because
we can take one thing while refusing another.”25 Thus, as we are given the possi-
bility of free choice, Aquinas sees individuals as being able to bring together their
thoughts with their desires.
Now two things concur in choice: one on the part of the cognitive power, the other
on the part of the appetitive power. On the part of the cognitive power, counsel is
required, by which we judge one thing to be preferred to another: and on the part
of the appetitive power, it is required that the appetite should accept the counsel of
judgment.26
Aquinas follows Augustine’s conception of the will here on all three major points:
asserting that it is an individual’s faculty of consent, one distinct from other fac-
ulties, and oriented toward the procurement of a good not yet in its possession.
Interestingly, this basic notion of the will is also shared by Luther, for even
though he argues strongly against the notion that our choices or personal determi-
nations can proactively bring about anything of true worth in themselves, he does
assert that the choice to be faithful in, and ultimately passive to, God’s will is an
individual’s highest achievement:
If we meant by ‘the power of free-will’ the power which makes human beings fit
subjects to be caught up by the Spirit and touched by God’s grace, as creatures made
for eternal life or eternal death, we should have a proper definition. And I certainly
acknowledge the existence of this power, this fitness, or ‘dispositional quality’ and
‘passive aptitude’ (as the Sophists call it), which, as everyone knows, is not given to
plants or animals.27
Luther argues here that the willful relinquishment of any claim to legitimacy
within an individual’s will is a central facet of the proper Christian’s life. Luther’s
notion of consent here is eminently subjective and fundamentally passive; it throws
its hands up at the prospect of both doing good or realizing the good and simply
attempts to receive God’s grace.
Like Luther, Calvin argues that the idea that human beings are possessed of
a free will is due to the error of the philosophers—particularly Aristotle—and the
theologians who have fallen in with them. For Calvin “the sum of the opinion of all
philosophers” is that reason “abides in human understanding” as a “sufficient guide

for right conduct.”28 Yet, Calvin continues, philosophers also argue that while the
will is subject to the authority of reason, and that it can also become “incited by
the sense of evil things,” it nonetheless remains that “the will has free choice.”29
Too many theologians, Calvin charges, have sought to “harmonize the doctrine of
Scripture halfway with the beliefs of the philosophers.”30 Even Augustine, Calvin
continues, at one moment declares human beings to be unfree, and then turns and
around the next and “is angry towards those who deny that the will is free.”31 All
of this leads Calvin to conclude of free will:
If anyone, then, can use this word without understanding it in a bad sense, I shall
not trouble him on this account. But I hold that because it cannot be retained
without great peril, it will, on the contrary, be a great boon for the church it to
be abolished. I prefer not to use it myself, and I should like others, if the seek my
advice, to avoid it.32
Of course here Calvin is not challenging the reality of the will but rather chal-
lenging the reality of the free will. While many hold that people pursue their own
interests, and that this pursuit is reflected in choices they make freely, Calvin
counters that such a pursuit is always empty—for while all desire eternal bless-
edness in some shallow sense no one truly, authentically aspires to it except by
the Holy Spirit. “There is no man to whom eternal blessedness is not pleasing,
yet no man aspires to it except by the impulsion of the Holy Spirit.” Indeed, for
Calvin, “the desire for well-being natural to men no more proves freedom of the
will than the tendency of metals and stones toward perfection of their essence
proves it in them.”33 Human nature desires salvation, Calvin argues, but it is
interminably corrupted by sin. For Calvin it is by “the bondage of sin by which
the will is held bound,” from which “it cannot move toward [the] good, much
less apply itself thereto.”34 Such a movement can only occur through “the begin-
ning of conversion to God,” which we know by Scripture to be “ascribed entirely
to God’s grace.”35
Despite this lack of effective volitional power, however, Calvin argues that
“nonetheless the will remains”; it is just that it has its “most eager inclination
disposed and hastening toward sin.”36 Man, Calvin argues, is “not deprived of
will, but of soundness of will.”37 Indeed, Calvin seems to hold that human beings
are still possessed of free will, in some respect; it is just that they are by necessity
corrupted. If we consider the goodness of God, Calvin argues, are we not to
conclude that it is necessary? At the same time would we say as well that God
lacks freedom? Of course not, so we have to conclude that these are two different
issues.
Therefore, if the fact that he must do good does not hinder God’s free will in doing
good; if the devil, who can do only evil, yet sins with his will—who shall say that man
therefore sins less willingly because he is subject to the necessity of sinning?38
Mankind chose sin of its own volition, and now its nature is such that it chooses
sin inevitably. In other words, for Calvin, human beings have not been coerced
into sin—it is something freely chosen and of course something we are ultimately
responsible. As a result, the human nature has not changed structurally—it is still
possessed of an intellect, a will, and passions—but these have become destitute.
It is only by the grace of God that the human being, in all its elements, can be
redeemed. Calvin asserts that this redemption is located in the individual will.
When the apostle tells the Philippians he is confident “that he who began a good work
in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” [Phil. 1:6], there is no
doubt that through “through the beginning of a good work” he denotes the very origin
of conversion itself, which is in the will. God begins his good work in us, therefore,
by arousing love and desire and zeal for righteousness in our hearts; or, to speak more
correctly, by bending, forming, and directing, our hearts to righteousness.39
Thus, however pessimistic Calvin may be about the will’s actual volitional power,
he is quite clear about its importance as a site of God’s grace. Indeed, Calvin goes
to good lengths to maintain the idea of the will while at the same time emphasiz-
ing the radical change it undergoes through salvation.
I say that the will is effaced; not in so far as it is will, for in man’s conversion what
belongs to his primal nature remains entire. I also say that it is created anew; not
meaning that the will now begins to exist, but that it is changed from an evil to a
good will.40
Such a change is a change in character and yet not a change in nature and sub-
stance—a change in disposition, but not function or location. For Calvin, even
after election the will is still the volitional center of the individual, it is only that
God now undertakes its volitions for that individual.
While we cannot say here that any of these thinkers represented the imme-
diate intellectual community that Spinoza wanted to engage, it seems safe to say
that they formed the intellectual backdrop behind which many in Spinoza’s Dutch
Republic understood their relationship with God and their distinct inability to do
anything about it.41 Specifically, Calvin was quite influential in setting the theo-
logical tone in Holland through which these issues could take shape. Indeed, even
when the followers of Calvin came to be opposed by Jacobus Arminius and his
Remonstrants at the beginning of the seventeenth century, the terms of Calvin’s
theological discourse were not themselves challenged so much as opposed. That

is, while Arminius and the Remonstrants, and later the Collegiants, did their best
to overcome the standing ecclesiastical establishment, they did little to overcome
the terms of that establishment. Rather, they simply insisted that the human will
was capable of more.
In this respect, from whichever specific ecclesiastical perspective one pos-
sessed, the theological discourse surrounding the Dutch Republic was very much
attuned to the cultivation of holiness and ethical virtue on an individual level—be
that through the working of the Reformed church or through one’s own volitional
discipline. Specifically, the individual will was what needed to be transformed so
that specific human beings could be reconciled with a God fundamentally distinct from
all humanity. Indeed, however one might come to wear the signs of election, not
only was it never maintained that individuals could achieve some identity with
God in the here and now, but the very possibility of such a formulation was prima
facie incomprehensible. It is this relationship between God and human beings that
Spinoza’s philosophy of divine order sought to disturb and re-think.
chapter one
“The Face of the Whole

Universe”
Spinoza’s Idea of God
Introduction: God’s Self-Causal Nature
If there is one point that initiates and preoccupies all of Spinoza’s specifically meta-
physical reflections it is that God can only be properly conceived of as uniquely
independent, so much so that nothing can exist apart from God. Spinoza argues
that God exists causa sui—that is, self-caused, or self-sufficient. From this central
identification, Spinoza concludes, it must follow that there can be no definitive
separation between God and matter, as God could not be properly self-sufficient
if something existed (and was created to be) outside of God. It is in this sense that
God is in essence properly infinite and absolute—for there is nothing that can be
beyond or outside of God. This means that, as Spinoza infamously makes clear
in 1p15, “Whatever is, is in God, and nothing can be or be conceived without God”
(E 228).
As a whole, this work examines Spinoza’s ideas of politics and agency in light
of this conception of God. This chapter begins this examination by considering
the exact sense in which Spinoza’s God is one and lays out some of its implications
for human subjectivity, as a “part” or mode of God (which are explained more fully
in the next chapter). If we are all “in God” can we really be said to be individuals at
all? If God is the true cause of everything, and everything is determined by God’s
nature, then in what way can human beings be said to have agency? Spinoza’s
idea of God—Spinoza’s pantheism—entails a comprehensive re-thinking of the

prevailing forms and conditions of human life. However, we cannot fully under-
stand this re-thinking, I argue, without first fully appreciating the specific sense of
God—the distinct conceptions of cause, unity, and difference that determine how
Spinoza sees God. That is, we cannot fully grasp the basics of Spinoza’s ethical,
political, and even religious thought without first coming to terms with the central
idea from which all of these spring—the idea of God.
Subsequently, this chapter begins by examining Spinoza’s sense of God’s
self-causing character by looking at some of the key ideas by which he describes
this nature: substance, on the one hand, and the dichotomy of Natura naturans and
Natura naturata on the other. These terms are obviously not unique to Spinoza,
and I argue that it is important to see that Spinoza is trying to restore them to
what he takes to be their proper meaning. Drawing on these terms, I then move
on to demonstrate how and why Spinoza’s theory of God is best understood as a
form of pantheism. This means examining Spinoza’s sense of finite things or finite
modes, and what it is, exactly, that constitutes their finitude, as well as (more gen-
erally) how this finitude is conceived within a totality. When we have grasped the
meaning of these themes and distinctions, I argue, we are in position to appreciate
the metaphysical underpinnings of the Spinoza’s thought.
Substance
Spinoza’s use of the term substance to describe God finds its most developed artic-
ulation in his Ethics. Indeed, the first—and formative—chapter of the Ethics is
devoted to delineating the true definition of substance. In Definitions 1 and 3,
Spinoza establishes that the sovereign nature of substance should be understood
as applicable in two areas: causation and predication. Substance is “that whose
essence involves existence; or that whose nature can be conceived only as existing”
(E 217) as well as “that which is in itself and is conceived through itself; that is,
that the conception of which does not require the conception of another thing
from which it has to be formed” (E 217). It is from these two basic yet pivotal
points that Spinoza begins logically to circumscribe the true nature of substance,
insisting that at every turn the conception of substance adhere to these two basic
propositions. That is, Spinoza argues that (a) substance must exist by its very
nature (that is, it causes itself ) and (b) that its essence—and hence existence—can
only be understood by reference to itself, and not some other idea or thing.
Though the Ethics is an attempt to elaborate a completely independent,
axiomatic philosophical system, its basic notion of “substance” is, of course, not
“ the face o f t h e w h o le u n i v e rs e ” | 17
entirely distant from Aristotle’s understanding of the term; not simply because
Spinoza thinks that substance “is said in many ways” that are mostly confused but
also because of his focus on the interrelation of predication and causation.1 For
Aristotle, as for Spinoza, the properties that necessarily pertain to a specific sub-
stance are intricately related to its cause or purpose. While Aristotle’s idea of sub-
stance is notoriously tricky and went through a myriad of incarnations, we can see
in his Categories that substance is that which “is neither said of a subject nor said in
a subject.”2 In this sense substance is a subject proper—the “what is” of a sentence.
Yet, at the same time, while determining that a substance is “about the pred-
ication of one thing of another,” Aristotle also argues that a substance is “one and
the same in number” such that it may undergo change and even “receive contrar-
ies” but still be the same thing. “An individual man for example,” Aristotle argues,
“being one and the same, becomes now pale and now dark, now hot and now cold,
now bad and now good.”3 Later, in the Physics, Aristotle argues that the sense of
substance’s persisting quality (that thing by which it survives change) as being best
understood as the combination of matter and form, in which form organizes an
idea or essence into matter. In this way, while substance requires matter in order to
be realized, this matter can to some extent change—while the form cannot. It is
the form or idea or essence of a thing, for Aristotle, that truly constitutes its “sub-
stance-hood,” though this form must always be realized in a particular material
incarnation.
While Spinoza obviously takes issue with the unequal distinction in Aristo-
tle’s work between matter and form, the ultimate problem he finds in Aristotle
(along with most other theorists of substance) is the idea that there are numerous
substances. For Spinoza, we simply cannot deduce the existence of a multitude of
substances if we truly understand the idea of substance. The key error on Aris-
totle’s part is the assertion that a substance’s formal essence requires its material
“separability and ‘thisness’”—its spatial distinction from another thing—and that
this characteristic is “thought to belong chiefly to substance.”4 In stark contrast to
Aristotle, Spinoza rejects this equation precisely because he sees this “separability”
as compromising Aristotle’s earlier declaration that substance is that which can be
predicated of nothing else. If substance is such a thing that it doesn’t need the idea
of anything else to be itself, then how, Spinoza asks, can it be distinct—be par-
ticular? Indeed, though Spinoza doesn’t address Aristotle directly, it is clear that
he thinks that there is an irresolvable contradiction between substance’s claim to
complete conceptual self-sufficiency, and its “thisness”—simply because “thisness”
can only be understood as a limitation, wherein “this” is distinct from some other
“thisness” (a “thatness”). Part I of the Ethics is devoted to debunking of the idea of
multiple substances and working out the logical ramifications of this refutation.
Spinoza begins to demonstrate the singularity—and thus unity—of substance

by considering how it is possible for “substances,” hypothetically, to relate to their
characteristics or what he calls attributes. While Spinoza holds that substance
proper has an infinite amount of attributes, he maintains (again, like Aristotle
and others) that we can know something essential about substance—be it one or
many—when we understand (some of ) its attributes. Thus, in 1p1 of the Ethics,
Spinoza argues that any substance must be prior—logically, not temporally—to
the particular expressions of its attributes. Spinoza calls these expressions modes of
substance because they are the specific affectations or fashions in which substances
manifest or exhibit themselves.5 Modes are important primarily because they are
the precise things by which we see the attributes or characteristics of a substance
in action. For example, if we were to assume that an individual human being is a
substance (and from Spinoza’s perspective far too many people do), and that such
a substance possesses the attribute of the intellect, it should follow that a specific
point or criticism offered by that intellect is only a mode of it. Such a criticism is
not, itself, the intellect; neither is it the substance offering it. Rather it is only a sin-
gular instance in which the substance is expressing itself—it is the mode that the
intellect has assumed in a specific context. The particularities of such a mode do
not say anything about the nature of the substance from which they arise, Spinoza
argues, for only the attribute (in this case the intellect) can speak to the essence of
substance.
It follows from this that any conception of substance is defined (to some small
extent) by an attribute it possesses—extension per se for example, and not how
something may happen to be extended in one instance or another. Some, like
Aristotle, may want to distinguish substances from one another based on how
they are extended but such distinctions are merely distinctions between modes for
Spinoza, and do not register as differences between anything we might wish to
call “substances.” There is an identity between two human beings, Spinoza argues,
that is more important than any differences they may happen to think (as different
thoughts) or do (as different ways of taking up space). Indeed, what is decid-
edly more important than any distinctions of intensity, temper, amount, or extent
is the unity these distinctions have in common—that they are extended, or that
they exist intellectually at all, etc. Put another way, the differences between modes
demonstrate a difference within a commonality.
If differences between modes of the same attribute are only differences in
quality or number (differences in degree, we might say, and not differences in
character), the differences between attributes are much more decisive—at least in
terms of determining what substance is. The reason for this is that, as we have seen,
attributes are characteristics of substance—of what is. Though a single attribute
does not, of course, exhaust the reality of an entire substance, it does say something
determinable about what the nature of substance truly is.
If we accept the idea of a multitude of substances, however this leads to a
major problem, for if “substances” distinguish themselves from one another in their
essence or character, then they cannot be conceptually sovereign or self-sufficient,
simply because their own respective identities will be particular. The particularity
of such substances lies in their distinct, and thus limited, identity: for how can they
be completely self-sufficient if they are ultimately quite determinate? While we
may wish to distinguish the essence of something, and consider its essence to be
completely self-referential, the minute we distinguish it from something else that
essence becomes defined in relation to that other thing. As Spinoza would later
famously comment, “all determination is a negation,” that is, a limitation, and to
be fundamentally determined is to be fundamentally limited (L5 892). Something
simply cannot assume a determinate form and not be a distinct thing, and for Spi-
noza such distinction is always a limitation, as it brings about a boundary where
it ends and something else begins. The reality of such a division means that the
entity in question is not understood exclusively through its own self-reference, for
it does not maintain complete sovereignty over how it is understood, but inevitably
makes reference to something else. This is what Spinoza means when he writes
that a determination “does not pertain to the thing and its being; on the contrary,
it is its non-being” (L5 892).
We can see this principle clearly in 1p6 of the Ethics where Spinoza argues,
“One substance cannot be produced by another substance” (E 219). Spinoza takes this
proposition to be clear on its face, simply because a substance that is caused is not
in fact a substance but rather something that comes from and has to be explained
in terms of something else, in regard to both its essence and its existence. Like
Aristotle, cause and essence are intertwined for Spinoza. Spinoza holds that
something cannot cause something completely dissimilar from itself, for the exis-
tence of that thing would inevitably turn on the essence of its creator (as cause if
nothing else).
Moreover, Spinoza holds that it is simply inconceivable to distinguish between
existence and essence, as both are ontological realities. To hold that something can
have an identity without actually “being” is incoherent for Spinoza (though this
does not mean that all “existence” is material). If someone were to say that “he
has a clear and distinct, that is, a true—idea of substance and that he nevertheless
doubts whether such a substance exists, this would surely be just the same as if he
were to declare that he has a true idea but nevertheless suspects that it may be false
(as is obvious to anyone who gives his mind to it” (E 220)). The very idea that an
idea may be true and not exist is irrational for Spinoza.
Spinoza also puts this point clearly in 1p7—“Existence belongs to the nature
of substance” (E 219)—a proposition that, he writes, should “be an axiom to all”
and “be ranked among universally accepted truisms” (220). We know this because
substance is, following Aristotle’s own definition, “that which is in itself and con-
ceived through itself; that is, the knowledge of which does not require any other
thing” (220). Subsequently, Spinoza argues if we are going to entertain the idea
of multiples “substances” (which Spinoza clearly does, if only to refute it) we must
consider any and all specific “substances” not simply in light of their attributes to
understand what they are, but more properly in terms of what substance truly is, at
its essence—beyond a simple reduction of it to one or two (or whatever number) of
the attributes that it might have. That is, we must remain grounded in the under-
standing that substance is that which is by and of its own power.
We can see then from these two points about essence and existence—which
are, for Spinoza, really the same point—exactly how the larger idea of substance’s
“self-caused” nature is reinforced. If we consider a substance in terms of its attri-
butes, and consider these attributes as what distinguish this substance from one
another, then it follows that this substance exists strictly as a consequence of its
attributes. But only an infinite, singular substance is reconcilable with this defini-
tion. Substance is thus self-caused not simply because it brings about merely its
own material (or as Spinoza would say “extended”) existence but because it brings
about—simultaneously—its own essence, as Aristotle originally implied. It is here
Spinoza drives the idea of multiple substances to an incongruous breaking point
by emphasizing that both self-sufficiency and the singularity are intrinsic to the
very idea of substance, for if we take the idea of substance seriously and follow its
definition to its logical conclusion, then that which is truly self-caused can only be
singular—since there cannot be anything outside of it and it certainly cannot occur
in a series of other things.
Indeed, the paradoxical nature of the idea of multiple substances becomes even
more acute when we realize that if all substances are truly self-caused then it can
only follow that all substances must be infinite (E 1p8). If existence belongs to sub-
stance by its nature, and no substance has its character in common with any other,
substance is unlimited in both essence and existence and is thereby infinite. Spi-
noza advances this conclusion still further (in E 1p11) when he equates substance
with God. We think of both God and substance as consisting of infinite attributes,
“each of which expresses eternal and infinite essence, [and] necessarily exists” (E 222).
The infinite attributes of substance are undividable (E 1p12) simply because if
they could be divided they wouldn’t be infinite, as they would be internally distin-
guished. Thus, if the character of substance or God is indivisible and infinite and
the essence of substance or God is self-caused the result is that (E 1p14) “there
can be, or be conceived, no other substance but God” (E 224). As substance is single
and infinite, all things—even all seemingly distinguishable material things—are
contained within its infinity. This leads to Spinoza’s most decidedly “pantheistic”
proposition, 1p15: “Whatever is, is in God, and nothing can be or be conceived without
God” (E 224). But what does this really mean? Is Spinoza saying that God is a
thing? Is Spinoza saying that God is all things?
Natura Naturans—Natura Naturata

The questions posed above seem to arise almost by necessity, seeing as how our
reliance on the word “thing” brings with it the typical sense of substance as a
single, specific “entity” or material body. To get a better sense of Spinoza’s idea of
God and substance it is helpful to pursue these ideas in light of a central distinc-
tion he draws between Natura naturans and Natura naturata, a distinction Spinoza
first uses in his Short Treatise on God, Man, and His Well-Being. Natura naturans is
“Nature naturing”—Nature as it is the sole and complete cause of itself. Natura
naturata is “Nature natured”—Nature as it exists as the product or effect of some
cause. In the Short Treatise, Spinoza describes such effects in startlingly Christian
language: the individual effects that constitute Natura naturata are, respectively,
“a Son … created immediately by God … [who is] an immediate creature of
God, created by him from all eternity” (ST, 59). Spinoza continues to frame
his discussion around Christian theology by noting that the idea of Natura
naturans is a “Thomist” one which the Thomists understood as meaning God,
although they insisted that Natura naturans—God—“was a being (so they called
it) beyond all substances” (ST 58).6 Spinoza certainly builds on this designation
when he writes that Natura naturans is “a being that we conceive clearly and
distinctly through itself, and without needing anything beside itself … that is,
God” (ST 58).
What are we to make of such a dichotomy? At first, Spinoza seems to be
saying clearly that “Nature natured” is not only a distinguishable but also a sep-
arate effect or product of “Nature naturing.” At the same time, Spinoza seems to
emphasize an intense sort of intimacy in his description of this causation. More
specifically, Spinoza seems here to be prompting his reader to consider the relation
between “Nature naturing” and “Nature natured” as being akin to the Father and
the Son, wherein the two are homoiousis (“of same substance”). Why else would he
use such language, if not to emphasize some—though obviously not conflatable—
form of ontological identity?
Spinoza returns to this distinction in the Ethics, where he elaborates on the
relationship between the two terms by focusing on his conception of modes and
specifically on the sense in which they are created. Spinoza emphasizes the causal
nature of Natura naturans in 1p29, arguing “Nothing in Nature is contingent, but
all things are from the necessity of the divine Nature determined to exist and to act in
a definite way” (E 234). The obvious proof of this lies, again, in 1p15—Whatever
is, is in God—for as God exists necessarily (1p11) so too “the modes of the divine
Nature have also followed from it necessarily, not contingently” (E 234). This is
true insofar as these modes are “considered absolutely (1p 21) or insofar as they
are considered as determined to act in a definite way (1p27)” (E 234). Hence, we
understand Natura naturata as “all that follows from the necessity of God’s nature,
that is, from the necessity of each one of God’s attributes; or all the modes of
God’s attributes insofar as they are considered as things which are in God and can
neither be nor be conceived without God” (E 234). By God here Spinoza means
Natura naturans: “that which is in itself and conceived through itself; that is, the
attributes of substance that express eternal and infinite essence” (E 234). Or, more
specifically, Natura naturans is simply “God insofar as he is considered a free cause”
(E 234). In this way, cause and effect share in the same fundamental identity,
though they clearly share in that identity differently, for one is the free cause of
this identity and the other is simply the articulation or elaboration of that cause.
Thus, Spinoza contends that:
in Nature (Cor. 1 Proposition 14) there is but one substance—God—and no other

affectations (Proposition 15) than those which are in God and that can neither be nor
be conceived (Proposition 15) without God. Therefore, the finite intellect in act or the
infinite intellect in act must comprehend the attributes of God and the affectations of
God, and nothing else. (E 234)
What is Spinoza trying to say here? If we consider the intellect of an individual,

for example, we would have to conclude that like “will, desire, love, etc.” the intellect
“must be related to Natura naturata, not to Natura naturans” (E 234). The reason
for this, Spinoza explains, is that—“as is self-evident”—an individual intellect is
only “a definite mode of thinking” (E 235). Though it differs from other modes
like love and desire, the intellect must all the same “be conceived through absolute
thought—that is (Pr. 15 and Def. 6), an attribute of God which expresses the eter-
nal and infinite essence of thought—in such a way that without this attribute it
can neither be nor be conceived” (E 235). In this way, Spinoza invokes the distinc-
tion of Natura naturans and Natura naturata to explain the sense in which Nature
is self-sufficient and thereby free. Specific modes of that Nature, of that substance,
can only be understood as the products of it, though they are not separable from it.
But Nature as it is “natured” is not as free as when it “natures” itself—at least not
in the same sense. The freedom of Nature as natured is clearly dependent on and
derivative of Nature as its natures, though there is a principle identity—Nature—

between these two.
We can see here that while Spinoza is trying to differentiate between two dif-
ferent elements of Nature—Nature as cause and Nature as effect—he is doing so
to illuminate the common identity that underlies that distinction and even makes
that distinction possible (a subject we will explore more below). From this we can
say that Spinoza’s pantheism consists, on its simplest level, in his insistence that
Nature is both its own cause and its own effect, and that it is both of these things
necessarily and comprehensively—to such an extent that nothing can exist out-
side of Nature. In this way Nature is God because Nature is both infinite (there
is nothing outside of it) and self-caused (it is dependent on nothing other than
itself ).
Yet while this brief survey of substance, Natura naturans and Natura naturata
may have given us good reason to think that there are pantheistic elements to
Spinoza’s thought (or even good reasons to label him a pantheist outright), the
question of how Spinoza is a pantheist—how his pantheism works—has yet to be
fully laid out. Indeed, there are many passages and ideas in Spinoza’s writings that
seem to complicate the view of him as a pantheist at all. Perhaps the most notable
of these is a letter to Oldenburg in 1675, wherein Spinoza writes that as to “the
view of certain people” that his thought “rests on the identification of God with
Nature, they are quite mistaken.” (L73 942) What are we to make of assertions
such as this? Can they be reconciled with the ideas of God and Nature laid out
above? It is to this question that we now turn.
The Conditions of Pantheism
Certainly one of the best ways of dealing with this challenge is to examine it
over the trajectory of Spinoza’s corpus. One of the earliest pantheistic sections in
Spinoza occurs at the beginning of his first work, the unfinished Treatise on the
Emendation of the Intellect (1657–1660). The Treatise is generally considered to be
Spinoza’s reflection on the good life, wherein he offers a standard apology for the
priority of philosophy to realize happiness in human life. What is noticeable about
this defense is that while Spinoza has yet to develop some of the scholastic terms
noted above he is engaged here in a rather traditional analysis (reminiscent of
thinkers from at least Plato and the Stoics) of how philosophy can properly order
the loves and desires involved in human life.
Spinoza offers his argument for philosophy in light of what he sees as the inev-
itable existential anxieties that will plague any other approach to life. Thus Spinoza
begins by emphasizing how his own experience had taught him “the hollowness
and futility of everything that is ordinarily encountered in daily life” and that upon
this hard lesson he “resolved at length to enquire whether there existed a true good,
one which was capable of communicating itself and could alone affect the mind
to the exclusion of all else” (TI 3). The continual perturbation of normal life is
the abiding theme here, as Spinoza describes how “all the things which were the
source and object of my anxiety held nothing of good or evil in themselves save
insofar as the mind was influenced by them” (TI 3). Indeed, Spinoza goes so far as
to describe his state at writing the Treatise as “one of great peril,” wherein he was
“obliged to seek a remedy with all my might, however uncertain it might be, like a
sick man suffering from a fatal malady” (TI 4).
In light of this intractable danger, Spinoza turned to figure out whether there
was, in fact, “something whose discovery and acquisition would afford me a con-
tinuous and supreme joy to all eternity” (TI 3). Here we see that Spinoza has diag-
nosed the cause of his wretched state as lying in the objects that he has accorded
love or hate. When we love a finite or perishable thing, we are subject to an intense
amount of fear and “emotional agitation” (TI 5). Of course, when we direct our love
towards “a thing eternal and infinite,” the mind is filled with “joy alone, unmixed
with any sadness” (TI 5).
The reason for this happiness, as Spinoza describes it, lies in simple fact that
we have decided to attend not to our own capricious whims and desires—which
we take to be good—but things that are good in themselves. The great majority
of human beings tend to consider everything from their own, decidedly particular
and thus relative point of view, and this gives rise to all manner of destructive and
superstitious loves. By contrast, Spinoza writes, the “eternal and infinite” thing,
this true or supreme good, is not in fact properly good or bad or perfect or imper-
fect at all, as these are “only relative terms” and that nothing “when regarded in its
own nature” should be so understood (TI 5). Indeed, Spinoza argues that “nothing,
when regarded in its own nature, can be called perfect or imperfect, especially
when we realize that all things that come into being do so in accordance with an
eternal order and Nature’s fixed laws” (TI 5). Human weakness fails to understand
this order, and thus comes to consider the objects it regards on strictly personal,
emotional terms—such as love or hate.
When we properly base our understanding of what is good for us on the laws
of Nature and of the true reality of the world, we will come to seek out that good.
Thus, while Spinoza takes it as “self-evident that the more the mind understands
of Nature, the better it understands itself,” (TI 11) we have to realize that such
knowledge leads not only to self-improvement but to the realization that there
exists a “union which the mind has with the whole of Nature” (TI 6).
This point, and its underlying assumptions, constitute the first major step
towards Spinoza’s pantheism. On the surface, Spinoza is clearly arguing that the
more the mind understands its own nature, the more it will be able to order its
thoughts and dispositions to bringing about a harmonious and felicitous life. As
Spinoza puts it, the better the mind “understands its own powers, the more easily
it can direct itself and lay down rules for its own guidance” (TI 12). Yet such an
understanding is not merely a lonely philosophical homily of the soul but a real-
ization of the mind’s place in the natural world. In addition to understanding
itself, the better the mind “understands the order of Nature, the more easily it can
restrain itself from useless pursuits” (TI 12). Rather than withdrawing our intel-
lectual resources to consider the state and value of our own personal loves, Spinoza
argues that we need to turn outward, to understand the world of which we are
a part. For Spinoza, “it is in this, as we have said, that the whole of our method
consists” (TI 12).
Such a sentiment might seem appealing enough but what rationale supports
it? How is it that in understanding the world we are in a better position to consider
and arrange our own loves and even desires? Just as he would later do in the Ethics,
Spinoza argues in the Short Treatise that there is a common reality that orders the
relationship between “essences” and their existence, between ideas and objects. For
Spinoza, “an idea is situated in the context of thought exactly as is its object in the
context of reality” (TI 12). The emphasis here is on the necessary context or world
of ideas and objects. As we have seen above in our analysis of substance, Spinoza
simply refuses to grant fundamentally separate ontological realities to ideas and
things. While we will explore this complex and pivotal topic in the next chap-
ter (often characterized as “the problem of parallelism” in Spinoza), of primary
importance at this point is the fact that Spinoza insists that there is a fundamental
order of the various things of Nature as well as the ideas that are their objective
essences. Further, this interrelation is conceivable only if we fully appreciate the
fundamentally causal character of Nature—both in regard to material things and
intellectual ideas: “It is again evident that, for the human mind to reproduce a
faithful image of Nature, it must draw all its ideas from that idea which represents
the source and origin of the whole of Nature, so that this may likewise become
the source of other ideas” (TI 12). Indeed, for Spinoza our inattention to Nature
necessarily degrades our own ideas, simply because we cannot understand those
ideas without understanding their source. “The less men know of Nature,” Spi-
noza writes, “the more easily they can fashion numerous fictitious ideas” (TI 16).
Such bad ideas often take superstitious forms such as “trees [that] speak” or “men
[who] can change instantaneously into stones or springs” or the idea “that ghosts
[can] appear in mirrors” (TI 16). They can also result in decidedly less marginal
ideas, such as the idea “that something can come from nothing” and “that gods can
change into beasts or men” (TI 16).
It is striking (and certainly must have been very striking to Spinoza’s seven-
teenth century audience) that Spinoza seems comfortable equating ghosts with the
idea of creation ex nihilo. While belief in ghosts and other “spirits” was common
enough in Spinoza’s Holland they were not nearly as well-attested nor as well
established institutionally as the first verses of Genesis.7 Yet for Spinoza these two
points of view are in the same camp: both ideas come from rather meager responses
to the opaque unpleasantness of human life in the natural world. To counter these,
Spinoza argues that if we proceed from the proper idea of Nature then we must
dismiss any traditional conception of a created world. Such conceptions result
from conceiving of Nature in an “abstract way,” a fashion of thought wherein the
things conceived “always have a wider extension in the intellect than is really pos-
sessed by their particular exemplifications existing in Nature” (TI 21). We thus
tend to underestimate the character of Nature, separating it from the rationality
and permanence of ideas. Nature, when properly understood, “has no resemblance
to things mutable” as it is a “unique and infinite” entity, our “total being, beyond
which there is no being” (TI 21). The argument of the Treatise is that human hap-
piness turns on whether or not we appreciate Nature as it truly is.
It is in his Short Treatise on God, Man, and His Well-Being (1662) that Spinoza
first introduces the idea of substance into his account of the true reality of God and
Nature However, this approach is distinct from the Ethics in that here he develops
his idea in light of some of the more commonly held conceptions of God. If the
Ethics is a work that tries to stand alone, demonstrating within its short confines
the true character of God, Nature, and human blessedness, then the Short Treatise
is a work that reaches out, appealing to thoughts and sentiments that Spinoza
takes to be well established amongst his readership. Thus the first step in Spi-
noza’s argument is the rather uncontroversial one of asserting God’s infinity and
perfection. Spinoza writes that God is “a being of whom all or infinite attributes are
predicated, of which attributes every one is infinitely perfect in its kind” (ST 40). Of
course, for Spinoza, such a description is ultimately a slippery one: infinitude and
perfection are not properly attributes of God but the common though imprecise
human adjectives for God that people have devised. But here Spinoza is not trying
to give a precise description of God’s existence as much as to sort through certain
widely accepted presuppositions of other theologians and philosophers. That is,
here we see Spinoza trading on the common perceptions of God held by other
philosophers and theologians and trying to refine them to so as to make their
implications explicit. It is his task, as he puts it, to see “whether we cannot use
against them the weapons which they take up against us” (ST 43).
Spinoza takes it as given that everyone agrees that God exists and, moreover,
that God is some kind of self-existing thing, and so Spinoza simply tries to spell
out the logical implications of this requirement. What we need, Spinoza writes, is
“to express our views more clearly” (ST 40). Specifically, we need to clarify what
we mean when we call God infinite. Can anything lie beyond or exist apart from
an infinite thing? Here, as we will see later on in the Ethics, Spinoza argues that
there can be nothing distinct from something infinite, and thus that there can be
no such thing as a finite substance. Two substances cannot exist, Spinoza argues,
because in their distinction they would “necessarily limit one another, and would
consequently not be infinite” (ST 41). Thus there can be “no finite substance” as
“every substance must be infinitely perfect in its kind” and “no substance can be
more perfect that that which exists in Nature” (ST 40). In a footnote Spinoza
makes the goal of this argument clear:
Once we can prove that there can be no Finite Substance, then all substance must with-
out limitation belong to the divine being. We do it thus: 1. It must either have limited
itself or some other must have limited it. It could not have done so itself, because having
been infinite it would have had to change its whole essence. Nor can it be limited by
another: for this again must be either finite or infinite; the former is impossible, there-
fore the latter; therefore it [i.e., the other thing] is God. He must, then, have made
it finite because he lacked either the power or the will [to make it infinite]: but this
supposition is contrary to his omnipotence, the second is contrary to his goodness. 2.
That there can be no finite substance is clear from this, namely, that, if so, it would nec-
essarily have something which it would have from Nothing, which is impossible. For
whence can it derive that wherein it differs from God? Certainly there is no substance
other than the infinite. Whence it follows, that there cannot be two infinite substances;
for to posit such necessitates limitation. (ST 41)
From this deduction, Spinoza concludes that there can be “no substance or attri-
bute in the infinite understanding of God other than what exists ‘formaliter’ in Nature”
(ST 42). This is clear enough if we see that the only other possible alternatives are
absurd. All agree that God is omnipotent, simple, benevolent, and a unique sub-
stance, says Spinoza. If God can act in a completely free fashion, at any point God
determines, and is solely responsible for what is, how can we say that God chose
to create this but not something else? God, as omniscient and supremely benev-
olent, is not limited or mistaken, nor does God withhold anything from us out of
malice—so what other alternatives could there be? The only conclusion that can
result from the prevailing, seemingly ubiquitous theological notions is that what
God has created is the only possible creation. If we consider God’s perfection we
must conclude that he causes all, for “assuredly,” Spinoza writes, “it is a far greater
perfection in God that he has created all that was in his infinite understanding
than if he had not created it, or, as they say, if he had never been able to create it”
(ST 42). If we consider God’s omniscience, we are led to the same conclusions.
Indeed, Spinoza insists that this is an argument to which most other philosophers
and theologians are already committed:
Do they not themselves argue thus, or must they not argue thus from God’s omni-
science: If God is omniscient then he can know nothing more; but that God can know
nothing more is incompatible with his perfection … But if God has all in his under-
standing, and, owing to his infinite perfection, can know nothing more, well then, why
can we not say that he has also created all that he had in his understanding, and has
made it so that it exists or should exist formaliter in Nature? (42)
But these arguments obviously still do not go far enough, for if—again—
when we establish any kind of boundary between God and the world (much
less “God’s creation”) God can only be distinguishable, then this contradicts
God’s infinite nature. Ultimately, if we follow the commonly held arguments
and conceptions to their logical ends we have to conclude “that of Nature all
in all is predicated, and that consequently Nature consists of infinite attributes,
each of which is perfect in its kind. And this is just the equivalent to the defi-
nition of God” (ST 42). But does this mean that God and Nature are the same,
or only “equivalent” in their “definitions”? Spinoza pushes this equivalency still
further when he asserts that “all these attributes” of God “are in Nature” and thus
are “but one single being, and by no means different things (although we can
know them clearly and distinctly the one without the other, and the other with-
out another)” (ST 43). Here Spinoza believes himself to have found the philo-
sophical grounding for the general “unity which we see everywhere in Nature”
(ST 43). “If there were different beings” in Nature, Spinoza writes, “it would be
impossible for them to unite with one another” (ST 43). To think otherwise is to
compromise the idea of what substance is, for if substance “were not such, but
consisted of parts, then it would not be infinite by its nature, as it is said to be;
and it is impossible to conceive parts in an infinite nature, since by their nature
all parts are finite” (ST 44). If we properly understand the nature of substance—
as something completely independent from another being—we have to conclude
that God and Nature are identical.
About the same time as the Short Treatise, Spinoza wrote a letter to Henry
Oldenburg (September, 1661) detailing his view of God. In it Spinoza discusses
the relationship between God, Nature and Substance in a fashion nearly identical
to that of the Short Treatise. We see that God is a single substance of infinite attri-
butes, which can only be identified with Nature. However, while ceremoniously
protesting that it is not his “custom” to expose the errors of others, Spinoza does
identify one of those who have obfuscated this simple conclusion. The first “and
most important error” (L4 762) of Descartes, Spinoza writes, is his conception
of God. Descartes’ conception of God, as well as Francis Bacon’s, goes “far astray
from knowledge of the first cause and origin of all things.” (L4 762) Descartes, in
his Principles, recognizes this definition of substance: he describes it as “nothing
other than a thing that exists in such a way as to depend on no other thing for its
existence.”8 Descartes quickly and injudiciously complicates this understanding,
however, when he considers it in a more theological light:
And there is only one substance which can be understood to depend on no other thing
whatsoever, namely God. In the case of all other substances, we perceive that they can
exist only with the help of God’s concurrence. Hence, the term ‘substance’ does not
apply univocally … to God and to other things; that is, there is no distinctly intelligible
meaning of the term which is common to God and his creatures.9
We can see here that Descartes distinguishes between two different senses of sub-
stance, one more traditional (“substances…that…can exist only with the help of
God’s concurrence”) and the other decidedly Spinozist (“one substance which can
be understood to depend on no other thing whatsoever, namely God”). The prob-
lem is that while the latter is of course ultimately more accurate, it is the former
that is more commonly attested. Descartes’s solution to this problem is simply to
insist that “substance” can refer to both types of thing as long as it is agreed that,
at some point, the distinction between these two senses of substance be acknowl-
edged. This stipulation is certainly not a contentious one, given that there is sub-
stantial agreement in Christianity and Judaism that God remains fundamentally
distinct from human beings. Of course, from Spinoza’s perspective, the idea that
there exists a distinction between different senses of substance at all, however cus-
tomary, is an untenable contradiction which gives rise to many, many philosophical
errors with real life consequences.
Of these errors certainly the most problematic from Spinoza’s perspective is
Descartes’s insistence that there is no common “intelligible meaning” between
God and human beings. As Descartes makes clear, substance is a term that can
only apply to God equivocally, as we have no true understanding of its nature.
Behind Descartes’s seemingly bold declarations about the ability of the intellect
to arrive at clear and certain ideas about the world there is a decisive moment of
resignation when he takes up the ideas we can have about God. While Descartes
obviously holds that we can know that God exists, and that God—by definition—
is an omnipotent and omniscient being, he insists all the same that we cannot
know any of the attributes that apply to God. Descartes makes this clear in his
Fourth Meditation:
As I reflect on these matters more attentively, it occurs to me first of all that it is no

cause for surprise if I do not understand the reasons for some of God’s actions; and
there is no call to doubt his existence if I happen to find that there are other instances
where I do not grasp why or how certain things were made by him. For … I now know
that my own nature is very weak and limited, whereas the nature of God is immense,
incomprehensible and infinite, I also know without more ado that he is capable of
countless things whose causes are beyond my knowledge. And for this reason alone I
consider the customary search for final causes to be totally useless in physics; there is
considerable rashness in thinking myself capable of investigating the <impenetrable>
purposes of God.10
If “substances” are only equivocal to substance proper, then it follows that human
beings are not only fundamentally distinct from God but that they must resign
themselves to ignorance as well—and not only a theological ignorance but igno-
rance of the physical world as well. We can know, of course, that there is a world
and that God does exist, but when it comes to fully understanding the reason the
and rationale that underlie these pivotal aspects of our lives we must face perpetual
estrangement.
Spinoza certainly saw such a conclusion as irrational and rash. In the Short
Treatise, he puts forward a dialogue in which he explores the nature of Descartes’s
pitfall. In a “Dialogue Between Understanding, Love, Reason, and Desire,” we see
Spinoza arguing against Descartes “that outside God there is nothing at all” and
thus that we must conclude “that he [God] is an Immanent Cause” (ST 45). The
dialogue begins with the character of “Love” acknowledging that its “essence and
perfection” depend upon the development of “Understanding,” and specifically
whether or not the Understanding conceives of a perfect being or not. Under-
standing, in turn, acknowledges that it considers “Nature only in its totality” (ST
45). Understanding does not explain this position further but rather directs Love’s
inquiry to “Reason” for further elucidation. Reason explains the sense of this total-
ity by arguing that any attempt at conceiving of Nature is necessarily a zero-sum
game—there can be no partial ontological sense of Nature, as “Nature” applies
either to everything or nothing at all. If we consider the quality of Nature and all
that is contained therein, we will soon see that the:
truth of the matter is indubitable… for if we limit Nature then we should, absurdly
enough, have to limit it with a mere Nothing; we avoid this absurdity by stating that it
is One Eternal Unity, infinite, omnipotent, etc., that is, that Nature is infinite, and that
all is contained therein; and the negative of this we call Nothing. (ST 46)
At this point in the dialogue, “Desire” intervenes, arguing that while it may be
“wonderfully congruous” to suppose that “Unity is in keeping with the Difference
which I observe everywhere in Nature,” how can this be the case (ST 46)? Isn’t it
just true that different objects, different beings, are distinct and separate from one
another? The key assumptions that support Desire’s objection are that extension
and thought are different substances which limit each other, and that Understand-
ing and Reason think that Nature is a third substance which encompasses the
prior two. This view involves “manifold contradictions,” for Nature cannot be said
to exist outside the first two, as a distinct substance, and at the same time be said
to encompass them. The central problem here, in Desire’s eyes, is the assertion
that Nature can be a whole of which thought and extension are only parts. Indeed,
Desire seems to think that such a description is not only contradictory but also
inadequate in itself, as it limits the powers that we would like to attribute to a
supreme being. The concern here is for two specifically divine attributes: omnipo-
tence and omniscience. First of all, Desire argues, any supreme being that creates
only itself is obviously inferior to a substance that brings both itself about and
another. For Desire, God’s omnipotence has to mean that God distinguishes “him-
self ” from other things. Thus we can see that a truly perfect being has to be able to
create itself and something distinct from itself.
Secondly, Desire argues in a symmetrical fashion that a supreme being which
knows itself only is obviously inferior to one that knows itself and another. A God
that knows both itself and something other than and beneath itself—its cre-
ation—is clearly more omniscient than a God whose knowledge is restricted to
self-knowledge. Spinoza accentuates the peril that accompanies Desire’s ignorant
conclusions when, after Desire advises Love to “rest content with what I show her,
and to look for no other things” (ST 46) Love wails: “What now, O dishonourable
one, have you shown me but what would result in my immediate ruin” (ST 46).
The implication here is, of course, clear enough: Love is destroyed if it is pre-
mised on a fundamental bifurcation between God and humankind. Indeed, when
God transcends everything, then there have to be two kinds of love—one that is
common and lowly, another that is elusive and ultimately alien. Thus real love,
much less its cause, is never truly with human beings; it only sporadically interjects
itself from the beyond. This kind of opaque metaphysical disconnect is exactly the
problem Spinoza identifies in Descartes.
From Spinoza’s dialogue, it becomes clear that the quality and significance of
an effect turn entirely on the nature of its cause, be it from within or from without.
Descartes follows Aristotle in arguing that to be self-caused is always to be distin-
guished, to be distinct from other things that one has caused. Spinoza’s idea of an
immanent rather than a transitive cause plays a larger part in the Ethics. But while
the distinction between these two types of causes seems clear enough we need to
clarify exactly how God is immanent to what he has caused. For Spinoza, God does
not simply address direct objects but is in and with those objects in an important
sense. But what does this really mean for each of these terms? What does it mean,
exactly, to postulate an ontological identity between cause and caused? Is it even
really possible to draw a distinction between an immanent cause and a transitive
cause, and what would be the ontological and epistemological character of such a
distinction?
Of course, it is the Ethics that best addresses these concerns, especially its
distinctions between God, its attributes (such as thought and extension), and its
modes. In 1p18, specifically, we see Spinoza attend to the claim that God is “the
immanent, not the transitive, cause of all things” (E 229). The first step, for Spi-
noza, in understanding the nature of an immanent cause is to see that there exists
an identity between God and all of the attributes that constitute God—1p: “God
[is eternal], that is, all the attributes of God are eternal” (E 230). Though God is not
the sum of its attributes, for there is an infinite amount of them, the attributes are
the characteristics of God and thus are themselves infinite.
But if the attributes of God are eternal are their modes eternal as well? Spi-
noza addresses the relationship between an absolute and infinite God and its parts
(or modes) in one of the most cryptic and contested propositions in the 1p 21: “All
things that follow from the absolute nature of any attribute of God must have existed
always, and as infinite, through the said attribute they are eternal and infinite” (E 230).
Spinoza here seems to be saying that anything that follows from or through an
attribute is eternal, because of its fundamental dependence on that eternal attri-
bute. But what does Spinoza mean by a “thing” here? Does he mean any common
object in the world? Or does he have specific or distinct entities in mind…closer
to what many would dub substance? Are modes types or forms of things—as in,
say, a human being? Or are they simply all of the great variety of material and
intellectual things?
In his Proof for 1p21, the “thing” that Spinoza uses as an example is “the idea
of God in Thought” (E 230)—which is, to be sure, a loaded example. Spinoza
sets out to prove 1p21 by showing the logical inconsistency of the idea that there
are things which follow from God (or are caused by God) that only exist finitely.
If we were to deny 1p21, Spinoza writes, and conceive “that something in some
attribute of God … is finite and has a determinate existence or duration” (though
the attribute of God is obviously itself eternal), we would be inevitably led to the
conclusion that such an idea “cannot be determined through thought” because it is
obviously an eternal attribute of God (E 230). To conceive of God as finite by way
of an infinite attribute of God makes no sense—it answers the question before it
poses it. Subsequently, we would need to have some way of thinking that is outside
of or beyond the realm of thought itself as well as God, which is by definition
impossible given our idea of God supplied by 1d6. For Spinoza, we can only—
inevitably—be led to one conclusion. “Therefore, if the idea of God is in Thought,
or anything in some attribute of God (it does not matter what is selected, since
the proof is universal), it follows from the necessity of the absolute nature of the
attribute, it must necessarily be infinite” (E 231).11
We can subsequently see “that which follows from the necessity of the nature
of some attribute cannot have a determinate existence, or duration” (E 231). Given
the only tenable conception of God available, we simply cannot, according to Spi-
noza, conceive of anything that follows from an attribute outside of God. If we say
that at some point in the past or at some point in the future the idea of God did
not or will not exist we will have to say either that an attribute of God (Thought)
will itself become determined or that such an idea occurs in some “other form
of thought”—distinct from God. Neither of these claims makes sense given the
nature of God that Spinoza has laid out for us, and we are again led to only one
conclusion. “The idea of God in Thought, or anything that necessarily follows
from the absolute nature of some attribute of God, cannot have a determinate
existence, but is eternal through that same attribute” (E 231). Again, Spinoza is
sure to emphasize that this applies to any mode of any attribute; we see this last
point with the final sentence of 1p21: “Note that the same holds for anything in
an attribute of God which necessarily follows from the absolute nature of God”
(E 231; emphasis mine).
The rather circular logic of 1p22 arises from this Proof: “Whatever follows from
some attribute of God, insofar as the attribute is modified by a modification that exists
necessarily and as infinite through that same attribute, must also exist both necessarily
and as infinite” (E 231). Here it is important to remember that while all modes are
not necessary in and of themselves, they all follow necessarily from an attribute of
God. How else could they come about? Spinoza argues that “a mode is in some-
thing else through which it must be conceived (Def. 5); that is, (Pr. 15), it is in
God alone and can be conceived only through God” (E 231). Even if a mode is
transitively caused by another mode it does not follow that the resulting mode is
finite. Spinoza’s language here is tricky, especially in 1p23 where he begins to refer
to modes that exist necessarily and as infinite, as if some other kind were possi-
ble. Spinoza, however, is clear that even if a specific mode is caused “through the
mediation of some modification” it still means that that modification itself “follows
from the absolute nature of the attribute” (E 232) and thus both this mode and the
one which results from it are necessary and infinite.
At first, this line of thought makes little sense. Don’t change and contingency
seem to be simple facts of life? Can Spinoza really be saying that even the modes
of attributes are infinite? What would it mean to claim that something that clearly
comes in and out of existence is, in reality, persisting? What is their reality? Such
questions are some of the most complicated and contested areas of Spinoza schol-
arship.
The Problem of “Finite Modes”
There are several different interpretations of how, or in some sense whether, modes
exist in relation to substance. On the one hand, scholars such as Edwin Curley have
argued that while Descartes saw the relationship between substance and mode as
analogous to the relationship between subject and predicate, Spinoza did not. “If I
understand him correctly,” Curley writes, “Spinoza, in classifying particular things
as modes, was intent on emphasizing the fact that the two distinctions do not
coincide” and that this is meant to deny “that the relation of particular things to
God was in any way like the relation of a predicate to its subject.”12 How, exactly,
individual, substantial things are supposed to share in the nature of substance as a
predicate shares in the nature of its subject makes no sense to Curley, and he thinks
it an improbable position to ascribe to Spinoza.
On the other hand, scholars such as Jonathan Bennett have argued just the
opposite—that modes inhere in substance just as a predicate inheres in a subject.
For Bennett, Curley’s position is “radical and improbable” as it not only stubbornly
ignores the meaning of the term mode [modus] but that he does so strictly to alle-
viate his own discomfort at the simple fact that Spinoza does describe “substantial
things” as modes. This is precisely the point for Bennett, as he understands Spi-
noza to be saying “that most items that are usually treated in a thing-like manner
can, and in a fundamental metaphysic must, be conceptualized differently.”13 While
we may not be used to thinking of trees (for examples) as inherently predicates of
a larger substance, our vexation only testifies to the sweeping reform that Spinoza
launches against traditional conceptions of being.14
In his response to Bennett, Curley cites the various passages where Spinoza
seems to emphasize the self-sufficiency of individual modes. While obviously not
arguing that modes are self-caused, Curley does contend that modes really do
exist, and they really do see to their own existence as particular things while they
happen to exist. For instance, after detailing his view of God, Spinoza in Book II
of the Ethics writes: “Each thing, in so far as it is in itself, endeavors to persist in
its own being” (2p45).15 Again, while substance is alone casually self-sufficient,
and thus the cause of everything else that is, once modes are caused, they strive
to persist on their own—descendent yet distinct from that which brought them
about.
In this way, the relationship between substance and mode is precisely a rela-
tionship based upon causation—of cause and then effect—not, as some would
argue, of the inherence of the latter in the former. Thus, modes participate in the
nature or laws of substance in that they are created (caused) by it, but they are
not at the same time indistinguishable from substance. For Curley, the alternative
position seems untenable:
There are places in Spinoza where he does speak as if his one substance were to be
identified with the whole of Nature, and this fits in naturally with the view that the
one extended substance is to be identified with the totality of physical things. But I do
not think that this way of understanding Spinoza gives us a reasonable account of the
relation between substance and mode.16
Curley sees modes as things obedient to the laws of substance or of God, and he
clearly reads a good deal of separation between the two. That is, he clearly takes
particular differences to be significant forms of difference—or forms of distinc-
tion—such that differences in quantity are like differences in kind or category.17
One recent interpretation that builds on Curley’s work is Aaron Garrett’s The
Meaning in Spinoza’s Method. Like Curley, Garrett argues that any reference Spi-
noza makes to modes being a part of substance must be understood as meaning
that such modes are only subject to substance’s sovereignty, and are not themselves
part of it. Seen from this perspective, the nature of Nature, as well as our own role
“within” it, is much closer to the prevailing point of view. For Garrett, when Spi-
noza describes “human beings as a ‘part of Nature’” he “meant above all that man
should be explained through the laws of Nature that hold of all natural things.”18
Garrett calls this “the cardinal thesis of Spinoza’s naturalism,” as he believes that
Spinoza understood substance to be a system of laws “undergirding all ‘parts of
Nature’—humans, lumpfish, telephones, and neutrinos—are metaphysical and
physical laws which relate the ‘parts of Nature’ back to a cause that explains what
they are.”19 Nature, so understood, is nothing more than a system of laws that
dictate how individual species interact with one another and, more importantly,
determines how those species have been brought about by their cause. Garrett
points to the preface of Part III of the Ethics to make the case for priority of law
in Spinoza’s idea of Nature:
There is nothing that happens which can be attributed to a vice; for Nature is always
the same, and its virtue and power of acting are everywhere one and the same, i.e., the
laws of Nature, and rules, according to which all things are made, and are changed out
of one form and into another, are everywhere, and always, the same, and so the nature
of things must be understood by one and the same reason, namely, through universal
laws and rules of Nature. (E; Preface III…)
For Spinoza to say that “Nature is always the same” is simply to say, Garrett
argues, that there exist general and immutable laws which govern the entirety of
the world and that, subsequently, the world can only be understood in light of
these laws. Further, Garrett argues that it is only in this very limited sense that
Spinoza “assumes that we are all parts of Nature.”20 Though Garrett recognizes
that while “there has been a tendency in reading Spinoza to consider this dictum
to imply that we are all parts that interlock in a vast whole or community of
Nature” he argues that, for Spinoza, “to be a part of Nature means something dif-
ferent than being a part of a whole in this sense.”21
The real focus of the above quotation from the preface to Part III does
undoubtedly seem to suggest some equation between Nature and natural laws,
even if it moves from the subject of the former to its expression in the latter, so
Garrett seems correct to argue that there is an identity here. It is, however, import-
ant to consider the context as well as, concomitantly, the location of this quotation
in the Ethics (at the beginning of Part III.) Like Curley, Garrett makes repeatedly
plain that the “axiomatic form” of the Ethics shifts its focus over the course of its
five Parts but is always dependent upon its initial formulations. That is, for both
scholars, the Ethics employs a geometrical method that builds on early, founda-
tional definitions and demonstrations as it advances. Thus Garrett writes:
In the Ethics Spinoza derived a sequence of numbered propositions from definitions

and axioms—much as Euclid did in the Elements—building each link in the expand-
ing chain on the definitions, axioms, and propositions prior to it. … Spinoza drew
dramatic metaphysical and ethical results such as that “God is an extended thing”
(IIP3) from prior and apparently more obvious propositions.22
In light of this approach, it would seem that we should be certain to consider the
point at which an idea appears in Spinoza’s argument. By the time Spinoza gets to
Part III in the Ethics he has laid out his metaphysical system in some detail (the
fundamentals of his metaphysical worldview) and is beginning to show how his
insights can help people to live better, happier lives. Indeed, the setting in which
the above discussion of Nature takes shape is sin, or more specifically its complete
deficiency as a characterization of Nature, much less human life. That is, Spinoza
is (at this point in the Ethics) attacking a common conception of how the world is,
or how the world has changed since the fall of man. Further, he is attempting to
show—in Part III—how knowledge of the world as it truly is can improve life in
the here and now. Thus Spinoza is not addressing the unity of Nature as such—a
topic he devotes a considerable amount of time to in the first two Parts of the
Ethics—but how human beings can come to understand the way Nature is. When
we understand the laws and principles inherent in Nature as it is, we can come
to understand ourselves better and therefore to act in a more fulfilling manner.

This issue, while obviously important (indeed, decisive, as the following chapters
explore) doesn’t bear on the exact relationship between modes and substance—it
just illustrates how important that relationship is.
Of course, more importantly, we are still left with the question of how the
phrase “parts of Nature” should be understood. Much of Garrett’s argument turns
on Spinoza’s November 20th 1665 letter to Henry Oldenburg:
By the agreement of parts, then, I mean nothing other than how the laws, or nature,
of one part adapt themselves to the laws, or nature, of another part so as to cause the
least opposition. Concerning whole and parts, I consider things so far as they are parts
of some whole, insofar as their natures mutually accommodate themselves as much as
possible; but insofar as things differ from the others, and is therefore considered to a
whole, not a part. (L4 32)
Garrett reads Spinoza as emphasizing agreement and accommodation when dis-

cussing the relationship between the whole and its parts. The implication here is
that there exists a concert of symmetry between distinct parts, but the parts are
distinct nonetheless. From this Garrett concludes that “we can still talk about parts
and wholes” but only and strictly “in terms of laws or “natures” which may differ
from region to region” (L4 35). In this sense, when we come to understand or
“know about parts and wholes” we come “to know about these laws and how they
adapt from one region to another” (L4 35). What does Garrett mean by region? It
seems that, much like Curley, he believes parts relates to the whole (modes relate
to substance) as a genus relate to its species.23
Indeed, Garrett turns to a definition of law provided in the TTP to reinforce
this conception. Law, Spinoza writes, in its “absolute sense,” is “that according
to which each individual acts, [the individual] taken all together or as belonging
to some species, according to one and the same certain and determinate reason”
(IV, III/43). Individuals act from “laws that depend on human wills and laws that
depend on ‘Nature’ necessity’” (IV, III/43). Here we can see that Garrett’s analy-
sis of the relationship between modes and substance turns in large part on what
he takes to be the nature of individuals and individual action. Individual modes
are parts of Nature to the extent that they are under the laws of Nature—to the
extent that Nature determines their own particular characteristics through its laws.
In this way, the identity of modes lies in their particular existing characteristics,
affected by specific laws rather than anything like a common identity.
Garrett’s argument seems to be greatly supported by Spinoza’s idea of finite
modes. In 1p28, in which, after seeming to dismiss categorically the very pos-
sibility of finite or determinate things or modes, Spinoza refers to exactly such
modes. On its face, the idea that there are some particular modes distinct from
infinite modes would seem to fit nicely into Garrett’s interpretation of Nature as
a system of laws governing disparate parts. Spinoza’s discussion of finite modes,
however, is centered around a conception of their proximate cause. Indeed, the
question that concerns Spinoza here is what kind of cause can bring about some-
thing finite.
Every individual thing, i.e., anything whatever which is finite and has a determinate exis-
tence, cannot exist or be determined to act unless it be determined to exist and act by another
cause which is also finite and has a determinate existence. (E 233)
Here, as before, the nature and identity of that which is caused is bound up with
the nature and identity of that which brought it about; as only an infinite cause
can only bring about an infinite effect, so too can a finite thing (or effect) only
be brought about by a finite cause of some sort. This is because, again, effects are
really just the expressions of their cause (modes are just affectations of an attribute
of substance). But of course for Spinoza a finite cause is not a real cause for (as
Spinoza notes in the above quotation) it is, more fundamentally, an effect. That
is, we can only understand finite causes truly as causes if we understand how they
themselves came about, and this requires us to paradoxically understand the cause
not as cause but as effect. Subsequently, to consider the causal nature of finite
causes always invites an infinite regress, in which the search for one finite iden-
tity leads to another finite identity, and the true causal nature of what has been
brought about forever eludes us. Thus Spinoza goes on to elaborate in Proposition
28: “cause again cannot exist or be determined to act unless it be determined to exist and
to act by another cause which is also finite and has a determinate existence, and so on ad
infinitum” (E 233).
The infinite regress that emerges here is clear enough, but what we are ulti-
mately to conclude about it is not. Indeed, the fashion in which Spinoza is tack-
ling what seems to be an all-important issue (the relationship between God and
things) often comes across as rather incomplete. “Some things,” Spinoza argues in
his 1p28s, “must have been produced directly by God (those things, in fact, which
necessarily follow from his absolute nature) and others through the medium of
these primary things (which other things nevertheless cannot be or be conceived
without God)” (E 233). Hence, we can only conclude “firstly, that God is abso-
lutely the proximate cause of things directly produced by him” (E 233). Stated
thus, it certainly seems like Spinoza is distinguishing between the two types of
modes. Yet as soon as he draws this distinction, Spinoza writes “God cannot prop-
erly be said to be the remote cause of individual things” (E 233). But what exactly
is a “remote cause”?
By “remote cause” Spinoza means “a cause which is in no way conjoined with

its effect (E 233). We may obviously be able to conceive of one mode giving rise to
another, but this does not mean that the latter mode is at any kind of ontological
distance from God. God does not emanate things into existence for, as Spinoza
reaffirms in 1p 28, “all things that are, are in God, and depend on God in such a
way that they can neither be nor be conceived without him” (E 233). Some modes
have their immediate cause in God and others have it in other modes, but all
modes are equally of God. The infinite regress that appears when we try to trace
the cause of one mode to another and then another, etc. demonstrates not the
contingency by which they came about but that—at some point—we are forced
to recognize the role of the infinite in creating them. That is, as causes and effects
pile up in our attempt to account for how they came about and depend upon one
another, the sheer number of them testifies not only to the complexity that went
into their creation (and their cessation!) but that there is some boundless capacity
that has caused them all to relate to each other. For Spinoza, an infinite sequence
of causes and effects reveals not a mode’s distance from God, but its immersion in
and dependence upon the infinite. Modes that have a finite nature are determined
through another mode, not by that other mode “itself.”
This conclusion leads directly into Proposition 29, which codifies the idea
that “Nothing in nature is contingent, but all things are from the necessity of the divine
nature determined to exist and to act in a definite way” (E 234). The inclusion of the
word “divine” here, in the discussion of the “determined,” is instructive as Spinoza
is arguing that however specific and determined a “thing” might seem, its ulti-
mate and true reality is that of a modification of substance or God. Temporality
and finitude, change and contingency, these speak to the way in which modes are
determined—not their determination as such. That is, from Spinoza’s perspective,
what truly matters when considering the reality of a mode is, first and foremost,
its identity with God as a determination of God’s nature, and only after this iden-
tity has been firmly noted should that mode’s particular quality be considered. To
describe something as merely finite, Spinoza argues, is to describe it only in regard
to its relationship with other modes—but this is not principally what modes in fact
are. Ideas, for example, may persist more than a loaf of bread, but this difference is
not important when we are trying to understand what ideas are as modes. In this
way, by insisting that we understand all modes as infinite, Spinoza is insisting that
we re-think what is really important about modes—what it is about them that
should preoccupy our thoughts. It is in this sense that he can assert, in 4p67, a man
who “lives solely by the dictates of reason is not guided by fear of death” (E 355).
But this of course begs the question: of what else should people think? What then
are the differences that really matter when we’re considering modes?
Real Distinctions
In his interpretation of Spinoza, Gilles Deleuze argues that all modifications of

substance should be understood as expressions of substance. Spinoza, Deleuze
maintains, sees substance as a whole by definition, and thus all modes of substance
are best understood as expressions, rather than as “parts,” “states,” or even logical
predicates. However, in order to best understand the sense in which substance
expresses itself, Deleuze continues, we must appreciate the Scholastic resonances
in Spinoza’s thought, and specifically how his conception of substance is similar
to that of Duns Scotus. Spinoza, writes Deleuze, belongs to “the great tradition of
univocity,” a term that plays a special role in Deleuze’s own thought. While theo-
logians and philosophers such as Descartes argue that human beings must always
equivocate when they put forward claims about the divine, Spinoza argued that
any such claims can and should be univocal (EP, 48).24 What, then, does Spinoza
mean by univocal? Before we can turn to the tradition of univocity—and Spinoza’s
role in it—we need to appreciate the exact sense Deleuze attributes to the term.
In his Difference and Repetition, Deleuze defines univocity as the view that
any time we invoke the term “being” we are invoking something that can only
be understood as our “common designated,” a single, unified existing world—or
what Spinoza calls God or Nature. While we often use the term “being” to col-
late a group or series of fundamentally distinct entities or “beings,” Spinoza—
Deleuze argues—alerts us to the fact that being is always “said in turn in a single
and same sense of all the numerically distinct designators and expressors.”25 What
does Deleuze mean by this? What does it mean to say that being always refers to
something which is the same rather than something which is distinct?
From the univocal perspective, Deleuze argues, being is inherently something
held in common. Further, being is that which is the same throughout whatever
various forms it may take on, or the way (as Deleuze expresses it) in which it
might be expressed. What this means is that being is said not only in all “single and
same senses” but also “of all its individuating differences or intrinsic modalities.”26
Things must have some real relationship, some real commonality, before they can
be differentiated. It is this ‘sameness” of being, whatever its form or circumstance,
that Deleuze calls its univocity.
Being is the same for all these modalities, but these modalities are not the same. It
is equal for all, but they themselves are not equal. It is said in a single sense, but they
themselves do not have the same sense. The essence of univocal being is to include
individuating differences, while these differences do not have the same essence and
do not change the essence of being—just as white includes various intensities, while
remaining essentially the same white.27
But what is notable about this? Isn’t this just what Descartes calls substance?
Doesn’t Descartes think that thought and God—though distinct substances ulti-
mately—have something fundamentally in common? This is undoubtedly true,
but Descartes does not go far enough from either Spinoza or Deleuze’s point of
view. Both Spinoza and Deleuze argue that it is precisely this ambiguity (this
“something”) that can only effectively alienates human beings from God—and
thereby even alienates God from God—simply because it ultimately insists on
some form of vague, amorphous separation in what is.
Deleuze calls this form of talk the analogical approach to being. When we
understand being by analogy we understand being to be a series of analogical
relations between what are ultimately different “types” of being. The analogical
interpretation of being insists that all the animals on Noah’s ark, for example, were
fundamentally distinct, and that they can only be grouped together according to
our own conceptual analogies. By constructing a series of analogies, a series of
likenesses between different beings, the analogical approach reduces being to the
status of a genus, a mere grouping based on common characteristics drawn by
analogy.
It is in this respect that Deleuze accuses the proponents of “analogy” of failing
to recognize that there is a fundamental difference between generic and specific
differences. Specific differences happen to pertain to various forms (or expres-
sions) of being in various contexts and situations, and they thus fundamentally
relate those instances back to the whole of being from which they come and get
their meaning. Generic differences deny such a common identity and assert that
the only relationship that exists between various beings are those drawn by anal-
ogy and the representation of those beings. Thus, to the extent that being is con-
ceived of as a loose system of similarities and differences it cannot itself actually
be anything other than a mere representation of those similarities and differences.
For Deleuze this means that the analogical approach to being ultimately scut-
tles the distinctions it was meant to illuminate, for differences between individual
things can be conceived but cannot be said to exist—as differences—without some
common reality between them. While the analogical approach wants to argue that
only differences exist, it must invoke a commonality between them to be able to
acknowledge such differences. Of course if these differences are actual—if they
are—then the commonality between them must exist as well, for if it were not
then the real differences we observe would depend on fabricated analogy, and then
these real differences would be not be real at all. Being, Deleuze writes, “cannot
be supposed a common genus without destroying the reason for which it was
supposed thus; that is, the possibility of being for specific differences.”28 If we say
that differences are, then we must say not only that they are distinct but that they
have something in common: their “areness,” or being. It follows then that being is
difference precisely because its own manifold nature demonstrates, simultaneously,
that it is both manifold and a single, united nature.
Deleuze attributes the “discovery” of univocity to Duns Scotus, and argues
that it finds its way to Spinoza via him. For Scotus, anything we can understand
as truly having being must be comparable to something else and, further, that the
necessary condition of such comparison is some form or level of commonality.
Again, for Scotus, this commonality must be the basis for some real differences;
he makes this clear when he argues that anything which is intelligible to us must
either have some form of distinguishable existence or it must exist “virtually.”29
While Scotus argues that “‘being’ is univocal for all”30 he insists at the same time
that:
it is clear how in “being” there concurs a two-fold primacy, namely, a primacy of com-
monness in quid in regard to all concepts that are not irreducibly simple and a primacy
of virtuality in itself or in its inferiors regarding all concepts which are irreducible.31
What kind of distinction is this? Scotus argues that when we consider the univo-
cal nature of being we have to discern its “twofold primacy” which he elaborates
as “a primacy of [both] commonness and of virtuality.”32 On the one hand, many
ideas we have and things we experience are reducible to quidditative, ontolog-
ical properties. Scotus calls these “common” in the sense that they share in the
properties with other, similarly “reducible” things. On the other hand, some ideas
exist that are not reducible, as ideas that seem to have nothing in common with
any other idea much less thing. What are these ideas? Where do these ideas
come from? How can they be comparable to other reducible ideas if they are so
distinct?
Scotus argues that irreducibly simple ideas are achieved by us in the same
fashion by which we know that the “determinable is univocal to determinant” or
in the same way that “what can be denominated [relates] to what denominates.”33
Such ideas are not our own creation but inevitable deductions we make about the
reality of the world. For example, Spinoza’s idea of extension seems to be exactly
the kind of deduction that Scotus has in mind—a real idea we get from our expe-
rience of the things of the world. “Extension” is an idea with its own distinct sense
or reality—fundamentally different from the idea of the intellect.
When we consider the identities of things in terms of their separability, we
are making a judgment exclusively on the style or even shape of their material
character. Scotus proposes that while we shouldn’t ignore material characteristics
we should be sure to acknowledge the “formal” or essential distinction that cer-
tain entities have, especially ideas. Thus Peter King argues to be the “core intu-
ition behind Scotus’s formal distinction is, roughly, that existential inseparability
does not entail identity in definition.”34 What this means is that some concepts—
simple ones that cannot be reduced to other concepts—have a reality in their own
“virtuality” (their formal or conceptual identity) that makes them the proper study
of epistemology and metaphysics alike. That is, the virtuality of these concepts
makes them properly transcendentals, and not the products of the human imag-
ination. We may know them through specific instances or occasions of their use
and appearance in the empirical world, but such manifestations do not speak to
the true reality of the ideas themselves. Other things—properly things which have
an empirical existence—we know to have being in quid simply from our sense
experience of them in the material world. Virtual things insist themselves upon us
when we consider our reality, and are thus no less real. These are the two distinct
ways in which, metaphysically, ideas become available to the intellect, and it is the
distinction that constitutes real difference. Scotus writes:
In the present life no concept representing reality is formed naturally in the mind
except by reason of those factors which naturally motivate the intellect. Now these
factors are the active intellect, and either the sense image or the object revealed in the
sense image. No simple concept, then, is produced naturally in our mind except that
which can arise in virtue of these factors. Now, no concept could arise in virtue of the
active intellect and the sense image that is not univocal but only analogous with, or
wholly other than, what is revealed in the sense image.35 (22)
We know this to be the case, Scotus argues, simply because a reasoning process of
the mind can know something in one of two ways, either through its own deliber-
ative process or through the ineluctable experience of it, be it a thing or a concept.
If we consider formal notions such as the intellect we will soon see that it is not
only an irreducible element of what is but also that it is univocal as well, applying
to both God and human kind.
What’s interesting about Scotus here is that while he certainly thinks that the
extent or intensity of the divine intellect is far greater than it is in human beings,
he is sure to insist at the same time that these varying levels of the intellect are not
equivocal but indeed very much homologous:
Take, for example, the formal notions of “wisdom” or “intellect” or “will.” Such a
notion is considered first of all simply in itself and absolutely. Because this notion
includes formally no imperfection nor limitation, the imperfections associated with
creatures are removed. Retaining this same notion of “wisdom” and “will,” we attribute
these to God—but in a most perfect degree. Consequently, every inquiry regarding
God is based upon the supposition that the intellect has the same univocal concept which it
obtained from creatures.36
Now of course for Spinoza the only specific “notions” that applies equally to
God and human beings are extension and intellect. Wisdom and will, as we shall
explore below, are only specific modes—characterizations that we have devised
and grown so confident in that we have come to mistakenly think of them as
attributes. Indeed, for Spinoza, it is confusing to associate attributes with ideas, for
while the intellect is a way in which substance is, ideas are only specific incidents
of that attribute. What does seem to unite Scotus and Spinoza, though, is the
assertion that common things (quidditative things) and virtual things (extension
or the intellect) are both different aspects of the same ontology. Scotus describes
this ontology thus:
It is clear that “being” has a primacy of commonness in regard to the primary intelli-
gibles, that is, to the quidditative concepts of the genera, species, individuals, and all
their essential parts, and to the Uncreated Being. It has a virtual primacy in regard
to the intelligible elements included in the first intelligibles, that is, in regard to the
qualifying concepts of the ultimate differences and proper attributes.37
Thus for Scotus there are two ways in which being can distinguish itself. On
the one hand there is the formal distinction, a conceptual distinction that which
is at the same time “a real distinction, since it is grounded in being or in the
object.”38
The formal distinction is to be distinguished from a “numerical distinction
because it is established between essences or senses, between ‘formal reasons’
which may allow the persistence of the unity of the subject to which they are
attributed.”39 Formal distinctions (or real distinctions) are formal in the sense that
they note the essence of what a thing truly is rather than the manner and practice
in which it appears. A distinction based on separability, or what Spinoza could call
a modal distinction, regards that which “is established between being or the attri-
butes on the one hand, and the intensive variations of which these are capable.”40
As Deleuze sees it, the Ethics is determined from its opening pages to demon-
strate “that real distinctions are never numerical but only formal—that is, qual-
itative or essential (essential attributes of the unique substance); and conversely,
that numerical distinctions are never real, but only modal (intrinsic modes of the
unique substance and its attributes).”41 It is only when the false yet prevailing
notion of difference is overcome that human beings will be able to see the sense in
which they are a part of God, and a part of each other as well.42
If this relationship (or at least symmetry) between Scotus and Spinoza is accu-
rate then we are opening the door to a new view of Spinoza, one that would ini-
tially seem to be as problematic as it is illuminative. Indeed, as Deleuze himself
notes, it is quite doubtful that Spinoza ever read Scotus; there is no mention of
Scotus in Spinoza’s writings. Further, even the influence of any specific Christian
thinker, other than Descartes, on Spinoza finds little explicit acknowledgement in
his work. As Mason puts it, “Spinoza cared not at all about the requirements of
Christian theology.”43
Mason’s sentiment is widespread. While such an assertion is of course correct
in some sense I suggest that it overstates the case. We can certainly see this in
Spinoza’s appeal to the popular conception of God as unique and omnipotent at
the beginning of the Short Treatise. Further, while Spinoza never felt the need to
please or satisfy a Christian audience, he cared very much about the character of
Christian thought and its effect on his society. Moreover, if we consider the role
Descartes’s philosophy played in the development of this character, we can deduce
that Scotus had a direct impact on Spinoza.
The first edition of Descartes’s Mediations was published in 1641, in Amster-
dam (while a second edition followed only a year later). In addition to the actual
“meditations” themselves the text included a collection of six “Objections” and
“Replies” that Descartes had solicited from various friends and acquaintances. Spi-
noza owned a copy of the 1650 edition of Descartes’s Opera Philosophica which
reprinted these objections and the replies. The “First Set” of the objections was
offered by a Catholic theologian from Holland named Johannes Caterus ( Johan
de Kater) who was then in the middle of his tenure at St. Laurens at Alkmaar.
Caterus had been solicited by two priests who happened to be friends of Descartes,
Johannes Albertus Bannius and Augustine Bloemaert, presumably because they
thought that Caterus was in a position to bring a nominalist point of view to Des-
cartes’s work, which is apparent throughout Caterus’s response.44
Caterus’s discussion of Descartes’s distinction between the soul and the body
as two separate substances is specifically Scotian in its critique. Caterus under-
stands Descartes’s rationale for this distinction as stemming from his belief that
soul and body “can be conceived apart from each other,”45 but questions the basis
from which he draws this distinction. How can we come to understand the body
without the soul, for it would seem that the latter would logically precede the
former and even be a condition of its existence? What kind of a difference exists
between these two? Caterus replies:
Here I refer the learned gentleman to Scotus, who says that for one object to be dis-
tinctly conceived apart from another, there need only be what he calls a formal and
objective distinction between them (such a distinction is, he maintains, intermediate
between a real distinction and a conceptual distinction). The distinction between God’s
justice and his mercy is of this kind. For, says Scotus, ‘The formal concepts of the two
are distinct prior to any operation of the intellect, so that one is not the same as the
other. Yet it does not follow that because justice and mercy can be conceived apart
from one another they can therefore exist apart.’”46
Although Caterus cuts his Scotian critique of Descartes off rather abruptly at this
point, his criticism is clear enough: formal concepts like divine justice and divine
mercy—as well as body and soul—might precede the operations of the intellect
but this does not mean that they exist apart from one another as individual onto-
logical entities. Further, much less does their separability in specific instances
necessarily entail a real distinction between the two. Such a distinction exists, of
course, for Scotus and Caterus, but as a real distinction of essence rather than a
general difference of particularity. It is an exercise in question begging of the first
order to deduce from a material separation a formal distinction.
Descartes, in his reply, argues that formal and modal distinctions are the same,
though the former differs from the latter slightly in that they apply to “incom-
plete entities” while modal distinctions apply to “complete” ones.47 We can, Des-
cartes argues, understand something without attributing to it the status of a full
or self-sufficient entity. One can understand motion and shape, Descartes argues,
apart from the body through an operation of abstraction performed by the intel-
lect. Further, through the same sort of abstraction we can understand motion and
shape as distinct from each other. In neither case, however, can we attribute to
either of these qualities actual existence. The same applies to mercy and justice, for
“I cannot understand justice apart from the person who is just, or mercy apart from
the person who is merciful.”48 He goes on:
By contrast, I have a complete understanding of what a body is when I think that it

is merely something having extension, shape, and motion. Conversely, I understand
the mind to be a complete thing, which doubts, understands, wills, and so on, even
though I deny that it has any of the attributes which are contained in the idea of a
body. This would be quite impossible if there were not a distinction between the mind
and the body.49
Descartes reaffirms this theory of distinctions in his Principles of Philosophy (1644).

Here he writes that “number,” is in things themselves, because it “arises from the
distinction between”50 separate things. While Descartes accepts Scotus’s tripartite
formulation of distinction—real, modal, and conceptual—he argues that a “real dis-
tinction exists only between two or more substances” which we can tell are “really
distinct from the fact that we can clearly and distinctly understand one apart from
the other.”51
Much as he argued in the Meditations, Descartes grounds his equation of dif-
ference with number in his confidence in the existence of a good and all-powerful
God. For Descartes, the knowledge we have of the existence of God transfers to
the “clear and distinct” ideas we have of existence itself, so that the knowledge we
have of God brings with it the fact that “we are certain that he [God] can bring
about anything of which we have a distinct understanding” (213). Given that we
have clear and distinct conceptions of specific individual substances that are differ-
entiated on the basis of their specific numeration, we know that these things exist
as substances. This is so true that Descartes argues that:
… even if we suppose that God has joined some corporeal substance to such a think-
ing substance so closely that they cannot be more closely conjoined, thus compound-
ing them into a unity, they nonetheless remain really distinct. For no matter how
closely God may have united them, the power which he previously had separated
them, or keeping one in being without the other, is something he could not lay aside;
and things which God has the power to separate, or to keep in being separately, are
really distinct.52
From Spinoza’s perspective such a position is odd, especially given Descartes’s

argument that God’s freedom is distinct from necessity per se. God, for Descartes,
is the ultimate volitional power—choosing to do whatever he chooses, regardless
of reason or rationale. Of course in the quotation above Descartes is simply insist-
ing upon this distinction—apart from whatever God may have brought about or
even would like to bring about in the future. Such an insistence is derived from
Descartes’s conception of substance—and specifically divine substance. Descartes
argues that divine substance is “nothing other than a thing which exists in such a
way as to depend on no other thing for its existence.”53 We can recognize divine
substance because it is that which has nothing outside itself, because it has an
infinite amount of attributes within very nature.54 That is, for Descartes, the infin-
itude of God’s attributes is what qualifies God as God. Likewise, Descartes insists
that the identity of any other substances lie in their particular attribute, or attri-
butes. For Descartes we come to:
know a substance by one of its attributes, in virtues of the common notion that noth-
ingness possesses no attributes, that is to say, no properties or qualities. Thus, if we
perceive the presence of some attribute, we can infer that there must also be present
an existing thing or substance to which it may be attributed. (210)
We can see here how Descartes comes to conflate, subtly, the coincidence of enu-
merable attributes with substance. Substances are not just attributes per se—like
thinking itself—but are what Descartes takes to be specific, enduring instances and
occasions of an attribute, such as a specific man thinking. After all, from Des-
cartes’s position, attributes must be attributable to some substance—otherwise
they would not be attributes at all. Parsed in this fashion, distinguishable sub-
stances are actually derived from distinguishable attributes, and ontology comes to
turn on epistemology and the perception of differences. What substance actually
is itself is never considered.
Indeed, it is much easier for us to have an understanding of extended substance or

thinking substance than it is for us to understand substance on its own, leaving out the
fact that it thinks or is extended. For we have some difficulty in abstracting the notion
of substance from the notions of thought and extension, since the distinction between
these notions of thought and extension, and the notion of substance itself is merely a
conceptual distinction. A concept is not any more distinct because we include less in
it; its distinctness simply depends on our carefully distinguishing what we do include
in it from everything else.55
Here Descartes clearly understands substances to be discernable by their distinct

character rather than their ontological self-sufficiency. Indeed, for Descartes onto-
logical self-sufficiency is only a characteristic that can be applied to God exclu-
sively—and it is precisely in this sense that God is for Descartes transcendent. It
is God’s infinite amount of substances that fundamentally distinguishes him from
human beings and makes no single specific substance determinate of his nature.
That is, as God is infinite, he is never equatable with any of his attributes, for there
is always something more—something else that we cannot account for. With this
distinction, of course, Descartes insists on two different senses of substance, which
he specifically opposes to the scholastic schools of Scotus.
… there is only one substance which can be understood to depend on no other thing
whatsoever, namely God. In the case of all other substances, we perceive that they can
exist only with the help of God’s concurrence. Hence the term ‘substance’ does not
apply univocally, as they say in the schools, to God and to other things; that is, there
in no distinctly intelligible meaning of the term which is common to God and his
creatures.56
In this sense Descartes’s conception of substance is a complete contradiction from

that of Spinoza, for while Descartes understands the independence of substance
to lie in its distinction from other things, Spinoza argues that any such distinc-
tion undoes the very self-sufficiency it is meant to represent, simply because it
establishes the identity of substance as distinct from other things and thus fig-
ures this very identity as a state of dependence—specifically substance’s depen-
dence on something for it to be substance. As we have seen, Spinoza believes that
such a conception of substance is inherently limited and thus no true substance at
all. This misrepresentation of the nature of substance is the central problem that
confronts most conceptions of God. Spinoza’s God is expressive precisely because

it is unlimited.
Of course such a problem is not merely theological—it is anthropological at
the same time. Spinoza’s insistence that human beings are not themselves sub-
stances but rather parts of the one true substance we need to consider just where
that formulation leaves the idea of individual and what Spinoza takes to be the
experience of human life.
chapter two
“A Kingdom Within a
Kingdom”
Spinoza on the Individual and the

Idea of the Will
Introduction: The Problem of the Individual
Spinoza’s general philosophical and religious orientation is thus distinguished not

simply by its pantheism but—more radically—by its rethinking of the traditional
account of particularity. For Spinoza, the reality of any particular thing can only
be truly discerned when we understand exactly how that thing or mode relates to
the larger, radically self-sufficient and comprehensive whole—the whole Spinoza
calls (variously) substance, God, or Nature. Thus, while particulars still exist, the
character of their existence is not constituted by their distinction from the whole
but lies rather in and through the whole. Particularity, by its very nature, is still
a discriminate form of existence, but Spinoza argues that the discrimination that
establishes any particular is not self-referential but concomitant, simply because
the difference of particulars can only be established—and only subsequently
discerned—through a common ontological field. That is, rather than having an
exclusive identity of their own, particulars have their identity through their inter-
connection with God.
Considering this emphasis, it is clear that Spinoza’s idea of God brings with it
implications that challenge the traditional view of Spinoza as an early progenitor
of liberal, secular political thought. While traditional liberal themes like freedom
and autonomy preoccupy Spinoza’s conception of the proper society and state,
it is apparent that in light of the ideas and priorities discussed in the previous
chapter such liberal ideas need to be re-examined, simply because Spinoza has
challenged the metaphysical assumptions that undergird liberal political theory
generally. One important mainstay of liberalism—the tenet that all human beings
have a distinct faculty of volition—is a specific target of Spinoza’s. This chapter
will consider Spinoza’s ideas about the will and agency in the context of Spinoza’s
conception of the human being. More specifically, this chapter will be preoccupied
with two central questions: if human beings are no longer beings that possess a
distinction of their own in what sense can they even be individual beings? Further,
if human beings are ultimately and fundamentally part of a larger totality (if the
basis for their own particular agency and responsibility seems to be so disturbed),
to what extent can such human beings be thought to act? These questions bring us
to the heart of Spinoza’s own theory of agency—a theory preoccupied with obedi-
ence as much as freedom, and oriented around a distinct conception of natural law.
Before turning specifically to these issues, however, we need to consider Spinoza’s
conception of the individual, and this means turning to Spinoza’s treatment of the
mind/body problem.
Mind and Body
Spinoza’s theological monism clearly prompts us to wonder what he takes the

individual to be. Indeed, in the conduct of his own treatment of Spinoza’s concep-
tion of God Bennett wonders whether Spinoza even has a theory of the individual
at all. The issue of individuality is even further complicated by Spinoza’s insistence
that God expresses God’s nature through an infinite array of attributes, of which
thought and extension are the two known to human beings. The complication
here arises from the fact that, as we have seen, these attributes are in themselves
inherently distinct, with each unable to limit or even affect the other. Thus, two of
the main elements that are most often assumed to make up a human being are not
just conceptually distinct from one another but in some sense seem to be ontolog-
ically exclusive from one another as well. While Spinoza argues in Proposition 7
“The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things” (E
247), he insists that these two orders organize two completely different forms of
expression, such that “thinking substance and extended substance are one and the
same substance, comprehended now under this attribute, now under that” (E 267).
Thus the idea of a circle and an actual circle are both of the same substance but yet
are two distinctly different ways by which that substance manifests itself. What is
the exact character of this difference? How are we to understand a specific human
“a kingd o m w i t h i n a k i n g d o m ” | 53
being if we have to maintain a firm difference (a real difference) between thought

and extension?
While Spinoza clearly states that extension and thought are only united in
substance, the very idea of an individual (as we saw in Descartes’ conception of
substance) would seem to require some concrete identity between the two. Must
not an individual be some kind of unique or distinct identity, perhaps of a certain
amount of extension and intellect, at very least? On one level, Spinoza rejects this
position clearly in Proposition 10: “The being of substance does not pertain to the
essence of man; i.e. substance does not constitute the form of man” (E 249). Given sub-
stance’s unique causa sui character, a nature that exists through an infinite amount
of attributes—thought and extension being only two—it is clearly a mistake to
attribute such a level of independent existence to individual human beings. The
root of this position is, again, in the assertion that real substance must be singular,
for otherwise it cannot be truly self-caused. That is, for substance to be substance
it must alone be singular and this precludes any other thing being so independent.
“Hence,” Spinoza concludes, “it follows that the essence of man is constituted by
definite modifications of the attributes of God” (E 249).
The exact nature of such modifications emerges much more clearly in 2p11c,
where Spinoza considers this problem from the attribute of the mind: “The
human mind is part of the infinite intellect of God; and therefore when we say
that the human mind perceives this or that, we are saying nothing else but this:
that God—not insofar as he is infinite but insofar as he is explicated through the
human mind, that is, insofar as he constitutes the essence of the human mind—
has this or that idea” (E 250). Spinoza’s contrast of God not as infinite but rather as
“expressed through the human mind” is clear here. Perhaps less clear to us—but no
less explicit in Spinoza’s writing—is that this account of God is also an account of
the human mind, the “thinking thing.” Yet in sharp differentiation from Descartes
here we see that individual thought is ultimately not individual in the particular
sense at all—but an aspect of something much greater.
In this way Spinoza wants to insist that the human mind and the human body
are, in some sense, united. The first step in discerning this unity is seeing that
human beings do not merely have ideas—they have ideas of affections as well.
The ideas we have of affections, however, must at some point relate to or concern
themselves with some body which has given rise to those affections. Thus, Spinoza
concludes, “the object of the idea constituting the human mind is a body, a body
actually existing” (E 250). This means that “not only is the human mind united
to the body,” but “the object of our mind is an existing body, and nothing else”
(E 251; emphasis mine). Such a relationship is confusing to say the least. The
mind is distinct from the body, and yet it also experiences the affections of the
body and thus it is, in some sense, its “sole object.” But how does the mind know
its body and not just any body? Spinoza seems simultaneously to insist upon both
separation and unification.
One of the most interesting attempts in recent Spinoza scholarship to deal
with this problem has been put forward by Michael Della Rocca. Della Roc-
ca’s interpretation of the mind/body divide in Spinoza begins with the obser-
vation that while it is a central aspect of Spinoza’s thought that neither mind
nor body can explain or account for the other, Spinoza has no real argument for
how thought and extension are separate attributes—or why we should see them
as such. Spinoza seems simply to insist that thought and extension are logically
distinct from one another and—at the same time—that they parallel one another.
For Della Rocca, this insistence on the parallel relation between thought and
extension should really be understood as a theory of representation. Della Rocca
reads Spinoza as following Leibniz here (at least initially) in arguing that thought
and extension are logically distinct, yet fundamentally symmetrical. In this way,
Spinoza (like Leibniz) emphasizes representation in order to make sense of two
competing claims: the seemingly ineluctable cohabitation of thought and exten-
sion on the one hand, and the fundamental separation of thought and extension
on the other. Della Rocca sees the core of this parallelism laid out in 2p7: “The
order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things” (E 247).
This order and connection is such that “in each case, the idea enters into causal
relations with other ideas that match the causal relations the corresponding thing
enters into with other things.”1 The respective operative causes of thoughts and
extensions are distinct, and yet they correspond to one another. This means, fur-
ther, that ideas and objects are not merely parallel to one another in some sort of
static fashion but are rather are in a kind of dynamic rhythm, where movement
and cause in one attribute mirrors a similar movement and cause in the other.
Della Rocca concludes, “the network of ideas and of things” are matching and yet
“causally isomorphic.”2
Della Rocca argues that this relationship is best understood as a representa-
tional parallelism, for ideas and things are not simply in step with one another.
Rather, ideas represent things. Della Rocca sees this again in 2p7: “whatever
follows formally from God’s infinite nature follows objectively in God from his
idea in the same order and with the same connection” (E 247). Parallelism is thus
supposed to be taken as semantic and not as ultimately ontological. In this way,
Spinoza avoids dualism and yet can insist upon what seem to be logically exclu-
sive attributes. Della Rocca argues that Spinoza’s parallelism is an explanatory
theory—it attempts to understand how individual bodies can be known or at least
accounted for.
But then what, we might ask, is representing what? Does it make sense to say
that ideas represent things, when they are ultimately the same thing? Don’t ideas
need to be distinct on some level from things in order to represent anything? If
they both inhere in the same substance aren’t they both present to one another, and
thus is not the need for them to be re-presented superfluous to say the least? It is
on this point that Della Rocca insists that an ontological distinction pertains to
these modes. Indeed, while Della Rocca notes Spinoza’s monism, he nonetheless
argues that modally specific thought and extension—which make up what we call
individuals—are in some important way fundamentally distinct. Commenting on
2p7s and 3p2s, Della Rocca writes: “It seems difficult not to interpret the above
passage as directly committing Spinoza to a numerical identity between the mind
and the body. After all, to be one and the same thing it seems to be numeri-
cally identical.”3 While this is a theory that (at least on some level) affirms the
basic unity of Spinoza’s ontology, it argues at the same time that this unity doesn’t
have differences within it as much as distinctions—“things” that can be identified,
enumerated, and thus set apart. To say that something is numerically identical to
something else is to say that something—whatever its parts—is distinguishable
from another thing or set of things (it/themselves now accordingly distinguish-
able). At the center of this interpretation is the inference that just as thought and
extension generally inhere in a single substance so too do their particular expres-
sions inhere in particular things.
Many agree with Della Rocca that the numerical identity of modes follows
directly from Spinoza’s view that thinking substance and extended substance are
identical. As 2p7s argues for a numerical identity between thinking and extended
substance, the argument goes, so too does it attribute an equal sense of identity
to certain modes of thought and extension. “When Spinoza introduces his claim
about identity of modes,” Della Rocca writes, “he seems to be drawing an infer-
ence from the identity of the thinking substance and the extended substance to
the identity of modes of thought and modes of extension.”4 Edwin Curley agrees
with Della Rocca on this point: “I think Spinoza does believe that the identity of
the thinking substance and the extended substance makes it reasonable for us to
expect to find an analogous identity among modes of thought and modes of exten-
sion.”5 Henry Allison, also, argues that an individuated identity resides in modes
themselves, as they come together from the attributes of thought and extension.6
Not surprisingly, an exception to this general consensus can be found in the
work of Jonathan Bennett. For Bennett, “Mind-body identity is not entailed by the
thesis that thought and extension are attributes of a single substance.”7 Moreover,
it is unclear to Bennett why the correspondence of modes from different attributes
has to converge into a distinct ontological identity. “Why,” he asks, “should not a
thinking and extended substance have details under one attribute which are not
also details under the other?”8
In his response to Bennett, Della Rocca argues that while “we might want
to say that it is conceivable for a thing to have thinking features distinct from its
extended features” such a distinction is not what Spinoza has in mind. We need to
keep in mind, Della Rocca argues, that thought and extension are attributes, and
thus (in keeping with Spinoza’s parallelism) they are ontologically distinct and
not just epistemologically distinct. Thus, while it is conceivable (at least to some
extent) that a mode or thing could have completely distinct features—thought
and extension—there is nothing about Spinoza’s parallelism that leads to this con-
clusion—indeed, it works against it. If we follow Bennett, Della Rocca seems to
argue, we will compromise Spinoza’s monism, reducing him to a dualist. For Della
Rocca, the larger point of Spinoza’s representational parallelism is that it testifies
to the monistic character of Spinoza’s thought more generally—a point that Ben-
nett’s interpretation would seem to challenge to the extent that it interprets Spi-
noza’s parallelism as ontologically significant.
Della Rocca’s argument for a modal sense of ontological identity, across the
attributes of thought and extension, is built out of a more general though com-
plicated theory of identity as such—Leibniz’s Law. Leibniz’s Law asserts that
an identity between A and B exists as long as they have all their properties in
common. Della Rocca amends this slightly (as he puts it) for Spinoza to insist
that such common properties must be extensional only—they must refer to an
object. Subsequently, Della Rocca argues that if there exist two modes of different
attributes that, nevertheless, hold the same extensional properties, they can be
considered identical. But what exactly constitutes extensional properties in the
first place?
The attributes of extension and thought here are intensional properties—they
are the conceptual conditions a mode must satisfy to qualify as an extended mode
or an intellectual mode—and thus these sorts of differences do not prohibit a
definition on Della Rocca’s terms. As these attributes distinguish what these modes
are, ultimately, they are distinct and thus not comparable. Thought is just different
from extension—so we need something else by which we can compare them too.
What we need to look at instead are what Della Rocca calls neutral properties—
properties “that do not presuppose that the item with that property is of a particu-
lar attribute.”9 That is, we can understand the identity between modes of thought
and modes of extension only if we ignore thought and extension, for the moment,
and consider some other properties that these modes share. But what could such
properties be?
That a mode of thought or extension may be caused or may be affected (by

something else) is a simple enough phenomenon that distinguishes a mode as dis-
tinct, Della Rocca argues. If a mode merely causes five effects we can isolate a cer-
tain character inherent to that mode which distinguishes it—regardless of the specific
attribute that may find expression through such causes. Or, to take another example,
we may consider the period of duration in which a mode exists. If another mode
exists for the same period, we have some good reason to think it the same mode
(though we would of course obviously also have to examine the other extensional
properties of course).
This may be an interesting theory in and of itself but is there any reason to
think Spinoza subscribed to it? Della Rocca points to 2p8c for textual proof:
[W]hen singular things are said to exist, not only insofar as they are comprehended in
God’s attributes, but insofar as they are said to have duration, their ideas also involve
the existence through which they are said to have duration. (E 248)
On the basis of this proposition it would seem, not surprisingly, that the idea of
symmetry plays a large role in Spinoza’s “parallelism”—but does this mirroring
really mean that these “things” are the same? Della Rocca argues that it does, and
he turns to 5p23d for more textual support: “[W]e do not attribute duration to
[the human mind] except while the body endures” (E 374). The implication here
would then seem to be that if it is a general rule that specific minds and specific
bodies always exist for the same period of duration, then they are the same thing.
But is not Spinoza, in the quotations above, specifically talking about how
things are “said to exist” or how we come to “attribute” different periods of dura-
tion to them? Is not Spinoza really talking about how human beings usually come
to understand modes and their relationship to one another, rather than how those
modes specifically are? Further, beyond the issue of human understanding, is not
it possible that two distinct things share the same extensional properties? In his
attempt to deal with this problem, Della Rocca returns to Leibniz’s Law:
If two distinct things shared all their neutral properties and extensional properties,
then there would be no legitimate way to distinguish them. We could not turn to the
non-neutral properties, since they are intensional and thus do not provide an appro-
priate basis for distinguishing these things. So we would be left without a way to
distinguish the two distinct things, and this would violate Spinoza’s commitment to
the intelligibility of all facts, including the intelligibility of the distinction between
two distinct things. Thus Spinoza is committed to the view that no two distinct things
share all their neutral properties.10
If we rule out intensional properties, and we are committed to the proposition that
all things are intelligible and play an important role in what things are (or how
they are), then it logically follows that particular, extensional properties are the
features by which one thing is different from another. In this sense, we can under-
stand what a mode is not by the attribute by which it is an expression of substance,
but by the specific qualities that are distinct to that mode per se. Such a perspec-
tive, Della Rocca insists, “is not a mere addition to his [Spinoza’s] system, but is
instead a position that grows out of what we can now see as the rich resources of
his system.”11 Indeed, Della Rocca goes so far as to say that this is a position that
Spinoza himself relies on, again, in 2p7s:
[W]hether we consider nature under the attribute of extension, or under the attribute
of thought, or under any other attribute, we shall find one and the same order, or one
and the same connection of causes, i.e. [hoc est] that the same things follow from one
another. (E 247)
Della Rocca understands Spinoza to be asserting that regardless of attribute, the

modes that come from substance (and thus from attributes) have an identity of
their own. It seems here that Spinoza is insisting that “facts about non-identity
must be explained and that they must be explained, in particular, by property dif-
ferences.”12 Substance provides the cause of such identities, and it provides the
logical model by which they can be known; but when it comes to the nature of
modes, per se, Della Rocca insists that they have some identity endemic to them-
selves alone.
We can see that while Della Rocca’s interpretation of parallelism might save
Spinoza from the charge of dualism in the traditional sense it introduces a new one
in its effect. Della Rocca clearly suggests that two different conceptions of being
can be found in Spinoza’s work: one that seems to affirm the unique and com-
pletely comprehensive idea of substance and another that seems to allow for the
reality of particular things. What are we to make of these two different interpreta-
tions? If we still accept the conclusion of the last chapter, we have to re-affirm that
for Spinoza being is not enumerated at all—that is, it is simply one. Being is not
itself fundamentally enumerated but is the singular condition for enumeration. If
minds and bodies were each one thing unto themselves, capable of being ascribed
a numerical identity of their own, they would not be of the same substance. In this
sense, when Spinoza says that different modes are of the same thing, he can only
mean that they are of the same substance, not the same mode.
This point is clearer if we consider the larger context in which 2p7s appears.
The proposition states, “The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and
connection of things.” (E 247) The proof of this, Spinoza argues, is “evident from
1ax4; for the idea of what is caused depends on the knowledge of the cause of
which it is the effect.” (E 267) Of course the legitimacy of this proof is not quite
as “evident” as Spinoza seems to think, for while the proposition seems to speak
to some harmony or coordination between ideas and things, the proof refers the
reader to the cause of the idea, which would presumably be—ultimately—sub-
stance. If we look at Proposition 7’s Corollary, we can see Spinoza commenting
further on the importance of God’s causal power on this point: “God’s power of
thinking is on par with his power of acting. That is, whatever follows formally from
the infinite nature of God, all this follows from the idea of God as an object of thought
in God according to the same order and connection.” (E 267; emphasis mine) What
exactly this common “order and connection” may be is left vague. What we do see,
however, is that whatever the common order really is, it follows exclusively from
God’s causal power. Spinoza (clearly building off of Part I of the Ethics) structures
his account of the common order of thought and extension around the idea of
God’s causa sui power. In the Scholium, this point becomes even more explicit:
We should recall to mind what I have demonstrated above—that whatever can be

perceived by infinite intellect as constituting the essence of substance pertains entirely
to the one sole substance. Consequently, thinking substance and extended substance are
one and the same substance, comprehended now under this attribute, now under that.
So, too, a mode of Extension and the idea of that mode are one and the same thing,
expressed in two ways. (E 267; emphasis mine)
Where do a single thought and a single body find their identity together? In sub-
stance, which brings them into (an) order with one another. The example Spinoza
gives is of “a circle existing in Nature and the idea of the existing circle—which
is also in God—[which] are one and the same thing, explicated through different
attributes” (E 267).13 Drawing on this example, we can see the order to which
Spinoza refers:
We conceive Nature under the attribute of Extension or under the attribute of Thought
or under any other attribute, we find one and the same order, or one and the same
connection of causes—that is, the same things following one another. When I said
that God is the cause, e.g., of the idea of a circle only insofar as he is a thinking thing,
and of circle only insofar as he is an extended thing, my reasoning was simply this, that
the formal being of the idea of a circle can be perceived only through another, and so
ad infinitum, with the result that as long as things are considered as modes of thought,
we must explicate the whole order of Nature, or connection of causes, through the
attribute of Thought alone; and insofar as things are considered as modes of Exten-
sion, again the order of the whole of Nature must be explicated through the attribute
of Extension only. The same applies to other attributes. Therefore God, insofar as he
consists of infinite attributes, is in fact the cause of things as they are in themselves.
For the present, I cannot give a clearer explanation. (E 267)
If we consider any mode, we have to consider the attribute through which it is. On
top of this, if we consider any attribute, we have to consider the substance through
which it is. Thus, there is a clear hierarchy of explanation at the heart of the divine
order which brings different modes “together.”
Given this hierarchy, as well as Spinoza’s emphasis on the unique causal
power of God, it is a mistake to draw any analogies between substance and its
modes, for they simply have completely different natures and powers. When Spi-
noza refers to modal thoughts and modal bodies as the same “thing” Della Rocca
takes him to mean some “thing” in the conventional sense, and thus he goes to
good length to consider whether that thing is a mode or not.14 If it is a mode,
Della Rocca reflects, is it a mode of thought or extension? It couldn’t seem to be
both, given Spinoza’s parallelism, but if it is supposed to be why even differentiate
between the two at all? The thing cannot, of course, be of no attribute and still
be a mode, given 1p28d. But, conversely, how can it be a thing and not a mode?
Spinoza flatly rules out this sense of “thing” in 1p25c: “Particular things are noth-
ing but affections of God’s attributes, or modes by which God’s attributes are
expressed in a certain way” (E 232). With these two possibilities exhausted, Della
Rocca concludes that Spinoza uses the term “thing” here “non-technically.”15 “We
can, perhaps, acknowledge that Spinoza’s choice of that word is somewhat mis-
leading,” Della Rocca maintains, “but that should not by itself prevent us from
adopting a non-technical reading, and thus should not prevent us from adopting
the numerical identity view.”16
Della Rocca’s interpretation is quite tempting. After all, should not we expect
Spinoza to have some account for what a thing is in the colloquial sense? The
inclination to answer such a question in the affirmative is seemingly logical but it
also challenges the singularity of substance as it attributes some ontological reality
to “things themselves.” What are we to conclude?
In contrast to Della Rocca’s attempt to make sense of this problem, we need
to consider again the work of Deleuze. Like Della Rocca, Deleuze also insists that
thought and extension not only share a high degree of correlation but also an “iden-
tity of being” or an “ontological unity.”17 Unlike Della Rocca, however, Deleuze
grounds this unity not in the seemingly concrete and yet quite general sense of
thing-hood but in the fundamentally egalitarian nature of all modes. Deleuze
argues that for Spinoza: “Identity of connection means not only the autonomy
of corresponding series, but an isonomy, that is, an equality of principle between
autonomous or independent series.”18 It is in this equality between modes and not
in a mere symmetry between them that their ontological identity can be found.
If, Deleuze argues, we “consider two corresponding series, but with unequal prin-
ciples, that of one being in some way eminent in relation to that of the other:
between a solid and its projection, a line and asymptote, there is an identity of
order and correspondence, but not, strictly speaking, an ‘identity of connection.’”19
Indeed, Deleuze maintains that in “such cases one can speak of parallelism only in
a very vague sense.”20 So, like Della Rocca, Deleuze insists that one mode reflect-
ing another is not enough to form an ontological identity of things. Unlike Della
Rocca, however, Deleuze grounds this identity in an equality of modes expressed
through equal attributes by substance.21 That is, Deleuze insists that the onto-
logical identities that occur in the “things” of our world can come only through a
connection of modes in which all are equal.
The modes of different attributes have not only the same order and the same con-
nection, but the same being; they are the same thing, distinguished only by the attri-
bute whose concept they involve. Modes of different attributes are one and the same
modification, differing only in attribute. Through this identity of being or ontological
unity, Spinoza refuses the intervention of a transcendent God to make each term in
one series agree with a term in the other, or even to set the series in agreement through
unequal principles. … Parallelism, strictly speaking, is to be understood neither from
the viewpoint of occasional causes, nor from the viewpoint of ideal causality, but only
from the viewpoint of an immanent God and immanent causality.22
Parallelism, Deleuze argues, makes sense when we accept the idea of an immanent
God, as it is only through this God that any connection between these attributes
exists. In this sense, the unity of modes—even in what we would call things—is
achieved through substance rather than in spite of it. By emphasizing the equality
of modes, Deleuze reinforces the fact that they are all fundamentally a part of
substance. Modes thus inhere together not simply by sharing distinct or particu-
lar qualities, but by being equally present to substance and finding an equal and
identical order of expression there. We can only understand this order and identity
between modes and the attributes through which they are realized if we under-
stand God as distinctly causa sui, because this is the basis of Spinoza’s pantheism.
Deleuze continues:
God produces things in all attributes at once: he produces them in the same order
in each, and so there is a correspondence between modes of different attributes. …
Because the attributes are all equal, there is an identity of connection between modes dif-
fering in attribute. … Because attributes constitute one and the same substance, modes that
differ in attribute form one and the same modification.23
Deleuze’s last sentence here is crucial: it is substance that forms the basis for modes
finding themselves connected in a modification with other modes, and these con-
nections are what things are. While Della Rocca points to the particularity of
modes, Deleuze argues that modes are always “expressed as a modification of sub-
stance” and this is “the same for all modes differing in attribute.”24 This does not
mean that modes do not take on particular forms of expression—only that they are,
in their essence, primarily modes of expression which come from the same source
and are thus fundamentally equal. Deleuze’s approach therefore refers the nature
of all modes back to their cause in substance, and finds their identity there—in an
equal symmetry of modes among an infinite amount of attributes.
It is easy to see why Della Rocca makes the interpretive move he does when
it comes to the relationship between the mind and the body: Spinoza is insisting
on an underlying identity between these two otherwise fundamentally distinct
modes. Further, these two modes seem to be immersed an extremely intimate
relationship with one another, one that is not quite clear if we don’t assume that
they are both different aspects of the same thing, in the regular non-technical
sense of the term. The problem, of course, as we have seen, is that this reading
completely undercuts the central role substance plays in Spinoza’s philosophy and
in this proposition specifically. To refer to another sense of “thing,” even in a collo-
quial sense, directly challenges Spinoza’s metaphysical world-view; if for no other
reason than because Spinoza is precisely attempting to correct the colloquial sense
of what is. Della Rocca is right to argue for an identity between mode of thought
and mode of extension, he just elides, on occasion, the fact that Spinoza calls this
identity substance. Of course the reason he does this is because he is trying to
get at how ideas and objects cohere in the individual. The interpretation I have
explored here has not helped us with this pivotal problem. To do so, we need to
bring Spinoza’s theory of desire and motion in the picture, to see how they relate
to Spinoza’s conception of the individual (whatever that might be).
The Order of Desire
It is in 3p57 that Spinoza comes closest to addressing the relationship between

individuals and their desires. Here Spinoza specifically associates the nature of
individuality as such with a specific form of desire: the desire to survive or endure;
what Spinoza calls conatus. While conatus can accurately be translated as “power”
or “striving,” both its etymological origins and its specific use by Spinoza distin-
guish it as principally a form of desire simply because it is an inherent and ineluc-
table aspect of the human being. As Wolfson has shown:25
“Conatus,” “will,” “appetite,” and “desire” are all taken by Spinoza as related terms.
They all have in common, according to him, the general meaning of a striving for
self-preservation and of a pursuance of the means to further the attainment of this
self-preservation. This striving is not a free act by which an affirmation or denial
is made, but rather an act which follows from the necessity of the eternal nature of
God.26
To call conatus primarily a form of desire is simply to emphasize that it springs

from our natural resolve to persist in our own being. Thus, conatus is for Spinoza
the archetypal active passion, for it is (if left to its own terms) perpetually insistent
upon itself and seeks only to increase its own power.
Given its seemingly myopic concern for self-preservation it is clear that cona-
tus must bear heavily on Spinoza’s conception of selfhood. Indeed, Spinoza argues
that conatus specifically and desire more generally comes to constitute “the very
nature or essence of every single individual” (see its Definition in 3p9sch/E 308),
for though a general principle of all things a person’s conatus is always funda-
mentally about that person. This is true to such an extent that the differences
between individuals are predicated upon “the desire of each [specific] individual,”
simply because as the desire of one “differs from the desire of another … the nature
or essence of the one [individual] differs from the essence of another” (E 308).
The specific examples Spinoza uses to illustrate this connection are pleasure and
pain. For Spinoza, both pleasure and pain are “emotions whereby each individual’s
power, that is, his conatus to persist in his own being, is increased or diminished,
assisted or checked” (E 285). When we consider desire as it relates to the mind
and the body, we understand it as pleasure and pain, for it is by this desire that the
individual experience of pleasure and pain emerges between and in the midst of
the mind and the body.
Therefore, pleasure and pain is desire or appetite, insofar as it is increased or dimin-

ished, assisted or checked, by external causes; that is, (by the same Sch.), it is each
individual’s very nature. So each individual’s pleasure and pain differs from the plea-
sure or pain of another to the extent that the nature of essence of the one also differs
from that of the other. (E 308–9)
The specific configurations and allocations of pleasure and pain, and the resulting
fashion in which they affect an individual’s ability to persist, make up the very
nature of what constitutes an individual. That is, “individuals” emerge from the
concrete organization of mind and body, modes of intellect and extension, by the
experience of desire.
In this regard it is of central importance to note here that Spinoza’s theory of
human emotion is developed against a background of what he observes in others
to be rather hopeful, yet sloppy, thinking. Indeed, just as human beings seem all
too eager to consider God as something outside of and distinct from Nature, so
also do they desire to place the human being in a unique and ultimately isolated
position:
Most of those who have written about the emotions [affectibus] and human conduct
seem to be dealing not with natural phenomena that follow from the common laws of
Nature but with phenomena outside Nature. They appear to go so far as to conceive
man in Nature as a kingdom within a kingdom. They believe he disturbs rather than
follows Nature’s order, and has absolute power over his actions, and is determined by
no other source than himself. (E 277; emphasis mine)
The prevailing notion of the will takes root in such lofty and delusional senti-
ments. When we give in to how we would like to see ourselves as opposed to
how we really are, we more often than not conceive of ourselves in some special
station—one that is distinct from and elevated above the rest of the Nature. Iron-
ically, to account for our sordid behavior, we even come to devise elaborate stories
that detail how we have fallen from our original, rightful positions—never really
taking seriously the simple idea that we are a part of a natural world and that the
unfortunate reality of this membership often entails what we take to be grim and
unpleasant consequences. To avoid this unsightly truth, we “assign the cause of
human weakness and frailty not to the power of Nature in general, but to some
defect in human nature, which they therefore bemoan, ridicule, despise, or, as is
most frequently the case, abuse” (E 277).
Rather than imagining some break between ourselves and Nature, Spinoza
argues that we need to appreciate our membership in it. When we do so, we will be
able to appreciate the critical and important role desire plays in our lives. If God’s
expression of the world (Natura naturata) is equal in all of its aspects, as Deleuze
maintains, then it is also ordered and consistent, and this applies specifically to
desire. Spinoza writes:
My argument is this: in Nature nothing happens which can be attributed to its defec-
tiveness, for Nature is always the same, and its force and power of acting is everywhere
one and the same; that is, the laws and rules of Nature according to which all things
happen and change from one form to another are everywhere and always the same. So
our approach to the understanding of the nature of things of every kind should likewise be one
and the same; namely, through the universal laws and rules of Nature. (E 278; emphasis
mine)
Here Spinoza simply argues that we should exercise some consistency in how we
regard the idea of Nature, understanding ourselves to be just as subject to its laws
and character than any other natural thing. Thus Spinoza concludes that “the
emotions of hatred, anger, envy, etc., considered in themselves, follow from the
same necessity and force of Nature as all other particular things” (E 278). To the
extent that human beings come to think of certain aspects of their person, such as
our emotions or desires, as marginal or even depraved we engage in self-deception.
Understanding that such emotions or desires are natural entails understanding
their nature, for it is in the naturalness of these properties that we see how “emo-
tions are assignable to definite causes through which they are understood, and
have definite properties” (E 278). These properties are rational and necessary, and
this means that these are the appropriate facts by which we should live—precisely
because they are the only facts.
If the world is caused to exist in a certain way, we need to understand the
quality of these causes, and not only as they specifically regard the idea of God
but also on what we would usually take to be a more local or modal level as well.
In this regard, Spinoza divides the causes of our emotions into two types: passive
and active. We are active, for Spinoza, when we are the adequate cause of some-
thing that happens, either within ourselves or outside ourselves. We are passive
when something happens, again either within or outside ourselves, which we do
not cause ourselves. While it might seem that in response to our emotions we
would obviously be passive, Spinoza opposes this assumption, arguing that emo-
tions can be both passive and active. Emotions are “affections of the body by which
the body’s power is increased or diminished, assisted or checked, together with the
ideas of these affections” (E 278; emphasis mine). The difference between action
and passivity lies in the quality of these ideas. This point is put forward at the very
beginning of the Ethics, in Proposition 1: “Our mind is in some instances active and
in other instances passive. Insofar as it has adequate ideas, it is necessarily active; insofar
as it has inadequate ideas, it is necessarily passive” (E 279). So, the mind is empow-
ered when it has good ideas and weakened when it has bad ones. Emotions per se
do not lead to passivity—this occurs only if they lead us to inadequate ideas.
Yet remembering Spinoza’s parallelism, we need to observe that ideas are
only causal in the realm of the intellect. Spinoza emphasizes this in Proposi-
tion 2, where he reasserts the barrier between mind and body: “The body cannot
determine the mind to think, nor can the mind determine the body to motion or rest, or
to anything else (if there is anything else)” (E 279). Again, the egalitarian identity
of all modes is clear here. While Leibnizian parallelism is obviously premised
around a symmetry between thought and extension, it is an unbalanced one, in
which thought clearly exists on a higher and more complete level than does the
extended.27
Spinoza’s argument that the body has some degree of power over and apart
from the mind may seem by many early modern (particularly Cartesian) standards
quite odd. No one, he laments, “as yet has determined the limits of the body’s capa-
bilities” (E 280). It is one thing, of course, to note the lack of knowledge we might
have about how the body works, but it is another to speculate as Spinoza does
about the implications of how “sleepwalkers do many things in their sleep that
they would not dare when awake” (E 280). In this respect, Spinoza seems to attri-
bute a certain amount of agency or even intentionality to the body—except that to
describe its processes in such a way would be to treat it as if it were the mind (or
at least consider it as akin to the mind) and this clearly begs the question. Indeed,
Spinoza’s main point here is to assert that the mind doesn’t control the body.
When men say this or that action of the body arises from the mind which has com-
mand over the body, they do not know what they are saying, and are merely admitting,
under a plausible cover of words, that they are ignorant of the true causes of that
action and are not concerned to discover it. (E 280)
But doesn’t experience flatly contradict this? Cannot the mind control the
body enough to force it to speak? Spinoza rejoins that experience also teaches us
“with abundant examples that nothing is less within men’s power than to hold
their tongues or control their appetites” (E 281). Further, while it may seem as if
“it is impossible that the causes of buildings, pictures, and other things of this kind,
which are made by human skill alone, should be deduced solely from the laws of
Nature,” Spinoza argues that from these laws “many things occur which they [the
masses] would never have believed possible” (E 280–1). The problem is not what
the body or, more largely, the laws of nature are capable of, but what we actually
believe about those processes. For Spinoza, we do not give the body its due: we
refuse to see, much less appreciate, the ways in which it controls our lives. It is one
of our all too common fallacies that it is the mind or the self that dictates how the
body should behave.
The dependence of the mind upon the body is nowhere clearer than in 3p11s,
where Spinoza asserts that “the present existence of our mind depends solely on
this, that the mind involves the actual existence of the body” (E 285).28 Given that
the mind is always the intellectual apprehension of desires and affectations it is
fundamentally dependent on the body. Though causally separate, ultimately, mind
and body are untied by desire and thereby exist in a relationship of high synergy,
where each attempts to empower the other (see 3p12&13). Thus it can only follow
“that the present existence of the mind and its capacity to perceive through the
senses are annulled as soon as the mind ceases to affirm the present existence of the
body,” (E 285) for the mind needs the body’s help to exist. Indeed, Spinoza goes
so far as to argue in 3p10 that thoughts of ourselves without our bodies are not
refinements of our mind but antagonisms to it: “An idea that excludes the existence
of our body cannot be in our mind, but contrary to it” (E 284). The reason for this is,
again, that “the first thing that constitutes the essence of the mind is the idea of an
actually existing body, the basic and most important element of the mind is the
conatus to affirm the existence of our body” (E 284; emphasis mine). Subsequently,
it can only be the case that “the idea that negates the existence of our body is con-
trary to our mind” (E 284).
Thus, as much as Spinoza implies some kind of requisite unification of mind
and body, he ultimately rejects it—insisting instead upon an extraordinarily high
degree of correlation between the two. Desire is the emotion which correlates these
two otherwise distinct attributes. Desire does this by enacting certain emotive dis-
positions—ones which can cause us to think or act in certain ways (to greater or
lesser extents, given a situation). Thus, for Spinoza, there is a certain ratio between
action and reflection that clarifies the relationship, the union, between mind and
body:
In proportion as a body is more apt than other bodies to act or be acted upon simul-
taneously in many ways, so is its mind more apt than other minds to perceive many
things simultaneously; and in proportion as the actions of one body depend on itself
alone and less that other bodies concur with it in its actions, the more apt is its mind
to understand distinctly. (E 252)
As we have seen, the mind can perceive and consider a number of bodies, but it only
ever experiences some activity in symmetrical fashion with one body. Further, pace
Deleuze, these symmetries are not merely similar—they are fundamentally equal
as well. In this sense, the mind and the body are involved in a continual matching
game of sorts, wherein the mind is surveying the affections it is experiencing and
then considering them in relation to some observed physical (or extended) activity
or movement. What matters is an implicit, discernable level of proportionality,
for to the extent that a mind sees its form of experience mirrored by a body it can
make a connection to it. Such connections are all the easier if the mind and body
experience a form of activity quite distinct from that of other bodies.
Of course the larger point, again, is that bodies and minds (however uni-
fied) through desire are not distinguishable as substances or things “of their
own.” “Bodies are distinguished from one another in respect to motion-and-
rest, quickness and slowness, and not in respect of substance” (E 252), Spinoza
writes. Indeed, as we have seen, substance is not something that is itself distin-
guishable—it is that which “distinguishes.” Within substance, though, motion
and activity stop and start in a myriad of coordinated and unconditioned ways.
Consider the attribute of extension. Bodies in motion are essentially the same in
that they are all modes of extension that only vary in their amount of extension
and movement and rest. Further, the movement these modes undergo are the
products of other bodies: “A body in motion or at rest must have been determined
to motion or rest by another body, which likewise has been determined to motion
or rest by another body, and that body by another, and so ad infinitum” (E 252).
There is no fundamental ontological difference between these modes—no differ-
ence in kind, only difference in extent or degree. To note the fact of bodies influ-
encing one another and avoiding one another is to see how they are on some level
effected by one another, and thus how they are finite modes. But as we saw in the
last chapter, Spinoza uses the word finite not to describe the intrinsic nature of
a body (or a thought, for that matter) but to describe the form of its relationship
to other bodies. Bodies are modes of extension, first and foremost. If we want to
get a sense of how they are expressed as modes (and not just what they are as
modes) we need to appreciate the way they relate to each other, and this form of
relationship (clearly secondary to knowing what a mode really is) Spinoza calls a
thing’s finite nature.
Individual bodies are, really, motion and rest—patterns of activity along the
attribute of extension. If we want to understand such patterns we, need to see
the finite nature of modes, for it is only in this sense that they are differentiated:
“That which constitutes the form of the individual thing consists in a union of
bodies” (E 254). Such a union, Spinoza argues, “is retained in spite of the con-
tinuous change of component bodies” so that “the individual thing will retain
its own nature as before, both in respect of substance and of mode” (E 254), not
because of its substance but because, in a sense, of its rhythm, its pattern, and
forms of movement and rest. It is in this sense that Spinoza’s argument concern-
ing the nature of motion and rest turns—perhaps counter-intuitively—into an
argument about the nature of individuality. “If several individual things concur
in one act/movement/etc.,” Spinoza writes, “in such a way as to be all together
the simultaneous cause of one effect, I consider them all, in that respect, as one
individual” (E 244). We should understand individuality then not as a thing
(especially one unto itself ) but as a coalition of different elements and processes,
of different modifications and the attributes which express them—as moments
of substance.
But of course for Spinoza the movements or actions in question seem to follow
certain patterns or even laws often differentiated through desire. How are we to
understand them? What reality can we attribute to them? To deal adequately with
these questions we have to turn to Spinoza’s idea of “common notions.”
Common Notions
As the mind is always already aware of a body—and it is through this awareness

that the mind is the mind at all—it seems clear that the mind has to be aware of
some basic or simple elements that inherently result from its own (and the body’s)
existence. Like Descartes, Spinoza insists that human beings are thinking things
(2ax2). But unlike Descartes, Spinoza deduces from this fact that the mind is
always thinking some thing—its body and the experience of its body. Thus Spinoza
argues in 2p11: “That which constitutes the actual being of the human mind is basically
nothing else but the idea of an individual actually existing thing” (E 250). While we
have seen that thought and extension coalesce through desire and the experience
of affect, Spinoza’s point here concerns more the phenomenon of thinking per se:
thought thinks the body. Beyond this point, however, we need to recognize that the
thinking of a body is not an open ended or entirely ambiguous activity—certain
specific experiences, acts, and ideas inevitably arise from it.
We have a specific group of basic ideas that arise from the experience of some
of the basic elements of our affections, if only because those affections have a natu-
ral order. Spinoza makes this clear in 2ax3: “Modes of thinking such as love, desire,
or whatever emotions are designated by name, do not occur unless there is in the
same individual the idea of the thing loved, desired, etc” (E 244). The idea of a
body and the concrete physical extension of that body meet in these emotive expe-
riences. Spinoza’s conception of the “I” or the self is rooted in these experiences.
While it is certainly true that Spinoza considers the “essence of man” (E 249) to be
“constituted by definite modes of the attributes of God, to wit (Ax. 2, II), modes
of thinking” (2p11pr) it is nonetheless the case that those modes of thought are
preoccupied with and grounded in the modes of a body.
Of all these modes the idea [of a me: of an individual actual existing thing] is prior by
nature (Ax. 3, II), and when the idea is granted the other modes—modes to which the
idea is prior by nature—must be in the same individual (Ax., II). (E 250)
All of this is on a basic level clearly a response to Descartes. We are thinking

things, true, but that thinking has to occur somewhere or in something, and that
thinking has to regard that thing in a specific way or by a specific concept—this is
a requirement of thought (E 244). Spinoza makes this clear in 2p13: “The object
of the idea constituting the human mind is the body—i.e., a definite mode of extension
actually existing, and nothing else” (E 251). Our minds and bodies may be distinct,
causally separate from one another, but this does not prohibit them from being
ordered so that they are fundamentally in concert with one another and even pos-
sess a primary regard for one another.
While Spinoza insists that selves as substances do not exist, he nonetheless
maintains that the idea of the self arises from this order and from this regard. There
is thus a certain inevitability about the idea of the self for Spinoza, even though
that self does not exist exclusively in its own right. When Spinoza writes that “man
consists of mind and body, and the human body exists according as we sense it,”
he is referring to a basic sense we have of ourselves—a “sense” which is only half
the story of what we really (from a strictly epistemological perspective) are.29 Now
for Spinoza it is undoubtedly true that “ideas differ among themselves as do their
objects, and that one is more excellent and contains more reality than another just as
the object of one idea is more excellent than that of another and contains more
reality” (E 251). Thus as the idea of God simply has more reality than does any of
its modes, so too does the idea of “thought” have more reality than does any of its
particular modifications, much less its emotive relationships.
Yet it is through the notions we have such as the notion we have of our body—
what Spinoza calls “common notions”—that we are most easily able to appreciate
and understand the actual experience of the mind and the body’s synergy, and
this is no negligible form of knowledge, no matter how rudimentary it may be.
For Spinoza, the observation that we all have ideas of our-selves—a self that has
a body—is the first step toward observing the fashion in which modes of thought
and extension work together.
I will make this general assertion, that in proportion as a body is more apt than other
bodies to act or be acted upon simultaneously in many way, so is its mind more apt
than other minds to perceive many things simultaneously; and in proportion as the
actions of one body depend on itself alone and the less that other bodies concur with
it in its actions, the more apt is its mind to understand distinctly. (E 251–2)
Again, while common notions are obviously limited from the point of view of
strict epistemological inquiry, they nonetheless arise naturally from the concur-
rence of the mind and the body and are helpful in this simple regard. The quality
of a particular life comes from one’s being able to understand and respond to the
experience of bodies, primarily (but not exclusively) our own.
In this way common ideas are really the furthest things from abstractions—
they are responses to the distinct, local experiences that a mode of thought per-
ceives by its relation to a mode of extension. However, as all human beings are
subject to the same natural order and are all forced to respond to the experience
of a body, these notions are universal—indeed, they are “common” to all. As we
have seen, selves—highly coordinated instances of thought and extension—are
not things that exist on their own, they exist in and through substance and are
governed by its order. To the extent that the modes of thought and extension
are arranged commonly across the whole of Nature we can say that the idea of
one’s own body is a common notion. Indeed, Spinoza goes so far as to say that
given the fact that these ideas are as common as they are, they are inevitably ade-
quate. “Those things,” Spinoza writes, “that are common to all things and are equally
in the parts as in the whole, can only adequately be conceived ” (E 265). As Nature has
natured-itself in certain, pervasive ways—bringing different modes into relation
with one another—it clearly follows that there is a certain class of thing of which
it is impossible to form a poor conception; a class of certain things that no one can
fail to conceive properly, no matter how much we might try to do otherwise. Such
concepts are the result of the natural order of the world—or God.
Here we see Spinoza emphasizing that parts of nature are simply and thor-
oughly conditioned by the whole. If we imagine a certain quality that all bodies
share, such that we “let A be something common to all bodies” to the extent that A
is “in the part of any body as in the whole,” Spinoza argues that it must follow that
“A can be conceived only adequately” (E 265). Why is this? Spinoza writes of A:
Its idea (Cor. Pr. 7, II) will necessarily be in God both insofar as he has the idea of the
human body and insofar as he has the ideas of affectations of the human body, affec-
tations which partly involve the natures of both the human body and external bodies
(Pr.s 16, 25, and 27, II). That is (Prs. 12 and 13, II), this idea will necessarily be ade-
quate in God insofar as he constitutes the human mind; that is, insofar as he has ideas
that are in the human mind. Therefore, the mind (Cor. Pr. 11, II) necessarily perceives
A adequately, and does so both insofar as it perceives itself and insofar as it perceives
its own body or any external body; nor can A be conceived in any other way. (E 265)
The point here is not that there is one thing which is understood one way (as
extended) and then another (as idea). Spinoza is arguing that concepts are common
(and thus implicitly adequate) to the extent that they are in God, who possesses
both the attribute of thought and extension, and it is by their relation to God
that these two attributes come together as they do. Spinoza expands on this in
the following Corollary: “Hence it follows that there are certain ideas or notions
common to all men. For (Lemma 2) all bodies agree in certain respects, which
must be (preceding Pr.) conceived by all adequately, or clearly and distinctly.” This
all stems from the order God has put in place between these attributes. It is in this
way that that which is common to all bodies is common to all modes of thought
as well.
Yet as Spinoza makes clear in 2p39, this commonality must pervade both the
parts (modes) and the whole (substance): “Of that which is common and proper to the
human body and to any external bodies by which the human body is customarily affected,
and which is equally in the part as well as in the whole of any of these bodies, the idea also
in the mind will be adequate” (265). We can use these common notions as the build-
ing blocks of knowledge—as long as they are adequate. This obviously applies
strictly to the nature of adequate ideas, as Spinoza holds that adequate ideas build
on and lead to one another, as he makes clear in 2p40: “Whatever ideas follow in
the mind from ideas that are adequate in it are also adequate” (266). But beyond the
import of our own ideas, Spinoza holds that adequate ideas are fostered through
our observation of our wider common experience, the experience of other things
and people. It follows from this “that the mind is more capable of perceiving more
things adequately in proportion as its body has more things in common with other
bodies” (266).
This is true, of course, because all things are in God and subject to its laws and
causes. In all such cases, we are simply observing what necessarily follows from
God’s nature, rather than the often overly emotional responses we tend to foster
on our own. Margaret D. Wilson observes this point when she writes:
The basic thrust of this argument, as I understand it, is that the divine or perfect ideas
or “properties” common to the human body and other bodies contrast with ideas of
sense and imagination in not requiring knowledge of those things that the human
mind apprehends only confusedly, in virtue of their effects on its body.30
Wilson’s point is that there are certain things about any simple experience of
bodies that are necessary, and aren’t open to subjective interpretation: their materi-
ality, their extension, their movement and action. Such things are too common to
be misconstrued. But it is key to see that in many important ways Spinoza extends
the concept of common notions beyond just the idea of bodies. One pivotal area
in which Spinoza discusses his conception of common notions is, perhaps surpris-
ingly, the TTP—specifically chapter seven. This chapter is an important one, as
it is from here that scholars most inclined to portray Spinoza as primarily a critic
of religion draw their arguments. In this chapter we see Spinoza’s laments about
the influence of “theologians” who “extort from Holy Scripture their own arbitrary
ideas, for which they claim divine authority” (456). While we will treat this aspect
of Spinoza’s work in the next two chapters, it is key to note here what Spinoza
writes about common notions and how they relate to Scripture.
Even though it is a written text, Scripture like Nature at large, is at least a bit
muddied for Spinoza, as Scripture does not simply give to us the definitions we
need to understand the things it addresses—we have to dig them out ourselves.
“Just as definitions of the things of Nature must be inferred from the various oper-
ations of Nature,” Spinoza writes, “in the same way definitions must be elicited
from the various Biblical narratives as they look on a particular subject” (TTP
458). Spinoza’s hermeneutical approach takes its lead from this observation, and
thus it firmly mirrors Spinoza’s more traditionally philosophical inquiries. In both
instances, we should look at things as they are and not as we (or others) would like
them to be.
The problem of course is that, as with Nature we are often tempted to see
Scripture in light of our own sometimes meager interests and prejudices. Such
an approach is obviously counter-productive for Spinoza, and it is in this respect
that he introduces “the universal rule for the interpretation of Scripture, [which is]
to ascribe no teaching to Scripture that is not established by studying it closely”
(TTP 458). If we take this approach, we soon realize that much of Scripture is
quite straightforward—especially the most important parts—and it has only been
our ceaseless attempts to bend it to our “will” that have complicated its meaning.
Now in examining natural phenomena we first of all try to discover those features
that are most universal and common to the whole of Nature, to wit, motion-and-rest
which she constantly acts; and then we advance gradually from these to other less uni-
versal features. In just the same way we must first seek from our study of Scripture that
which is most universal and forms the basis and foundation of all Scripture; in short,
that which is commended in Scripture by all the prophets as doctrine eternal and most
profitable for all mankind. For example, that God exists, one alone and omnipotent,
who alone should be worshipped, who cares for all, who loves above all others those
who worship him and love their neighbors as themselves. These and similar doctrines,
I repeat, are taught everywhere in Scripture so clearly and explicitly that no one has
ever been in any doubt as to its meaning on these points. (TTP 460)
This is not to imply that scriptural interpretation is purely an unambiguous affair.

Spinoza expresses “no hesitation in affirming that in many instances we either do
not know the true meaning of Scripture or we can do no more than make conjec-
ture” (466). As we shall explore more thoroughly in the final chapter, Spinoza sees
the social and religious worlds which produced the Bible as worlds which have
come and gone, thoroughly lost to our memory. Yet these difficulties, Spinoza
writes “can prevent us from grasping the meaning of the prophets only in matters
beyond normal comprehension” (TTP 466). When we consider “true of matters
open to intellectual perception,” Spinoza continues, “we can readily form a clear
conception” (466). Who and how God is, that we should worship God and love
one another, these are entirely clear concepts for Spinoza; i.e. “common notions.”
In the footnote to this last quotation, Spinoza lays out what he means by “a
clear conception.” “By things comprehensible,” Spinoza writes, “I mean not only
those which can be logically proved but also those which we are wont to accept
with moral certainty and to hear without surprise, although they can by no means
be proved” (TTP 474). Here, in perhaps a surprising move, Spinoza puts beside
one another—as equally clear –two seemingly distinct things: logic and “moral
certainty.” How does such a concurrence work? Spinoza argues that, while one
can be demonstrated and the other cannot, the truths of logical proofs and moral
issues both strike us as implicitly true and requiring little explication. Spinoza
argues that just as “anyone can comprehend Euclid’s propositions before they are
proved” so too can they understand “those narratives, whether or past or future
events, that do not exceed human belief, and likewise laws, institutions, and cus-
toms, although they cannot be roved with mathematical certainty” (TTP 474–5).
Whatever obscurities may reside in Scripture a great deal of it is composed of
moral truths that require no title or special training.
For things which of their own nature are readily apprehended can never be so obscurely
worded that they are not easily understood; as the proverb says, “a word to the wise is
enough,” Euclid, whose writings are concerned only with things exceedingly simple
and perfectly intelligible, is easily made clear by anyone in any language for in order to
grasp his thought and be assured of his true meaning there is no need to have a thor-
ough knowledge of the language in which he wrote. A superficial and rudimentary
knowledge is enough. (TTP 466)
It is well known that Spinoza was a pioneer in conceiving of a form of biblical

interpretation that is not only independent of any kind of traditional ecclesiastical
authority but is often antagonistic towards them. It is less well established, gen-
erally, that Spinoza’s hermeneutical theory is also squarely opposed to the task of
biblical interpretation falling solely to philosophers, scholastics, or other educated
gentlemen.31 Spinoza contends that “the teachings of true piety are expressed in
quite ordinary language, and being directed to the generality of people they are
therefore straightforward and easy to understand” (TTP 467). This is a point we
will return to again in the fourth chapter. Suffice it to say here that, like geometry
or even the simple existence of one’s body, Spinoza argues that Scripture contains
within it certain general concepts that reflect the established, natural order of the
world.
The “Idea” of the Will
As we have seen, ideas that follow from a clear, basic foundation do not need
to be proven through theoretical philosophy to be effective or beneficial to us.
Indeed, the common experience of these ideas testifies to their accuracy. Under
these considerations it would seem that there is a pretty good argument for the
idea of the will already, simply given its predominance and what would seem to
its explanatory power. And yet it is also clear, from a Spinozist perspective, that
we need to know that we are not simply laboring under a prejudice, as the pre-
vailing wisdom is often right but also quite often faulty and even harmful—espe-
cially when it is widely held. Spinoza emphasizes this point often, and points to
“so-called ‘transcendental terms,’ [Transcendentales dicti] such as ‘entity,’ ‘thing,’
‘something’” [Ens, Res, alquid] as examples of such faulty ideas (E 266). How can
we know which common ideas are good and which are bad?
It might be helpful to consider here exactly how Spinoza sees bad ideas as
coming about. Spinoza argues that the human body can only observe so many
images and at the same time consider them all distinct. When we begin to see
more than our fair share of images, those images begin to get confused. “But when
the images in the body are utterly confused, the mind will also imagine all the
bodies confusedly without distinction, and will comprehend them, as it were,
under one attribute, namely, that of entity, thing, etc” (E 266).
The idea of a universal entity called “man” is simply a result of an excessive
and confused intake of images. Again, the body perceives images of all sorts
of human beings and becomes overloaded. To make sense of this confusion,
the mind begins to group these images together not in keeping with the ratio-
nal attributes of God, but according to the consistent formations of modes the
confused mind perceives and understands to be substantial. Such images are
not even strictly of different “men” but, more importantly, of the same men,
whose images are themselves quite similar and great in number. “The mind
expresses,” Spinoza writes, “by the word ‘man,’… an infinite number of indi-
viduals” (E 267). Of course, it is important to emphasize, such “individuals”
are not “things” but confused images—poorly understood perceptions. These
images turn on the vicissitudes of how the perceiving body has been affected. If
a given mind experiences or perceives a persistent motif or form of movement,
it is likely to presume that its own perceptions can be safely taken to represent
the material in question.
For example, those who have more often regarded with admiration the stature of men
will understand by the word “man” an animal of upright stature, while those who are
wont’ to regard a different aspect will form a different common image of man, such as
that man is a laughing animal, a featherless biped, or a rational animal. Similarly, with
regard to other aspects, each will form universal images according to the conditioning
of his own body. Therefore, it is not surprising that so many controversies have arisen
among philosophers who have sought to explain natural phenomena through merely
the images of these phenomena. (E 267)
A great deal depends upon our ideas. Since we now know that “all things are in
God and are conceived through God, it follows that from this knowledge we can
deduce a great many things so as to know them adequately” (E 271). The pasto-
ral or “ethical” missive of the Ethics lies precisely in this sentiment: that through
knowledge—specifically knowledge of God—we can understand ourselves and
the world better and lead better, happier lives.
One of the most cumbersome ideas of man is the idea of man volitional
agent—an individual self who can choose to bring an action or thought about
out of nothing. The idea that some self can stand apart from any cause and elect
a cause of its own devising into being is one of the main ways in which the true
reasons for our actions are obscured. Spinoza explicitly rejects this conception of
agency in 2p48, where he writes: “In the mind there is no absolute, or free, will. The
mind is determined to this or that volition by a cause, which is likewise determined by
another cause, and this again by another, and so ad infinitum” (E 272).
It might be tempting, at first, to see Spinoza’s point in 2p48 as something of
a reductio ad absurdum, as an argument that the causes behind our actions are so
diffused amongst each other and even amidst other causes (which don’t directly
affect us) that we cannot ultimately account for their origin. Such an interpreta-
tion is wrong, however, because within the overall context of Spinoza’s philosophy,
all causes ultimately refer to infinite substance. Indeed, if we have understood
Spinoza conception of substance aright we are logically led to this position. After
all, where else could all causes ultimately come from? An attribute? Attributes are
themselves just distinct characteristics of infinite substance. A mode? Of course
not—yet this is exactly what the idea of the will would have us believe, that a cause
can find its origin in another cause.
Spinoza argues that the mind is itself “a definite and determinate mode of
thinking” and subsequently cannot “be the free cause of its own actions” (E 272).
The inclusion of the word free in this quotation is crucial. The mind—like every
other thing—is caused, and thus while it may cause things to happen, it can in no
sense be understood as a free cause. Under the auspices of the will human beings
come to think that they possess a “faculty of affirming and denying” and this is to
be distinguished from “the desire whereby the mind seeks things or shuns them”
(E 272). Although both seem to bring about action, the major difference between
desire and the will is that the latter presents itself as completely self-sovereign
while the former acknowledges that it is the product of a cause. Thus the will pres-
ents itself as a faculty while desire is seen as a function of the mind, for—again—
whereas the former presents itself as a separate function, the latter presents itself as
but one element of the larger human being. While the one’s conception of human
life emphasizes its independence, the other’s conception of human life emphasizes
its inherent and necessary symbiosis.
But we do have volitions, do we not? Spinoza does not deny the fact that we
have volitions—he just wants to challenge the prevailing sense in which they are
“ours.” Spinoza argues, “There is in the mind no absolute faculty of willing and
non-willing, but only particular volitions, namely, this or that affirmation, and this
or that negation” (E 273). To clarify this position Spinoza offers an example:
Let us therefore conceive a particular volition, namely, a mode of thinking whereby

the mind affirms that the angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles. This affir-
mation involves the conception, or idea, of a triangle; that is, it cannot be conceived
without the idea of a triangle. For to say that A must involve the conception of B
is the same as to say that A cannot be conceived without B. Again, this affirmation
cannot even be without the idea of a triangle. Therefore, this idea can neither be nor
be conceived without the idea of a triangle. Furthermore, this idea of a triangle must
involve this same affirmation, namely, that its three angles are equal to two right
angles. Therefore, vice-versa, this idea of a triangle can neither be nor be conceived
without this affirmation, and so this affirmation belongs to the essence of the idea of a
triangle, and is nothing more than the essence itself. And what I have said of this voli-
tion, namely that it (for it was arbitrarily accepted) must also be said of every volition,
namely, that it is nothing but an idea. (E 273)
The natural corollary of this, Spinoza concludes, is that the “will and intellect are
one and the same thing” (E 273). But this formulation is itself misleading, for
Spinoza denies that the volitional power of any idea or sentiment is the product
of a distinct faculty. That is, Spinoza argues that both the will and the intellect are
nothing but “particular volitions and ideas” (E 273). This conclusion is import-
ant in two respects. On the one hand, it affirms volitions and ideas as particular
modes, while on the other hand it asserts that they are the same sort of thing. Voli-
tions and ideas are identical, as all ideas—by their nature—involve affirmations
of themselves, and it is only in this sense that they are properly “volitional.” Ideas
simply cannot be conceived as affirming nothing, for to the extent that they are
at all they affirm necessarily and inherently affirm themselves as ideas. No matter
how speculative or conjectural an idea might be, it nevertheless affirms its own
speculative or conjectural character—which is itself an affirmation in no uncertain
terms.32 Ideas affirm themselves by their own nature, so the very idea that there
exists a separate faculty whose responsibility it is to affirm ideas is obviously redun-
dant from his point of view. But beyond this mere redundancy the real problem
here, of course, is the fault line that fundamentally separates human beings from
the ideas they come to acquire (rather than endorse).
To appreciate just how problematic this fault line is for Spinoza we need to
remember that for Spinoza—like Descartes—an idea is inherently different from
an image or representation in the mind. “Again,” Spinoza writes, “it is essential
that we distinguish between ideas and the words we use to signify things” (E 273).
Ideas are simply self-referential; words refer to themselves and extended things.
There is a fundamental distinction between the symmetry of ideas and things, on
the one hand, and the words we use to refer to things on the other. The former is
logical and necessary, while the latter is flexible and arbitrary. Words are more like
placeholders for things that people use (in different ways) for convenience’s sake.
Although they are not without some merit, their affirmative power (or lack of it)
has to be properly understood.
If we are unable to appreciate this fundamental distinction, we will be unable
to appreciate Spinoza’s idea of the will and its importance for living a good life.
Indeed, Spinoza clearly laments the fact that the people of his age were largely
unable to appreciate this fundamental subtlety.
For since these three—images, words, and ideas—have been utterly confused by many,
or else they fail to distinguish between them through lack of accuracy, or, finally,
through lack of caution, our doctrine of the will, which is essential to know both for
theory and for the wise ordering of life, has never entered their minds. (E 273)
In the end, this confusion often leads to the obfuscation of the actual affirmative
power of ideas, which is—at the same time—an obfuscation of the true reality of
those ideas as well. In this way, we are not only cut off from knowing the truths
that are there for us to use, we are led to the crippling as well as isolating belief that
we can only come to these ideas on our own. Indeed, for while Spinoza nowhere
seems to take the problem of relativism all that seriously, he does write of “those
who think that ideas consist in images formed in us from the contact of external
bodies are convinced that those ideas of things whereof we can form no like image
are not ideas, but mere fictions fashioned arbitrarily at will” (E 274). So confused
between word and idea, these poor people come to “look on ideas as dumb pictures
on a tablet, and misled by this perception they fail to see that an idea, insofar as it is
an idea involves affirmation or negation” (E 74). We find relief from this problem
only through observing the affirmative power of thought:
Again, those who confuse words with idea, or with the affirmation which an idea
involves, think that when they affirm or deny something merely by words contrary
to what they feel, they are able to will contrary to what they feel. Now one can easily
dispel these misconceptions if one attends to the nature of thought, which is quite
removed from the concept of extension. The one will clearly understand that an idea,
being a mode of thinking, consists neither in the image of a thing nor in words.
For the essence of words and images is constituted solely by corporeal motions far
removed from the concept of thought. (E 274)
If we don’t observe these differences, all sorts of problems follow. The first that
Spinoza identifies is “the confident claim that the will extends more widely than
the intellect” (E 274) and is thus not only distinct from it but more powerful as
well. Those who hold this position argue that their wills are extended to all manner
of emotions, beliefs, and ideas, and thus are more comprehensive than their intel-
lects (E 273). From such a perspective, it appears that we can already assent to
all manner of things that we cannot even know. In marked contrast stands the
intellect, which is always forced to confront its own limits. That is, the result is
not only a will distinct from an intellect, but a situation in which we see “the latter
[as] being finite and the former infinite” (E 274). This obviously leads to a kind of
perverse self-divination, where we come to see ourselves as the efficient cause of
our reality, rather than a participant in it.
On this score, Spinoza is not afraid to point out one of the more curious
aspects of Christian theology: the idea that the wills of human beings are unlim-
ited.33 We do not believe that we can know everything, exist at anytime, or be
everywhere, so why do we feel that we can—or at least could, given the proper
situation—will whatever we like? The problem with this understanding lies not
with the idea that there exists an infinite number of ideas that are all universally, in
some sense, affirmable (for even those that are false or wrong affirm something),
but that we come to mistake this necessary aspect of all ideas to be the arbitrary
deliberations of some individual. Such a substitution obviously mistakes a mode
for “a” substance, in effect transferring the character of God to the nature of man.
But isn’t it just factually the case that we exercise some sort of volitional ability
on countless occasions—both in the affirmative and in the negative? Spinoza is
certainly aware that experience “appears to tell us most indisputably that we are
able to suspend judgment so as not to assent to things that we perceive, and this is
also confirmed by the fact that nobody is said to be deceived insofar as he perceives
something, but only insofar as he assents or dissents” (E 274). If we were to know
or even truly perceive a winged horse, this perspective argues, such a phenomenon
would not entail that we grant that such a horse is there. Indeed, that we are not
encumbered to judge one way or another about the winged horse’s existence would
itself seem to testify to the freedom of the will to determine itself—even if such
a determination might go against reason or common sense. “Experience tells us
most indisputably that the will, that is, the faculty of assenting, is free, and differ-
ent from the faculty of understanding” (E 274).
Such cases to the contrary, Spinoza believes that if we withhold judgment
or assent to anything, it is really due to a lack of knowledge. The suspension of
judgment is “really a perception, not free will” (E 275). Again, for Spinoza, assent
is an inevitable part of an idea, simply because it comes from that idea:
I deny that a man makes no affirmation insofar as he has a perception. For if the mind
should perceive nothing apart from the winged horse, it would regard the horse as
present to it, and would have no cause to doubt its existence nor any faculty of dissent-
ing, unless the imagining of the winged horse were to be connected to an idea which
annuls the existence of the said horse, or he perceives that the idea which he has of the
winged horse is inadequate. Then he will necessarily deny the existence of the horse
or he will necessarily doubt it. (E 275)
The real affirmation of an idea comes from within that idea, not from without.
Spinoza uses the aberrant example of a winged horse here to highlight the unlike-
lihood as well the irrationality of such a conception: no one could truly come to
assent to its reality. Such a horse can only be conceived within the imagination;
once it is given the slightest amount of basic consideration any potential reality we
may have accorded it is sufficiently undone.
But doesn’t this all beg the question? While it would seem to be more or
less clear that “we do perceive that one idea has more reality or perfection than
another” (E 275), it is not nearly as clear that one idea demands more affirmation
than another, or even that it demands a specific sort of affirmation at all. Given the
undeniable reality that we often affirm as true things that turn out to be false (i.e.
that we make mistakes in judgment), is there any real reason to think that one
distinct affirmation has, of necessity, any more “reality or perfection than another”
(E 274)? Isn’t it the case that we can feel a variety of ways about an idea? Cannot
we even affirm a variety of implications and outcomes from one idea? Such great
complexity and variety would seem to make Spinoza’s position appear to be pretty
specious.
Spinoza’s response to this problem echoes the previous one: “The will is a uni-
versal term predicated of all ideas and signifying only what is common to all ideas,
namely, affirmation, the adequate essence of which, insofar as it is thus conceived
as an abstract term, must be in every single idea, and the same in all in this respect
only” (E 276, emphasis added). All ideas have an inherent affirmative character—
though they obviously do not all bring about the same specific affirmative content
and they do not have the same powers to affirm.
Spinoza argues it is often easier to affirm something that is not the case than
affirm something that is, even though ideas prompt us otherwise. This sad fact is
due, again, to the fear and superstitions that arise from what we (falsely) interpret
to be the contingencies of life. Such fabrications can take all forms, and are not
strictly speaking the products of thinking at all—at least not of rational thought.
They are the creations of the imagination brought about by poor reactions to
desires and emotions. Consequently, when we think these ideas, we don’t actually
think them all that much. Indeed, Spinoza argues that while there may be some
level of affirmation involved in any idea, the extent of it in regard to false ideas
is marginal at best, for we simply do not need to think that much to affirm any-
thing in such a manner. “Again, I absolutely deny that we need an equal power of
thinking to affirm that what is true is true as to affirm that what is false is true.
For these two affirmations, if you look to their meaning and not to the words
alone, are related to one another as being to non-being” (E 276). Thus, when we
realize that “there is nothing in ideas that constitutes the form of falsity,” we can
only be dumbfounded at “how easily we are deceived when we confused universals
with particulars, and mental constructs and abstract terms with the real” (E 276).
Though ideas are present to us, we seem consistently to ignore their true meaning
and implications. While we may have some idea of what a triangle is, Spinoza
argues that we do not really understand the triangle until we see that because it is
what it is, it has to—inherently—affirm its own nature. The idea that it is we (the
“discerning thinkers”) who ultimately decide whether or not an idea is affirmed is
obviously a huge stumbling block, one that is firmly set in place by our conception
of the will.
The idea of the will is then not only false and unnecessary but it is also det-
rimental. If we understand ourselves to be the ones who bestow an affirmation
upon a given idea we misunderstand not only the power ideas have but we also
the limits of our own power—thinking ourselves to be a “kingdom within a king-
dom.” Spinoza draws on the famous paradox of Buridan’s donkey to illustrate this
point, as this paradox is more often than not understood to be a critique of the
intellect’s role in human life. Imagine a perfectly and entirely rational, though
hungry, donkey caught equidistant between two symmetrical bales of hay. What
reason does the donkey have for choosing the one on her left from the one on
her right? She has none because—things being equal—there is simply no such
reason, and thus she cannot come to a decision about what to do and is consigned
to death, since the donkey has no will to break through this equilibrium. Such a
paradox seems to put those who equate the intellect with the will in a rather dif-
ficult position. What seems to separate human beings from animals is not simply
our rational capabilities but our ability to act and choose in a fashion of our own
determination and with reason’s council—not command. How can we account
for decisions that don’t appear to have any real reason behind them? How can we
account for the lack of action here except by blaming the absence of the will?
Spinoza does not take issue with the terms of this example; he readily grants
for the sake of argument that any being stuck in such a scenario would have a
hard time surviving. What Spinoza does do, however, is compare the ass to other
types of human beings who are incapable or unwilling to care for themselves. The
donkey’s end is bad enough, but is it truly that much worse than what befalls all
sorts of human beings, themselves (supposedly) endowed with a volitional faculty?
Spinoza writes that if those who would pose this example would “ask me whether
such a man is not to be reckoned an ass rather than a man, I reply that I do not
know, just as I do not know how one should reckon a man who hangs himself,
or how one should reckon babies, fools, and madmen” (276). People, supposedly
themselves possessing a free ability to choose, come to all sorts of poor conclusions
about how they should live or die—but this in itself proves nothing. The true
import of the example of Buridan’s donkey is thus the opposite of what it initially
seems, for while it is offered to distinguish human beings from animals it actually
highlights their similarity. In this way, rather than demonstrating the reality and
the importance of the will, Buridan’s donkey shows us that the will doesn’t seem
to be of much consequence at all, other than in its prompting us to consider this
problem in a unsound way (itself, of course, its own lamentable consequence).
Indeed, Spinoza himself acknowledges that his critique of the will and, corre-
spondingly, his is own conception of affirmation are especially important because
they give “us complete tranquility of mind … wherein lies our greatest happiness
or blessedness, namely, in the knowledge of God alone, as a result of which we are
induced only to such actions as are urged on us by love and piety” (E 276). Under
the traditional idea of the will we were always distinct from—or even severed
from—the ideas we “knew” and the morals we “obeyed.” When we come to under-
stand our ineluctable reality as it truly is, we see that we are not distinct from our
ideas but swept up in them, as everything is a part of a larger, completely necessary
totality. We can only come to love this totality, and thus we can only come to love
God, once this unity is understood.
chapter three
“Nothing More Useful

than Man…”
Spinoza on Politics
Introduction
If we are to avoid bad ideas like the traditional idea of the will we need to be
able to understand not only our proper place in substance, but also how substance
causes us to act and what it is that we can possibly do about it. Fully appreciating
our place within the “all” is no easy task. We need to examine how volitions are
engaged and actions are undertaken, not strictly in regard to the epistemological
problems examined above but also, more concretely, in terms of how we simply live
our lives together. This means examining the natural laws that are substance’s way
of governing our world.
This chapter examines Spinoza’s sense of these laws and how he thinks we
should respond to them. In particular, this chapter focuses on how Spinoza sees
conatus as a natural law, and how the political ideals of sovereignty and freedom
need to be considered in its light. For Spinoza, human beings are free only to
the extent that they effectively increase their own power, and this requires living
with other human beings under a democratic form of sovereignty. Such a form of
political life is characterized by its obedience, to both the laws of Nature and, sub-
sequently, the sovereign political body of which one is a part. In this way, Spinoza
argues that human beings are only free not merely when they live in common with
one another, but when they are subject to one another as well. While Spinoza is
clearly a proponent of liberal democracy, his conception of it is highly qualified

by his theory of natural law, simply because Spinoza sees a state as natural as an
individual.
Nature’s Laws
It is worth emphasizing at the outset that Spinoza sees any real notion of right or
law as intrinsically natural.1 For Spinoza all rights arise naturally and are not the
products of human artifice no matter how well conceived. As he puts it in his TTP:
“the natural right of every man is determined not by sound reason but by his desire
and his power” (527). By natural right, Spinoza means “nothing but the rules of
the nature of each individual, according to which we conceive of each thing to be
naturally determined to exist and act in a certain way” (TTP 526).
The example Spinoza employs to demonstrate the principle is, humbly enough,
the fish. As Spinoza describes them, fish are fundamentally determined by nature
both to swim and to eat smaller fish. In a passage particularly flattering of fish, Spi-
noza makes the character of this determination clear:
It is by the supreme right of nature that fish are masters of the water, and that the
larger eat the smaller. For it is certain that nature, considered absolutely, has the
supreme right to do everything in its power, i.e., that the right of nature extends as far
as its power does. (TTP 527)
Thus Spinoza identifies two specific qualities inherent in natural right: the right
of any thing to exist—conatus—as much as its power will enable it, and, more
ambiguously, the more particular character of existence pertaining to that thing
as such (fish as “masters of the water,” for example). In both respects, right is quite
literally made by and is equivalent to might. Moreover, as conatus is the desire
or power to exist it necessarily entails a number of forms of power to exist, for
such power always takes shape in a particular respect to a particular thing. We
can see then that for Spinoza the notion that conatus can take different shapes or
forms is at the heart of all natural rights. Indeed, since conatus is the principle of
Nature that makes such individuality possible in the first place, this is really of
no surprise.
The supreme law of Nature is that each thing endeavors to persist in its present being,
as far as in it lies, taking account of no other thing but itself, [and] it follows that each
individual has the sovereign right to do this (as I have said), to exist and to act as it is
naturally determined. (TTP 527)
“ nothing mo r e u s e f u l t h a n ma n …” | 85
As Spinoza makes clear in the above quotation, this conception of right is anal-
ogous to the idea of sovereignty. For Spinoza, “whatever an individual thing does
by the laws of its own nature, it does with sovereign right, inasmuch as it acts
as determined by Nature, and can do no other” (TTP 527). While Spinoza may
seem especially deterministic on this point (and of course to a great extent he
is), his larger aim is to underline the simple fact that nothing escapes the causal
power of Nature. As we have seen in the previous two chapters, all things are a
part of Nature for Spinoza and all are equally under its charge. In this way, such
a conception of natural right claims to be substantially egalitarian, as it does “not
acknowledge any distinction between men and other individuals of Nature, nor
between men endowed with reason and others to whom true reason is unknown,
nor between fools, madmen, and the same” (TTP 527). Yet this right, this power,
is organized and caused by a single source, God—for the power of Nature “is the
very power of God, who has the supreme right to do all things” (TTP 527). As we
have seen, Spinoza argues that the idea of God’s sovereignty (god’s causal power)
is coherent only if we accept that God is sovereign over all and over all to the
same extent—that is, completely (if, again, not in the same fashion). If there were
anything outside the scope of God’s sovereignty, God would not be worthy of the
name sovereign (though this does not, however, mean that God governs all in the
same way). It is in this way that Spinoza can conclude that there is no hierarchy
in Nature, since God (Nature) rules over all—though he does so in different ways.
We see in these differences all sorts of different types of power, but all of these
types have a sovereign right to their power, as God bequeaths this right to them.
Therefore, if we consider that Spinoza argues both that conatus is a funda-
mental principle which comes from God as the “supreme right to do all things”
and, simultaneously, that this right is so egalitarian that it applies not simply to
“men” but also to “other individuals of Nature,” we can see one of the basic ways
in which Spinoza insists that God instills a fundamental commonality across all
of Nature’s parts. All things have the same basic right to persist, though they
exercise this right in different ways and to different degrees. It is on this point that
Wolfson argues that Spinoza’s theory of conatus falls in line with a long lineage
of other thinkers who ascribe a similar sense of importance to the term, many
of whom attributed conatus to more forms of “life” than just plants, animals, and
human beings (in contrast to the early Stoic authors of the term, such as Diogenes
and Cicero).2 Far from being a quality exclusive to living things, thinkers like
Augustine, Hobbes, and even Descartes (at least to some extent) all argued that
everything—everybody—which occurs in Nature has some degree of conatus given
to it by God. Augustine thus asserts that “even those corporeal objects which have
neither sensation nor any seed of life nonetheless either spring upwards or sink
downwards are balanced in the middle, so that they may preserve their existence
in that place where they are most able to exist according to their nature.”3 Similarly
Hobbes defines conatus as every thing’s “endeavor”: the near instantaneous instiga-
tion of all motion in any thing. Endeavor/conatus is “motion made in less space and
time than can be given; that is, less than can be determined or assigned by exposition of
number; that is, motion made through the length of a point, and in an instant or point of
time.”4 Similarly, in his Principles of Philosophy Descartes argues that the very first
law of nature is that “each and every thing, in so far as it can, always continues in the
same state.”5 Well before Spinoza, Descartes asserts that we know the reality of this
law from the simple fact of God’s immutability, which allows us to “know certain
rules or laws of nature, which are [themselves] the secondary and particular causes
of the various motions we see in particular bodies.”6 Indeed Spinoza, as Wolfosn
points out, was certainly well aware of the affinity between himself and Descartes
on this point, as he drew a connection between his own conception of conatus and
Descartes’s assertion that any body in motion will tend to stay in motion.7 In all of
these thinkers we see conatus—or something functionally equivalent—as a funda-
mental law of Nature (if not the law) that rules every natural thing.
It is important to note, however, that Augustine, Hobbes, and Descartes all
assert that conatus comes to bear specifically upon bodies alone—upon material
things alone—and not upon the intellect. For these thinkers conatus is an instinct,
separate and distinct from an intellectual or rational capacity, and thus certainly
not what brings things or bodies together. Augustine, for example, argues that “all
the irrational animals, to whom the power of thought is not given, from immense
dragons down to the smallest worms, all show that they desire to exist, and there-
fore avoid death by every movement”8—they are just like human beings in this
respect. At the same time, these dragons are completely distinct from human
beings who “have another, and far nobler, sense, belonging to the inner man, by
which we perceive what things are just and what are unjust.”9 Human beings are
capable of understanding justice, Augustine explains, because while “we are able
to perceive these things by means of our bodily senses … we do not judge them
by means of those senses.”10 In this way, we human beings are both governed by
nature and crucially set apart from it due to our reflexive abilities.
Such an interpretation of conatus is not unusual, but it is not uncontested
either. Generally, much of the debate around the role of conatus in relation to the
reflective capacities of human thought have historically taken shape around the
notion of “synderesis.” Timothy C. Potts argues that the term synderesis itself comes
from Jerome, who coined it under its earlier form of “synteresis.” Like conatus, syn-
teresis “means ‘preservation’ or ‘maintenance’” but it has a wider scope, referring
more broadly to “God’s conversation” with the entirety of his creation outside of
his specific, supernatural revelations.11 In this way, synteresis refers to the larger
order of conatus that God instilled in every living thing in Nature. Yet, with regard
to human beings, rather than merely prompting things to persist or seek out their
existence the theory of synteresis carries with it a normative quality as it prompts
us toward the good (though it has been understood to do this in different ways).
Much of the difference of opinion surrounding the idea synderesis concerns
what part of the human organism this desire speaks to, as this was not made espe-
cially clear by Jerome. That synderesis is a form of desire is clear enough, but to
what does this desire make its claims? The heart? The will? Or the intellect? As
Potts shows, the ‘syn-’ prefix in synderesis can be interpreted in such a way as to
attribute to the term a “reflexive force, which gives it the sense of observing or
watching over oneself and, perhaps, thereby preserving oneself from wrongdo-
ing” (10). By contrast, rather than considering it as some mere visceral instinct,
some interpreters of Jerome have understood synteresis to be something akin to
conscientia or conscience, given what could be the term’s inherent connotation of
judgment and thought. Thomas Aquinas is certainly one of the most influential
proponents of this view. For Thomas, synderesis was not a form of desire at all—at
least not a bodily one—but an innate disposition towards the good in the human
mind. Thomas argues that nature supplies our minds the proper ends, and we
are left to direct our intellects to discern those ends and choose the best means.
Anthony Celano argues, “Thomas considers the end to be determined in man by
nature, while the means are not; therefore the means alone are subject to discursive
reason.”12 That is, for Thomas, “the proper ends of human life are determined. And
therefore there is a natural inclination with respect to these ends.”13 It is left to our
conscience, our reflexive abilities, to come to terms with how to best realize those
ends. From this Thomas concludes, “That which is apprehended by the intellect
belongs to a different genus from that which is apprehended by the senses; it fol-
lows that the intellectual appetite is different from the sensitive appetite.”14
On the other hand, many argue that synderesis actually unites the impulse
to exist with an impulse to act morally, and thus they even equate the two. The
important thing to note here is that just as conatus regards an ineluctable desire
to exist so too does synderesis insist that we have an ineluctable desire to exist vir-
tuously. Thus Robert A. Greene describes this understanding of synderesis as “the
immediate moral apprehension of the first moral principles of natural law.”15 Potts
argues that many Christian thinkers such as Bonaventure emphasize how “Jerome
goes on to say that ‘…conscience is cast down among some people … and loses
its place.”16 If conscience is limited to the few or the “some” then it would seem
to be more akin to special supernatural revelation rather than to any kind of uni-
versal, natural revelation. Thus these thinkers attempted to draw “a distinction …
between synderesis and conscience, [with] synderesis being the ‘spark of conscience’
rather than conscience proper.”17 Potts points to Bonaventure specifically as Aqui-
nas’ challenger on this point, as Bonaventure sees the inclination to virtue as spe-
cifically non-reflexive.18 Greene argues that “St. Bonaventure shifted the ground
under synderesis by arguing that it was, strictly speaking, a habit of the natural as
opposed to the deliberative will, rather than of the intellect. As such, it operated
in the sphere of man’s affective and emotional life.”19 In this way Bonaventure saw
our moral nature as not only distinct from our reflexive abilities but as opposed to
them as well. Indeed, after Bonaventure, Greene argues:
The moral discoveries of synderesis came to be spoken of as not only non-discursive

but instinctive in nature—apprehensions for which no reason could be given, appre-
hensions somehow rooted in affective human experience.20
Bonaventure’s was quite an influential interpretation of this idea. Yet the larger
point I wish to draw attention to here is that, according to Potts, a central ten-
sion in natural law theory grew out of this hermeneutical problem: “There thus
grew up two treatises, one synderesis and the other conscientia, the two notions
being so expounded that synderesis cannot be lost but conscientia can.”21 That is, the
exact fashion in which human beings desire the good became polarized—being
either a lower form of rational thought (i.e. not proper philosophical knowledge
of the truth) capable of being realized, or basically an innate and irrational instinct
toward the good.
Spinoza’s theory of desire seeks to overcome this polarization.22 Unlike Aqui-
nas, Spinoza argues that the intellect is essentially compromised by its own cona-
tus, its own desire. Unlike Bonaventure, however, Spinoza argues that any conatus
in a human being is both physical and intellectual, both material and reflective,
for it makes no sense to call conatus natural and, at the same time, to divorce it
from the intellect—itself a part of Nature. We can see the intellectual form of
conatus announced clearly in 3p9: “The mind, both insofar as it has clear and distinct
ideas and insofar as it has confused ideas, endeavors to persist in its own being over an
indefinite period of time, and is conscious of this conatus” (E 284). Conatus is a desire
and is, as the last chapter demonstrated, what orchestrates thought and body
together—to the extent that they each become dependent upon on the other to
be modes of their own respective attributes. This point is made plain in 3p11:
“Whatsoever increases or diminishes, assists or checks, the power of activity of our body,
the idea of said thing increases or diminishes, assists or checks the power of thought of
our mind” (E 284). Conatus, the law of nature, finds itself here on neither side of
human life exclusively, but as that which brings the mind and the body together
and makes the individual possible. Conatus is pervasive, it is sovereign, in the
sense that it not only permeates and orders every area of human life but also
makes human life possible. In this regard, individuality or subjectivity emerges
not by separating oneself from nature and producing one’s own independent rule,
but rather through Nature’s production of it—regardless of how we might “feel
about it.”
Of course, this is not to imply that all “things” assert themselves in the same
way or, more importantly perhaps, to the same extent. Spinoza’s point is that all
of Nature is compelled by Nature and compelled to the same task—existence (be
whatever its particular type). In this regard, the idea of synderesis clearly has some
overlap with Spinoza’s account of Natura naturans. Though this comparison is
obviously greatly distinguished by Spinoza’s notion of an immanent God, both
the “synderesisists” and Spinoza believe this world is ordered to promote its own
existence. That is, Spinoza, like the various theorists of synderesis, clearly holds
that God has undertaken to ensure a specific sense of right for all living creatures,
a right that is ensured in Nature. We can see this affinity in Spinoza’s late political
writing the TP:
So from the fact that the power of natural things by which they exist and act is the
very power of God, we can readily understand what is the right of Nature. Since God
has right over all things, and God’s right is nothing other than God’s power insofar
as that is considered as absolutely free, it follows that every natural thing has as much
right from Nature as it has power to exist and to act. For the power of every natural
thing by which it exists and acts is nothing other than the power of God, which is
absolutely free. (TP 683)
Yet despite this affinity (or perhaps because of it), Natura naturans stands out from
synderesis in two decisive regards. First, as we have seen, Spinoza insists that an
individual’s conatus is that which brings her mind into union with her body, and
is thus what constitutes her essence—her identity as an individual. Second, Spi-
noza’s sense of conatus seems to be nearly completely devoid of any normative
character—at least in any traditional sense. As we saw in Spinoza’s example above,
a fish acts out of the power of its own desires, and Spinoza makes no claim that
these desires correspond with any kind of universal moral order. If a fish wants to
eat another, smaller fish it doesn’t think twice about it, and there’s no reason to
think it should for it is completely within its right to do so. But of course if there
is nothing in the way of real normative criteria between animals and other things,
or even between animals and humans, some problematic moral consequences soon
seem to present themselves.
If we follow Spinoza, is there any reason to protect people more than plants, or
plants more than parking lots? Spinoza’s response to these questions turns more on
the power that these things possess, and how we can best make use of their power
than any special regard we should have for these things as they stand apart from
our particular encounters with them. Spinoza cannot agree with many reading of
the book of Genesis that human beings are intrinsically special given their status
as imago dei. Nor would Spinoza agree with Kantians when they argue that human
beings should always be treated as ends and never as means, simply on the basis of
their rights as individuals. Indeed, for Spinoza, it seems, calculating the worth of
other human beings always means calculating how they will help us survive and
develop. In Part IV of the Ethics Spinoza writes:
Every man exists by the sovereign natural right, and consequently by the sovereign
natural right every man does what follows from the necessity of his nature. So it is by
the sovereign natural right that every man judges what is good and what is bad, and
has regard for his own advantage according to his own way of thinking (Prs. 19 and
20, IV), and seeks revenge (Cor. 2, Pr. 40, III), and endeavors to preserve what he loves
and what he hates (Pr. 28, III). (E 340)
It is clear that we have little hope of anything approaching a foundational moral-

ity here. Human beings seem perpetually and intrinsically self-interested, and
even nihilistic. Moreover, Spinoza’s insistence on the hollow irrelevance of human
expectations, where morality seems to be just like every other human desire, is
disheartening to say the least.
It is this sense of disappointment that leads Edwin Curley to argue that the
“notion of natural right (not coextensive with power) disappears in Spinoza.”23
This, he concludes, is the central “defect in his political philosophy.”24 Though
Curley is sympathetic to Spinoza’s point of view from a distinctly philosophical
perspective, he nonetheless has to conclude that, for himself, Spinoza’s thought
lacks the necessary “theoretical resources to condemn tyrannical governments are
strongly as we would wish.”25
This same problem is also quite clear in Spinoza’s brief analysis of sexual dif-
ference. Some, Spinoza argues, will wonder whether patriarchy is a part of the
natural order of the world or merely a convention. In response, Spinoza argues that
“if we consult actual experience, we shall see that it is due to their [women’s] weak-
ness” (TP 681). Whether or not we like this conclusion, Spinoza emphasizes what
he sees as the simple fact of women’s inferior nature, over and apart from whatever
ideas we have on the subject. However persuasive such seemingly noble ideas like
equality may seem on their face, for Spinoza they have no true basis in Nature and
are only the fabrications of other human beings. Indeed, Spinoza seems to go so
far as to imply that all morals are merely conventional, and he seems to contrast this
with how things were in a state of nature.
In a state of nature there is nothing that is universally agreed upon as good or evil,
since every man in state of nature has regard only to his own advantage and decides
what is good and what is bad according to his own way of thinking and only insofar
as he was regard to his own advantage, and is not bound by any law to obey anyone
but himself. (E 341)
We can see here Spinoza’s clear affinity with Hobbes.26 In his Leviathan Hobbes
argues that in a state of nature “where no covenant preceded, there hath no right
been transferred, and every man has right to everything; and consequently, no
action can be unjust” (95). Similarly, Spinoza argues that “in a state of nature
nobody is by common agreement the owner [dominus] of anything, and in nature
there is nothing that can be said to belong to this man rather than that man” (E
341). The state of nature is one in which “everything belongs to everybody, and …
there cannot be conceived any intention to render to each what is his own or to rob
someone of what is his” (E 341) for such a sense of justice simply is not produced
by nature.
Thus in a state of nature wrongdoing cannot be perceived, but it can be in a civil state
where good and bad are decided by common agreement and everyone is bound to
obey the state. Wrongdoing is therefore nothing other than disobedience, which is
therefore punishable only by the right of the State, and on the other hand obedience
is held to be merit in a citizen because he is thereby deemed to deserve to enjoy the
advantages of the state. (E 341)
It is not only Spinoza’s mere conventionalism that is troubling here—it is also the
strong oppositional terms of his conventionalism, between a state of nature and a
state of civil society, between anarchy and sheer compulsion. For Spinoza the idea
of justice can only be conceived, much less brought about, by individuals entering
into a social contract [pactum] with one another. “In a state of nature.” Spinoza
argues, “nothing can be said to be just or unjust” for such normative ideals only
arise within a state, “where it is decided by common agreement what belongs to
this or that man” (341).
Yet if our common sense of rights is strictly conventional and rights have no
criteria outside of themselves by which we can judge their legitimacy (they are
“extrinsic” to the “nature of the mind”), why would anyone ever enter into a social
contract in the first place? Why would anyone ever curb her own will or desires—
or in this sense rights—if she they were only concerned with cohering her actions
with some, entirely artificial, normative sensibility? While it may occur that such
an authority might be useful in some particular circumstances, why would anyone
so submit themselves over the long term, with any sort of real commitment or
integrity? In a well known passage, Spinoza addresses this problem:
To man, there is nothing more useful than man. Man, I say, can wish for nothing more
helpful to the preservation of his being than that all should so agree in all things that
the minds and bodies of all would composed, as it were, of one mind and one body;
that all should strive together, as far as they can, to preserve their being; and that all,
together, should seek for themselves the common advantage of all. (E 331)
As we have seen in the last chapter, it is desire generally and conatus specifically
that bring mind and body together. Here, Spinoza refers to the unification of
mind and body by conatus on a much larger scale—well beyond the solitary “king-
dom” of one human being. As it is the desire to exist and thrive that produces the
individual so it is the desire to exist and thrive that produces the state. That is,
just as conatus brings body and intellect into the form of a single individual, so too
does conatus (on a larger scale) bring bodies and intellects into a political order.
Moreover, in both cases we see that a principle of rational order is the condition
for the existence of an identity. Self-interest does not here give itself over to the
intent of the group—it is just conceived on a much bigger scale. Indeed, Spinoza
seems to especially prompt the relative equation of individual and state in the
above quotation when he speaks of the latter’s member’s coming into one mind
and body.
Yet aren’t these just fundamentally different conditions under which to expect
a unification? Isn’t the formation of a self fundamentally more natural than the
formation of a political state? To get a handle on these questions we need better to
understand how human beings naturally help one another exist. What does it mean
to say that man is useful? Spinoza here asserts that man turns to his fellow man so
that he can increase his own conatus, but what exactly does this mean? Conatus in
particular is never as strong as conatus in civil community, Spinoza writes, but what
is it about community, about the union of people into a political body, that makes
its conatus more powerful? Spinoza has two answers to this question.
Reasons for the Political Body
As we saw in the previous chapters, Spinoza argues that human beings live
lives—more often than not—of contingency and constant anxiety. Again, as with
Hobbes, Spinoza argues that a world without any possible sense of peace or resolve
is all the worse because of the fear it introduces into the basics of everyday life. In
such a world everything is contested. Most human beings, further, aren’t capable
or inclined to consider how this problem feeds itself, and thus often embrace all
manner of superstitions to deal with their problems. Indeed, human beings are
driven to such easy answers precisely because they are so preoccupied with the
vicissitudes of their own appetites—for there is simply not reason why they, left
solely to their own intellects, would do otherwise.
All men are born in a state of complete ignorance, and before they can learn the true
way of life and acquire a virtuous disposition, even if they have been well brought up, a
great part of their life has gone by. Yet in the meantime they have to live and preserve
themselves as far as in them lies, namely, by the urging of appetite alone, for Nature
has given them nothing else and has denied them the actualized power to live accord-
ing to sound reason. Therefore they are no more in duty bound to live according to the laws
of a sound mind than a cat to live according to the laws of a lion’s nature. (TTP 527)
In our desperate effort to come to terms with life’s initial opacity we become mixed
up in all manner of fabrications and bad ideas that have a wide variety of detri-
mental effects on how we live with one another. “If,” Spinoza writes, “men lived by
the guidance of reason, every man would possess this right of his (Cor. 1, Pr. 35,
IV) without any harm to another” (E 341) simply because he would be able to
better appreciate the laws of nature and subsequently negotiate his own course.
“But since men are subject to emotions (Cor. 1, Pr. 35, IV) which far surpass the
power or virtue of men (Pr. 6, IV), they are therefore often pulled in different
directions (Pr. 33, IV) and are contrary to one another (Pr. 34, IV), while needing
each other’s help (Sch. Pr. 35, IV)” (E 341).
In order to counteract the various pushes and pulls of our own particular emo-
tions at any given moment, it helps to be tethered to the common interest of a
group. Such an attachment and commitment provides stability, for it prompts an
individual to regard less his own particular situation and more that of a larger
political body of which he is one part.
Therefore, in order that men may live in harmony and help one another, it is necessary
for them to give up their natural right and to create a feeling of mutual confidence that
they will refrain from any action that may be harmful to another. The way to bring
political harmony about (that men who are necessarily subject to passive emotions
(Cor. Pr. 4, IV) and are inconstant and variable (Pr. 33, IV) should establish a mutual
confidence and should trust one another) is obvious from Pr. 7, IV and Pr. 39, III” (E
341).
That is, we need to turn to other people to fight off emotions that are sure oth-
erwise to overwhelm us. As “no emotion can be checked except by a stronger
emotion contrary to the emotion which is to be checked,” Spinoza writes, it is on
this basis that “society can be established, provided that it claims for itself the right
that every man has avenging himself and deciding what is good and what is evil”
(E 341).
Of course, as Spinoza implies above, it is particularly the decision over what is

right and what is wrong, what is permissible and what is illegitimate, that makes
such a claim, constraining human action and making it possible for human beings
to forsake their own right for revenge—simply because what revenge “is” (as con-
tractual law) results from this decision. Such a decision can obviously be effective
only if it is rendered by someone with the power to enforce it. Therefore, a proper
social contract has to have “the power to prescribe common rules of behavior and
to pass laws and enforce them, not by reason, which is incapable of checking the
emotions (Sch. Pr. 17, IV), but by threats” (E 341). Right, being power, doesn’t
simply exist as an intellectual claim, but has an inherently material quality that
must find manifestation in some thing or some one—this is what at least initially
counteracts emotion. While such a claim to right is not of itself irrational, it has
to be powerful enough to fill any void left uninhabited by reason—and such voids
are especially large in a state of nature, where emotions are so pervasive, especially
when confronted without the aid or guidance of others.
If we … reflect that the life of men without mutual assistance must necessarily be
most wretched and must lack the cultivation of reason … it will become quite clear
to us that in order to achieve a secure and good life, men had necessarily to unite in
one body. They therefore arranged that the unrestricted right naturally possessed by
each individual should be put into common ownership, and that this right should no
longer be determined by the strength and appetite of the individual, but by the power
and will of all together. (TTP 528)
In the simple, natural act of coming to live together we cultivate reason—the prin-
ciple power by which we gain control over our own particular emotions. The social
contract is created to combat emotion—it does so through the construction of a
force external to the citizens who form the contract, in the form of a sovereign.
Wrongdoing is strictly an issue of ignoring state power, for any other sense of
wrong would challenge the sovereign’s authority.27
Thus in a state of nature wrongdoing cannot be perceived, but it can be in a civil state
where good and bad are decided by common agreement and everyone is bound to
obey the state. Wrongdoing is therefore nothing other than disobedience, which is
therefore punishable only by the right of the State, and on the other hand obedience
is held to be merit in a citizen because he is thereby deemed to deserve to enjoy the
advantages of the state. (E 341)
Here Spinoza strikes the most authoritarian note of the Ethics, speaking to the
joys with which those obedient to the state will be favored. Yet, in strong contrast
to Hobbes, Spinoza argues that in a social contract, previously active individuals
do not become passive citizens. For Spinoza, the passage of right from one mere
individual to a larger community increases that right—not only for the group at
large but, more importantly, for that individual from which the right originated in
the first place. Passive individuals thus become active citizens, as their conatus is
strengthened through the formation and development of political forms. Again,
Spinoza sees “the validity of the agreement rests on its utility, without which the
agreement automatically becomes null and void” (TTP 529).
Indeed, Spinoza argues that it is precisely as an individual’s conatus begins to
exceed the strict boundaries of that individual—and becomes, in a sense, a com-
munal conatus—that that individual’s interests become better served. “If two men
come together and join forces, they have more power over Nature, and conse-
quently more right, than either one alone; and the greater the number who form a
union in this way, the more right they will possess together” (PT 686). While not
opposing contractual and natural right (as we shall see below) Spinoza argues here
that the right of individuals to their power (the natural right, as we have seen) is
increased through joining forces with other individuals. But again we have to ask
ourselves, especially in this context, what really is the nature of such a political
form of right? How exactly can individual rights be increased through political
cooperation?
It is helpful to consider this question in light of Spinoza’s deviation from other
great thinkers of the liberal tradition like Hobbes. Hobbes, argues that in a social
contract individuals “reduce all their wills, by plurality of voices, unto one will;
which is as much to say … appoint one man, or assembly of men, to bear their
person.”28 Such positions have led Riley to conclude that, for theorists like Hobbes,
the transfer of a group of individuals’ rights to a sovereign is “like tearing down
everyone else’s walls except the sovereign’s; in a transfer we allow the sovereign his
full natural right while curbing our own.”29 In contrast, Spinoza’s idea of the state
is not one rooted in an authority gained through the constraint of individual wills
or rights but is one premised on the notion that right-minded individuals (in both
senses of the phrase) associate with each other in order to maximize their power.
Spinoza puts the point quite strongly when he writes: “Human natural right or
freedom is a nonentity as long as it is an individual possession determined by indi-
vidual power; [indeed] it exists in imagination rather than fact” (TTP 415). Indi-
viduals who choose to act and think (at least to some extent) in concert with other
individuals do not find their rights compromised but in fact realized, as the powers
that they had as solitary individuals pale in comparison to those they have as mem-
bers of a political state. Such a form of life is not only personally expedient but
also properly rational, for it is when we realize the intrinsic benefits presented by
cooperation that we become better equipped to realize our own desires. When we
recognize that our individual rights are in fact our inherent dispositions provided
by the laws of nature we are empowered—and ordered—to live with others under
those laws. Here we see that natural law and civil law, ideally, feed one another.
This cohesion between civil and natural law speaks ironically to the Hobbes-
ian sense of sovereignty Spinoza exemplifies—even more than Hobbes himself.
Like Hobbes, Spinoza argues that sovereignty cannot be divided—that it must be
united exclusively in a single authority who has thorough, comprehensive power.
Yet where Hobbes restricts the scope of sovereignty Spinoza extends it, for Spi-
noza argues that if the sovereign is to be truly unlimited then she must not be par-
ticular at all, but must involve and encompass as many of her subjects as possible.
That is, for sovereignty really to be sovereign, it cannot be fundamentally distinct
or set apart in any way. Hobbes’s conception of sovereignty, with its emphasis on
coercion and force, reflects an adversarial—and thus distinct—role from what it is
sovereign “over.” In contrast, Spinoza sees the very idea of sovereignty as being the
opposite of the particular and the distinct. True sovereignty then is not a matter
of simply enjoying the command of the civil law—for sovereignty to be achieved
the communal and the natural, the particular and the universal, need to be brought
together, as the scope of sovereign authority must be unlimited. It is in this sense
that Spinoza argues:
For absolute sovereignty, if any such thing exists, is really the sovereignty held by the
entire multitude. (TP, 724)
This means that while sovereignty may come to be executed in any number of
particular representations of its power, it must, above all, be more than just partic-
ular desires. This means, Spinoza argues, that simply as a logical matter, the idea
of sovereignty requires a leader or a political body to have democratic power. Thus
Spinoza argues democracy is the best form of government precisely because it cor-
responds most accurately with the true form of sovereignty. Democracy succeeds
not simply because it subscribes to the highest ideals, but because its power is the
most comprehensive—the most sovereign.
While it is surely possible that tyrants can arise and that “everyone [is] able,
without hesitation, to run the risk of submitting himself absolutely to the author-
ity and will of another” (TTP 530) such problems are truly momentary, for a sov-
ereign cannot be sovereign for very long if that sovereign is opposed by those upon
whom the claim to sovereignty is made.
For, as we have shown, this right of commanding whatever they wish belongs to the
supreme powers only so long as they really have supreme power. If they should lose
that power, they also lose, at the same time, the right of commanding all things, and
[the right] falls to him or those who have acquired [the power] and can retain it.
So only very rarely can it happen that the supreme powers command the greatest
absurdities. For to look out for their own interests and to retain their authority, it is
incumbent on them most of all to consult the common good, and to direct everything
according to the dictates of reason. As Seneca says, no one continues a violent rule for
long. (TTP 530)
Spinoza, in the above quotation, argues that sovereignty turns on the sanction of
the entire governed body. That is, Spinoza sees true sovereignty as eminently com-
prehensive—and in this way democratic. Steven B. Smith, commenting on the
above quotation, compares Spinoza here to Rousseau, arguing that both thinkers
see the transfer of rights to all as ultimately entailing their return—only returned
with more strength and vigor.30 As Spinoza implies above, the move to democracy
is a move from absurdities to reason, simply because it is a move from the partic-
ular to the general. Of course, as we’ve seen, Spinoza argues unreservedly that in
“the state of Nature the man who is guided by reason is most powerful and most
possessed of his own right” (692). The power of reason is no different in the social
contract, where the extent of reason is certainly amplified, as “the commonwealth
is determined by the power of the multitude guided as if by one mind” (TP 692).
In a state of Nature (II/11) the man who is guided by reason is most powerful and
most in control of his own right; similarly the commonwealth that is based on reason
and directed by reason is most powerful and most in control of its own right. For the
right of a commonwealth is determined by the power of a people that is guided as
though by a single mind. But this union of minds could in no way be conceived unless
the chief of the aim commonwealth is identical with that which sound reason teaches
us is for the good of all men. (TP 692)
Here Spinoza clearly relates the rational with the general or communal. To the
extent that communities are formed under their own authority, and that authority
is explicitly elaborated and concretely embodied, then it will by definition be more
reasonable than the single, solitary individual. Indeed, it seems that for Spinoza
the mere fact of individuals coming together requires the use of rationality—thus,
commonality, at the very least, correlates with rationality.
Had appetite been their only guide (for by the laws of the appetite all men are drawn
in different directions), and so they had to bind themselves by the most stringent of
pledges to be guided in all matters only by the dictates of reason (which nobody ven-
tures openly to oppose, lest he should appear to be without capacity to reason) and to
keep appetite in check insofar as it tends to another’s hurt, to do to no one what they
themselves would not want done to themselves, and to uphold another’s right as they
would their own. (TTP 528)
Spinoza argues that it is “practically impossible for the majority of a single assem-
bly, if it is of some size, to agree on the same piece of folly” (TTP 530). Spi-
noza’s view of democracy may seem overly optimistic but his understanding of
democracy’s rational nature is certainly quite clear. For Spinoza, the very purpose
of democracy is to “avoid the follies of appetite and keep men within the bounds of
reason, as far as possible, so that they may live in peace and harmony” (TTP 531).
Again, Spinoza does not dismiss the possibility of corrupt or, indeed, irrational
rulers, but he thinks that such figures are an aberration.
It is exceedingly rare for governments to issue quite unreasonable commands; in their

own interests and to retain rule, it especially behooves them to look to the public good
and to conduct all affairs under the guidance of reason. (TTP 530)
Irrationality is thus antithetical to government for Spinoza—not only because it

proves to be in the controlling party’s interest to govern rationally but also because
the formation of a political body prompts everyone involved in it towards living a
more rational life. That is, it is irrational for anyone to live apart from a civil society
or common bond, and the full realization of this truth makes human beings more
secure against the sway of their own foolish desires and impulses.
The Freedom of Obedience
The real benefits of this sort of rational-life-in-common become all the more clear
when one considers this ideal in light of Spinoza’s theory of freedom. For Spinoza,
one is truly free only to the extent that one is rational. Thus, while most advocates
of democracy celebrate a negative sense of freedom (a freedom “from” the law, to
do what one wills or chooses), Spinoza understands democracy’s strength to lie in
the way it inculcates reason in its participants. This positive sense of freedom (a
freedom to live in line with the best elements of one’s nature) is clearest in Spi-
noza’s distinction between slaves, subjects, and sons. Someone is a slave, Spinoza
argues, when that person “lives under pleasure’s sway and can neither see nor do
what is for his own good, and only he is free who lives whole-heartedly under the
sole guidance of reason” (TTP 531). This emphasis on both a lack of ability to do
what is good and a lack of ability to see the good are key, for Spinoza asserts that
obedience (though “to some extent an infringement of freedom” (TTP 531)) is not
the quality of the slave as such. Whether or not one is a slave turns, rather, on the
reason behind an action—or, better, an action’s rationality. If one undertakes an
action simply for the benefit of another, and strictly on that other’s behest, then
that person is a slave, simply because that action does not serve one’s interests.
Slavery thus turns not on who happens to utter a decision or other form of efficient
cause, but on the reason behind one’s actions: if one is not working toward what is
rational for oneself, then one is a slave. From this it follows that a “commomwealth
whose laws are based on sound reason is the most free, for there everybody can be free as
he wills, that is, he can live whole-heartedly under the guidance of reason” (TTP 531;
emphasis mine).
While Spinoza clearly declares freedom to be a matter of willing in the above
quotation (“everybody can be as free as he wills”) the sense of this “willing” is
quickly equated with living a rational life (“live whole-heartedly under the guidance
of reason”). In fact, Spinoza specifically uses the word “potest” here, which means
“to be able” or “to have power” more than “wills” (“voluntas”). Thus while Spinoza
perhaps employs the language of “willing” in some limited sense, he clearly does
so in a very different fashion than one concerned with intent or agency. Spinoza’s
sense of “being able to” is simply an action, a form of life, which has its power
through its coherence with the laws of reason. Again, for Spinoza those who are
the most free are those who are the most rational. “A man can be free in any kind of
state,” Spinoza writes in a supplementary note to the above quotation, “for a man
is free, of course, to the extent that he is guided by reason” (TTP 581). Conversely,
an individual can be a slave in the freest state—though it is exceedingly hard to do
so. Of course, at the same time, Spinoza has made it clearly that to live rationally
is to live politically with others. Thus freedom is not only distinct from the matters
of individual willing and volitions but turns out to be a matter of recognition and
obedience. All this leads Spinoza to conclude that, for man, “The more free he is,
the more steadfastly he will observe the laws of the state and obey the commands
of the commands of the sovereign whose subject he is” (TTP 581).
Spinoza’s distinction between sons and subjects can be quite helpful in appre-
ciating this point. While a slave is one whose actions have no regard for their
own self-interest but entirely serve those of another, a “son” is one whose actions,
though arising from or dictated by another, end up acting in “his” own interests
anyway. A son is someone who accepts paternal advice grudgingly, and enjoys the
benefits of that advice despite having had desired another course. Such a person is
distinct from a subject, Spinoza argues, not because of some intention or consent
that the subject possesses (wherein he might, as in a social contract, recognize and
endorse his own good in obeying the dictates of another), but rather in the scope of
his obedience. While a son is obedient to the laws of one or two people, a subject is
obedient to the laws of many. That is, while “a son is one who by his father’s com-
mand does what is his own good; a subject is one who, by command of the sover-
eign power, acts for the common good and therefore for his own good also” (TTP 531).
A son obeys a few particular people (at the most) while a subject obeys a state,
and in doing so is thereby rational, and free. This does not mean that a subject has
to be a philosopher—only that subjects have to be brought to live under the rule
of reason. Spinoza’s emphasis on action is crucial in regard to both the slave and
the son—in neither case does he concern himself with the actual awareness of the
individuals involved. What matters are that individuals obey, who they obey, and
how rational that obedience turns out to be.
It is this sense of liberty—a distinctly positive sense of liberty—that has led
many political theorists to see Spinoza as an early, liberal theorist in the social con-
tract tradition. The most recent of these attempts has been put forward by Steven
B. Smith, who argues that, for Spinoza:
Freedom is possible once we have decided to forgo the lawlessness of the state of nature
and live under laws of our own making. Thus, if reason mandates peace, and peace
requires society, then freedom consists in obedience to the laws of society. Spinoza is
aware of the paradox of this formulation that seems to identify freedom with obedi-
ence. By obeying the government we become free, for the alternative would be chaos
and hence a complete loss of freedom. … What Spinoza proposes is the classic recipe
for positive liberty.31
It is clear that Spinoza sees true freedom as a matter of living rationally, and
living rationally as a matter of living together. But if it is true that human beings
are most rational and most free when they live with other human beings, it
doesn’t necessarily follow that their way of life together must take the form of
a political state. Indeed, if human beings are united by their own nature—be
that union motivated by mutual interest or fear or by some practical form of
rational calculation—what importance can we really ascribe to the emergence
of a political form, to the emergence of the social contract? That is, why does
it make sense to speak of a transfer of rights at all, when those rights are never
really relinquished in any meaningful sense? Spinoza makes it clear that human
beings not only retain their conatus within a state, but insists that they are bound
by Nature to observe it regardless of the situation—so why develop a theory of
the social contract at all? This problem has been especially important to readers
of Spinoza who place a particular emphasis on the TP. In Chapter VI/1 of this
work Spinoza writes:
Now since fear of isolation is innate in all such men inasmuch as in isolation no one
has the strength to defend himself and acquire the necessities of life, it follows that
men by nature strive for civil order, and it is impossible that men should ever utterly
dissolve this order. (TTP 701)
“ nothing mor e u s ef u l t h a n ma n …” | 101
Here Spinoza is quite clear that “civil order” springs innately from human beings
as such, and thus—pace Hobbes—political association itself is anything but a fab-
rication or invention. Indeed, at the beginning of the TP, Spinoza promises to
deduce a practical political theory from human nature “as it really is” (TP 681),
and not as philosophers would like it to be. Such a deduction, if really derived
from the reality of human nature and not from the speculations of philosophers,
doesn’t—the TP seems to argue—find man by himself, alone in a state of Nature,
but rather as always-already in some form of social association or community.
When we remember that it is conatus that brings human beings into community,
the same instinct that gives individuals their very identity, then the natural pri-
macy of political association becomes all the more clear.
As long as human natural right is determined by the power of each single individual
and is possessed by each alone, it is of no account and is notional rather than factual …
We therefore conclude that the natural right specific to human beings can scarcely be
conceived except where men have their rights in common and can together successfully
defend the territories which they can inhabit and cultivate, protect themselves, repel
all force, and live in accordance with the judgment of the entire community. For (by
Section 13 of this chapter) the greater the number of men who thus unite in one body,
the more right they will collectively possess. And if it is on these grounds—that men in a
state of Nature can scarcely be in control of their own right—that the Schoolmen want to call
man a social animal, I have nothing to say against them. (TP 687; emphasis mine)
Such passages seem to call into question the true importance of the social con-
tract in Spinoza’s overall work. Indeed, Spinoza seems to doubt whether individual
rights are even conceivable at all.
Yet if right is always truly collective, if right is really achieved in the collective
more than the individual, why devise a social contract theory at all? Why devise a
theory of the social contract if it is, at best, epiphenomenal? Isn’t the very point of
the social contract to ground the institution of sovereignty in the rights of indi-
viduals? Etienne Balibar argues that Spinoza’s use of the term contract [pactum] is
“neither a terminological survival, an anticipation, nor a concession, but a central
political and theoretical stake.”32 Spinoza’s “theoretical stake,” however, is purpose-
fully “disconcerting.”33 Whereas Balibar attributes a “beautiful simplicity” to the
idea of the social contract in Hobbes and Rousseau, he argues that Spinoza’s idea
“abounds in breaks in argumentation and in denials.”34
The most prominent contradiction in Spinoza’s theory of the social contract
lies in his distinction between theory and practice in the TTP. Balibar points to
TTP 17, where Spinoza asserts that “the picture presented in the last chapter …
although it agrees quite closely with practice … must nonetheless remain in many
respects no more than theory.”35 As Balibar understands this section of the text,
there are two interpretations available: either the social contract is “only a theoret-
ical schema, of which real societies represent only a more or less faithful approxi-
mation” or “there are really civil societies that are states” for whom “a certain form
of the pact must necessarily be given (at least as long as a sovereign power is main-
tained), but only in an ideal case does it take the form of an ‘integral transfer.’”36
This latter interpretation finds support when Spinoza writes:
No one transfers his natural right to another so completely that he is never consulted
again, but each transfers it to a majority of the entire society of which he is a member.
In this way all remain equal, as they were before in a state of nature. (TTP 536)
For Balibar, such political equality is only formal, for “in reality the pact would
in fact usually signify instead that individuals become unequal, and that in their
submission there is an inevitable part of slavery, of existence alieni juris.”37 Bali-
bar argues further that as the TTP unfolds, “the adequation between the form of
the pact and the genesis of civil societies from the power of individuals becomes
entirely problematic” because the continuity of natural right in the state “calls into
question the form of a pact, or else the latter must signify—as in Hobbes—a nega-
tion of the natural right of individuals.”38 In this way, the obedience that leads to
freedom would seem to be an obedience of Nature instead of the sovereign.
But what does it mean to “question the form of the pact”? Why is it that indi-
vidual rights cannot actually be enabled through the pact? That is, why doesn’t Bal-
ibar think that, for Spinoza, the rights of individuals are empowered through the
social contract? For Balibar, this interpretation of last part of the TTP is entirely
too utopian. Indeed, any interpretation of Spinoza which attributes a significant
amount of importance to the social contract is, Balibar points out, a serious prob-
lem, as it postulates such a discrepancy between theory and practice, ideas and
nature, that it threatens to “reverse the causal order of nature.”39 Balibar counters
this utopian interpretation of Spinoza by emphasizing the extent of power that
Spinoza seems to attribute to the state. While Spinoza argues that subjects never
fully transfer their rights to their sovereign and are always in fact feared by their
sovereign, Balibar emphasizes that Spinoza also contends that:
For a proper understanding of the extent of the government’s right and power, it
should be observed that the government’s power is not strictly confined to its power
of coercion by fear, but rests on all the possible means by which it can induce men to
obey its commands. It is not the motive for obedience, but the fact of obedience, that
constitutes a subject. Whatever be the motives that prompt a man to carry out the
commands of the sovereign power, whether it be fear of punishment, hope of reward,
love of country, or any other emotion, while it is he who makes the decision, he is
nevertheless acting under the control of the sovereign power. From the fact, then, that
a man acts from his own decision, we should not forthwith conclude that his action
proceeds from his own right, and not from the right of the government. (TTP 536–7)
What does Spinoza mean by this? How do sovereigns fear their subjects and yet, at
the same time, play such a large role in determining their behavior and even their
thoughts? Balibar argues that Spinoza sees governmental power as not simply
a coercive power over subjects but as a power constitutive of them, and this is
undoubtedly true. Spinoza, in the above quotation, clearly thinks that a sovereign
has some power not just over her subjects’ actions but also over their wishes and
intentions. Further, Spinoza sees the extent of such sway seems to be an innate
part of anything worthy of the name sovereign. Regardless of whether a subject
“is motivated by love, or fear, or (and this is more frequently the case) a mixture
of hope and fear, or by reverence—which is an emotion compounded of fear and
awe—or whatever be his motive,” Spinoza argues, such a subject “acts from the
ruler’s right, not from his own” (TTP 537). The scope of governmental authority
is thus quite extensive—to the point that we can never really determine where a
subject’s intentions end and a sovereign’s intentions begin.
Such a conception of sovereignty presents quite a problem for Balibar and,
undoubtedly, for many of us. Even Hobbes, it should be recalled, maintains that a
sovereign has no power over the internal thoughts and feelings of her subjects—
what he calls the internal forum.40 Prima facie, such a conception of sovereignty
is intrinsically problematic. Indeed, from this perspective Spinoza seems to be an
early proponent of biopower—a form of power Michel Foucault ascribes specif-
ically to the modern age. With the advent of biopower, Foucault argues, “Power
would no longer be dealing with legal subjects over whom the ultimate dominion
was death, but with living beings, and the mastery it would be able to exercise over
them would … be applied at the level of life itself.”41 That is, biopower is an expan-
sion of the sovereign’s traditional powers (over when life can be ended, or how
it can be punished) in the modern era to include the ability to define the nature
of life as such—to “invest life through and through.”42 In this respect, Spinoza’s
assertion that state power “is not strictly confined to its power of coercion” but lies
rather in its ability to command the sort of obedience that actually “constitutes the
subject” seems to be a clear declaration that the state enjoys biopolitical power.
For Balibar, as well as Hardt and Negri, Spinoza is describing what is fun-
damentally unjust about the state, which he will come to oppose in the Politi-
cal Treatise. For these thinkers, the state cannot be seen as benefiting its subjects
(increasing their power) if it is actually determining their identities through its
own authority. Nonetheless, we should ask ourselves, not only whether Spinoza
himself also sees the emergence of biopolitics as a problem, but also if he even sees
the emergence of such a form of sovereignty as a development at all. That is, is

the emergence of what Foucault, and others call the biopolitcal in fact for Spinoza
a transformation of sovereign power? Is it a perversion of that power? Or is the
biopolitical dimension of modern sovereignty an inherent characteristic of Spino-
za’s idea of sovereignty as such? Posing such questions, and taking them seriously,
means wondering whether Spinoza—in his analysis of sovereignty—is presenting
us with a problem to be solved, or a reality to be understood? What, exactly, does
Spinoza think the proper extent of sovereign power is?
I believe that if we approach Spinoza theory of sovereignty without precon-
ceptions—without the preconceived notion that Spinoza is a liberal thinker or a
theorist of the multitude—we will get a more accurate understanding of Spino-
za’s position. This is not because the above descriptions are inaccurate, but only
because that when they are taken strictly in themselves they not only tell us little
about how Spinoza sees politics but they tend to be particularly obfuscatory when
the idea of sovereignty is discussed. From both perspectives, sovereignty is either
a problem or it is problematic; either it is an oppression to be overcome, or an
unpleasant requirement that must be critically endured by an opposing civil class.
That sovereignty might be for Spinoza not only a necessity but actually a good,
precisely because it is able to effect a comprehensive organization of social life, is
not considered—despite the fact that much of Spinoza’s own work prompts such
a reading:
From the fact … that a man acts from his own decision, we should not forthwith
conclude that his action proceeds from his own right, and not from the right of the
government. For whether a man is urged by love or driven by fear of a threatened evil
since in both cases his action always proceeds from his own intention and decision,
either there can be no such thing as sovereignty and right over subject or else it must
include all the means that contribute to men’s willingness to obey. (TTP 537)
Spinoza is putting forward two points in the above passage. The first is that the
moment of volition or decision and the reality of right are not the same, for the
moment in which a subject decides something it often is not properly his but the
sovereign’s—that is, it is a formulation that has been produced by the sovereign.
The second point here is that such formulations are by definition included in the
nature of sovereignty. Indeed, at the end of the above quotation Spinoza seems
to confront us directly with a zero-sum situation: either the sovereign has a total
right—and “must include all the means that contribute to men’s willingness to
obey”—or there must be no such thing as sovereignty. This is no doubt brought on
by passages in chapter 16 like the above and the following, in which Spinoza seems
to suggest that real sovereignty is a form of interpellation:
The point is … that obedience is not so much a matter of outward act as internal
act of mind. Therefore he who whole-heartedly resolves to obey another in all his
commands is fully under another’s dominion, and consequently he who reigns over
his subjects’ minds holds the most powerful dominion. If the strongest dominion were
held by those who are feared, then it would assuredly be held by tyrants’ subjects,
for they are most feared by their tyrants. Then again, although command cannot be
exercised over minds in the same way as over tongues, yet minds are to some degree
under the control of the sovereign power, who has many means of inducing the great
majority to believe, love, hate, etc. whatever he wills. Thus, although it is not by direct
command of the sovereign power that these results are produced … experience abundantly
testifies they often proceed from the authoritative nature of his power and from his guid-
ance, that is, from his right. Therefore there is not absurdity in conceiving men whose
beliefs, love, hatred, contempt and every single emotion is under the sole control of the
government. (TTP 537; emphasis mine)
Emotion and intentionality do not matter as much as power, because power can
dictate both act and thought. The sovereign, as sovereign, can bring about not
only certain forms of action but also certain forms of beliefs (could she be capable
of doing so and still remain sovereign?) though, as Spinoza notes, this power is
not directly causal, for such beliefs merely proceed from her power. In attribut-
ing such a power to sovereigns, Spinoza is not arguing that their power could be
so all encompassing that they could determine whatever they might wish. As he
quickly moves on to qualify this issue in the next paragraph, Spinoza sees that “the
right and power of government, when conceived in this way, are quite extensive,
there can never be any government so mighty that those in command would have
unlimited power to do whatever they wish” (TTP 537). Sovereigns are thus in
some sense clearly limited, though we must remember the nature for this limita-
tion is rooted not in the residual rights or abilities of the sovereign’s subjects as
subjects (which they might pertain simply through simply being individuals and
thus maintaining their inalienable rights) but in the order and logic of Nature. It
is clear, as Spinoza has already argued, that a sovereign cannot persist in any kind
of irrational behavior or consistently forsake the welfare of her subjects. A sover-
eign cannot simply dictate or will whatever she wishes, for her sovereign power is
only achieved through rationality. That rationality is an inherent element of sov-
ereignty, so it is no surprise to see that Spinoza thinks that a sovereign does—and
should—foster it in her subjects.
Balibar offers a different interpretation. “Isn’t it absurd,” Balibar argues, to
claim “that individuals obeying a third, externally constituted power, are, how-
ever, free by the very fact of this submission, and only act ex proprio decreto?”43
[“by his own decree?”] Moreover, Balibar argues, is not such a position so absurd
that it must prompt us to consider whether or not Spinoza is employing it as a
sort of rhetorical flourish—one whose true meaning is only implicit? If we really

consider the notion of sovereignty Spinoza lays out above, with its thoroughly
illiberal sense of right, we have to ask ourselves “Is Spinoza a closet theorist of
voluntary servitude?” Yet when we consider an affirmative answer to this ques-
tion, we will soon see that something else is going on in Spinoza’s work entirely.
Balibar asks,
Or else, on the contrary, does he, through a sort of reductio ad absurdum of this con-
cept, in fact tend to separate two “spheres” of individual existence, which authoritarian
regimes (regimes of “censorship”) misguidedly strive to confuse (and, in fact, in vain,
for this confusion would be against nature): the regime of internal freedom and exter-
nal obedience?44
Rather than straightforwardly condemning authoritarian governments, Balibar

argues, Spinoza slyly demonstrates how such governments elide the fundamen-
tal distinction between sovereign and subject. That is, by presenting his reader
with what is truly at stake in state power—an absolute claim to sovereign authority
—Spinoza effectively dispels the notion that social contracts are able actually to
preserve the rights of the subjects who enter into them as rights that are effec-
tively their own. Further, such a demonstration—through its inherent absurdity—
underscores the importance of this distinction between sovereigns and subjects
within Spinoza’s own political theory. For Balibar, this distinction is essentially
between the state and the multitudo: masses or “multitude.”
The multitude is a term that finds its most prominent use in the TP. In the
Ethics multitude appears only once, in 5p20s, where Spinoza refers to “the mul-
titude of causes” [“in multudine causarum”].45 In the TTP it appears six times,
though here it is used, Balibar argues, strictly as “a sociological, nonpolitical con-
cept”—one that refers not to any political body as such, but rather to a particular
sort of anti-intellectual culture.46 In contrast, the TP outlines a number of ways in
which the multitude can be politically organized. In all of these, Balibar argues,
what is important to note is that the relationship between the multitude and the
state (as well as the multitude itself ) is uneasy—indeed, it is one of constant ten-
sion. The reason for this is that no political community is truly fundamental, that
is, there is no one which can manifest “a preestablished harmony or an originally
political nature of man.”47 Instead, all political bodies are immersed in a tension
between the role of a sovereign authority and a populace who inevitably, and even
innately, challenge that rule—a populace Spinoza calls the multitude. Thus polit-
ical bodies exercise a “continuous regulation of the relation that the powers of the
multitude maintain with nature of which they form a part, implying activity and
passivity, agreement and disagreement, knowledge and imagination.”48 Though the
TTP aspires to make a certain degree of peace and harmony attainable in theory,
Balibar argues that the text is really just an attempt by Spinoza to demonstrate the
fundamental illegitimacy of the state.
We can see this same emphasis on the idea of the multitude at work in the
influential interpretation of Spinoza offered by Antonio Negri. Negri, like Bal-
ibar, argues that the true heart of Spinoza’s political theory lies precisely in this
anatagonistic juxtaposition between the authoritarian machinations of state power
and the dynamic or creative powers of the multitude. Although the multitude
is itself a unity, it is also internally contradictory, and thus is (paradoxically) a
dynamic plurality. There are no fixed forms of order in the multitude—everything
is challenged, re-thought and re-done. This dynamism results in a democratic
social body that, as a result of its power, is squarely opposed to the state form. As
with Balibar, Negri argues that the dialectic of state power and the power of the
multitude only end when the former has, through its ceaseless antagonism, risen
up and sublimated the former. But such a resolution won’t happen in the near
future, simply because the multitude is fundamentally opposed to the very idea of
resolution. Negri writes:
Spinoza’s politics participates in a genuine Copernican revolution: the infinite is the

multitudo, a continuous movement is its power—an infinite movement that consti-
tutes a totality but is identified in it only as the actuality of a passage; it is not closed
but opened; it produces and reproduces.49
For Negri then, “the multitudo remains an elusive totality of singularities.”50

On some level, this is undoubtedly true, as modes never cease being modes
after all. But the real issue here would seem to be more properly not the singu-
larities per se but the character of their organization—if they are, indeed, actually
organized at all. Negri understands the organization of such singularities to be
inherently dynamic, even if such a dynamism can often more accurately be charac-
terized by violence. According to Negri,
The tendency of Spinoza’s political philosophy—which consists in running through-

out the flow of the multitude and establishing in this flow a series of increasingly
complex distinctions, up to those that concern the forms of government—becomes a
very violent confrontation. We mean that every rupture of the flow and every estab-
lishment of a rigid form is an act of violence.51
This violence is primary and, ultimately, ineluctable. Although “reason …

would like the multitudo to be presented as a single soul: this demand of reason
traverses the natural field on which social life unfolds” and “does not manage
to overcome the violence and dispersion once and for all.”52 For Negri, then,
Spinoza’s political theory is best characterized as a state in which social unity is

interminably at odds with the dynamic, often chaotic, power of the multitude
that composes it. Indeed, Negri argues that there “is nothing in Spinoza’s meta-
physics or his anthropology that can offer any hope of resolving this tension.”53
For Negri, “Part V of the Ethics”—the Part, as Spinoza describes it, which con-
cerns the method or way leading to freedom”54—“has nothing to teach us.”55
Moreover:
The continual referral of political virtue to generosity, to the rejection of hate, anger,
and contempt, in short, to love for the universal does not come any closer to resolving
the problem (E IVP45, 46); in other words, the reference to a series of passions that,
if they are valuable as indications of a direction, nonetheless do not correspond to the
necessity of its completion.56
However, despite his emphasis on violence and contingency Negri does see
the multitude as giving rise to at least one virtue that does have a good deal of
political resonance—in the traditional sense of the “political.” Negri argues that
the irresolvable, unstable nature of the multitude is ultimately a “nonsolution of
the relationship between absoluteness and freedom” it is also “the foundation of
one of the highest values of the republican tradition: tolerance.”57 This appeal to
a central theme of classical republicanism may sound strange coming from Negri,
who goes to good length to distinguish Spinoza from this tradition. Yet on the
crucial issue of toleration, an issue certainly of no minor import to the republican
tradition, Negri sees Spinoza as one of its greatest proponents:
The multitudo, in its paradoxical nature, is the foundation of democracy insofar as

it allows each individual to introduce into society his own values of freedom. Each
singularity is a foundation. Tolerance for Spinoza does not here represent a negative
virtue, as a residual morality. If in the TTP tolerance concerned intellectual freedom
especially, here it becomes a universal right.58
So tolerance is not a negative virtue—one that might have to do with restric-

tion or restraint, in keeping with some external standard—but a distinctly posi-
tive one. What does this really mean? Negri argues that tolerance, by emerging
from the chaos of the multitude, protects and affirms its dynamic power; that
is, it affirms its right to power and persists in its struggle. Such a reading clearly
figures Spinoza, at least the Spinoza of the TP, opposing all forms of order and
authority—especially religious ones. Indeed, Negri argues that despite the obvi-
ously metaphysical character of Spinoza’s political vision—even in the TP—this
character is entirely distinct from the religious orientation of the Ethics. This inter-
pretation is also echoed in Balibar:
Despite several references to the analysis of religion presented in the TTP, the role of
religion in politics is now clearly subordinate, if not marginal, and Spinoza’s concept
of the religious itself seems to have changed profoundly. There is only one allusion
to ‘theocracy’, which henceforth designates nothing more than one particular way of
choosing a monarch (TP, VII, 25). Nor does the notion of ‘true Religion’ figure in the
TP. Instead, when discussing the aristocracy, Spinoza introduces the idea of a ‘religion
of the homeland’ (TP, VIII, 46), which seems to refer back to the traditions of the
cities of antiquity.59
While the TTP possessed two different but complementary themes, “true reli-
gion’ and the ‘natural right of the sovereign,’”60 the TP is an argument about the
social foundation of natural right—right divorced from the historical contingen-
cies of true religion. In this sense it “was a militant intervention in a contemporary
polemic.”61 This intervention was a theoretical declaration of the “‘foundations of
politics’, unrestricted by any particular event or circumstances.”62 For both Balibar
and Negri, the TTP is concerned with understanding and responding to specific,
historical manifestations of political bodies, while the TP is more straightfor-
wardly theoretical and, therefore, objective.
It is difficult to conceive how such a hard line between these texts is ultimately
defensible. While there are undoubtedly points of emphasis that distinguish these
materials, Spinoza quite explicitly declares in the first chapter of the TP (after
the introduction) that he is going to build upon his previous arguments in the
TTP and the Ethics. “With regard to religion,” Spinoza writes at the beginning
of the TP, “we have set forth our views at sufficient length in the Tractatus theo-
logico-politicus” (TP 740). Spinoza thus not only refers explicitly to the TTP here
he explicitly understands the TP to be continuous with his earlier text. In the TP
Spinoza writes that his purpose is not to correct the TTP’s analysis of religion but
to extend it. In the TTP, Spinoza explains in his later work, “we omitted … that
all patricians should be of the same religion, a very simple religion of a most uni-
versal nature as described in that treatise” (TP 740). The reasons for this are clear
enough, and are not exclusively religious but stem from the nature of sovereign
authority more generally:
It is of the first importance to guard against the patricians being split into sects, show-
ing favor to this group, some to that, and furthermore against becoming victims to
superstition, seeking to deprive their subjects of the freedom to say what they think.
(TP 740)
This quotation clearly demonstrates that any problems with religion Spinoza
might address in the TP have to do with the factitious or superstitious forms reli-
gion may occasionally develop. Thus, there may be a problem with the particularity
of religion in the TP but that problem is not one of historical particularity but polit-
ical particularity. Indeed, as Spinoza suggests in the TP, the problem with religion
is that it is often not political—not sovereign—enough.
Yet, especially in Negri, the attempt to depict Spinoza as an opponent of reli-
gion specifically and of any forms of legal order more generally is at the fore. In
a footnote, Negri puts the point most starkly: “In Spinoza the secularization of
the idea of power effaces the most distant theological reminiscence.”63 This is in
sharp contrast, Negri argues, to Hobbes, in whose writing “the lack of physical
and metaphysical reasons there corresponds the necessity of divinity, and in him,
a certain order of reasons of the heart is opposed to the arguments of reason when
it cries: long live God!”64 Spinoza’s secularism is thus much more advanced than
the tacit Christian secularism of Hobbes and others, as it permeates the entirety
of his work. Indeed, although he dismisses the Ethics and its appeal to a peaceful,
rational life, Negri has no problem emphasizing the importance of what he takes
to be its atheism. “Spinoza’s religiosity is often mentioned with respect to the TTP
and TP. In fact, a genuine atheist religiosity runs throughout Spinoza’s hypothesis
of democracy: Nemo potest Deum odio habere” (E 371).65
The Conditions of Toleration
Thus for both Negri and Balibar Spinoza’s thought is devoid enough of religious
thought to allow it to be truly tolerant, and it is this feature that (ironically per-
haps) puts these thinker’s interpretation of Spinoza in close proximity to other
thinkers like Smith and Jonathan Israel, who place Spinoza at the beginning of
Enlightened, liberal thought. Indeed, much like Negri, Israel is also interested in
presenting Spinoza as a useful contrast to other, tacitly Christian, theorists of tol-
erance like John Locke. Israel argues that, “Locke’s theory is essentially a theolog-
ical conception,” as Locke asserts that it is for every individual “not just to assume
responsibility for seeking the salvation of his or her soul but … to perform openly
that form of worship by which he or she seeks salvation.”66 Consequently, Locke’s
idea of toleration, in Israel’s eyes, “revolves primarily around freedom of worship
and theological discussion, placing little emphasis on freedom of thought, speech,
and persuasion beyond what related to freedom of conscience which, in principle
might be Jewish or Mohammedan as well as Christian.”67 In contrast stands Spi-
noza who, Israel argues,
is essentially philosophical, republican, and explicitly anti-theological. Freedom of

thought and speech, designated libertas philosophandi by Spinoza, is the primary goal,
while saving souls plays no part either in their advocacy of toleration or setting limits
to toleration which, Spinoza concedes, may in a given society be advisable.68
What all this reveals, according to Israel, is that Locke’s theory of toleration
is only able to recognize specific, well-established, religious traditions. Protestants
and Quakers, Jews, and perhaps even Muslims all seem to have a place in Locke’s
tolerant society, while more “free thinking” individuals—atheists explicitly but
perhaps also, Israel speculates, more mainline deists and agnostics—are not to
be tolerated. This means further that Locke’s idea of religious toleration is, for
Israel, fundamentally theological because it favors distinct theological ends while
marginalizing others, and is thereby not much concerned with toleration itself.
Toleration, for Locke, is only a means to accepted worship and not an end in itself.
By contrast, Israel asserts—like Negri—that the theory of religious toleration
advanced by Spinoza, being properly “philosophical” and even “anti-theological,”69
is one that seeks out the freedom of thought and speech for individuals as ends
in themselves. As there is no specific larger ecclesiastical community from which
free and tolerant thoughts and words emerge and to which they could correspond,
Israel argues, Spinoza’s vision of toleration seems to be one that is content to rest
with its own singular and unattended merit.
Israel is far from alone in attributing this liberal characterization to Spinoza.
Stuart Hampshire presents Spinoza as “an early advocate of the great liberal con-
ception of toleration and freedom of thought.”70 Smith of course has also recently
argued that Spinoza’s TTP ought to be “a classic of modern liberal democracy” as
it recognizes that the nature of a truly liberal society can only be fully considered
in light of how it answers what Smith calls “the religious question.”71 Smith fol-
lows Israel (and Wolfson and Strauss before them) in arguing that the “religious
question” is, for Spinoza, ultimately the “Christian question”—or the question of
how a political authority can be constituted in relation to a specifically Christian
worldview. The criticisms of Judaism Spinoza sets forth in the TTP are, from this
perspective, also (ironically) directed toward the prevailing Christian ecclesiastical
authorities of his day in all their various forms. This cunning strategy of veiled
criticism was, in this sense, the beginning of a solution to the “religious ques-
tion”—and, Smith argues, the solution was, for Spinoza, the “model of the free
and liberated individual.”72 For Smith’s Spinoza, “the individual is free not only in
the philosophical sense that comes with the exercise of one’s own rational powers
but in the ordinary sense that comes with liberation from ecclesiastical tutelage
and supervision.”73 When considering the later chapters of the Treatise, in which
Spinoza lays out his own specific conception of religion—a vera religio, a religio
catholica—these Spinoza scholars, again like Balibar and Negri, assert that this
theory of religion was merely an unpleasant but necessary means to a politically

and ultimately philosophically desirable end.
Yet, as we have seen, rather than emphasizing the inherent worth or sovereign
character of individual thought as such (much less speech) Spinoza emphasizes
the simple, stubborn, unquestionable facticity of individual thinking. Spinoza
argues that “it is impossible for the mind to be completely under another’s control;
for no one is able to transfer to another his completely natural right or faculty to
reason freely and to form his own judgment on any matters whatsoever” (TTP
566; emphasis mine). Of course, at the same time, the sovereign has the right to
influence greatly the thoughts of his subjects. However, such influences can only
be realized if they are done rationally. Indeed, it is clear that the sovereign can
have no rational influence if she does not protect the subjects’ right to reason for
themselves—for otherwise they simply would not be susceptible to reason at all.
Sovereigns protect their subjects’ right to reason so that their own power will be
increased—not in some act of deference to the dignity of the subjects’ thoughts in
themselves.
On the other hand, it is also important to remember that Spinoza’s reasons for
advocating the restraint of sovereigns from attempting to dictate the thoughts of
others lie not in the “individual’s” natural entitlement to think as such but rather
in the sheer logical absurdity of the sovereign’s attempting to control the individ-
ual’s thought. As we’ve seen, thought control, or its attempt, is simply inadvisable
because it is impossible—if for no other reason than the supposed controller’s
particular thoughts are not themselves under her control, but are in fact prey to her
emotions. Such sovereigns cannot hold the thoughts of others to their own par-
ticular liking because that liking is itself what is controlling—manipulating—that
sovereign. Thus, the reasons Spinoza gives for arguing against such attempts lie
in their logical unfeasibility rather than their sheer immorality or injustice.74 As a
result, Spinoza writes that sovereigns are—ironically, perhaps—the least sovereign
when they exercise power that is specifically their own, and not rational or com-
munal.
…However much sovereigns are believed to possess unlimited right and to be inter-
preters of law and piety, they will never succeed in preventing men from exercising
their own particular judgment on any matters whatsoever and from being influenced
accordingly by a variety of opinions. It is true that sovereigns can by their right treat
as enemies all who do not absolutely agree with them on all matters, but the point at
issue is not what is their right, but what is their interest. (TTP 567)
It is important to understand that Spinoza’s assertion that all individuals

have a right to toleration is not antecedent to the stubborn insistence of rational
thought but is fundamentally established by it. This is because right, in Spinoza’s

sense of the term, is not an abstract consideration of the privileges that should be
extended to important forms of thought or behavior but, rather, the real, deter-
minative power—granted by nature—that all individuals possess. While Spinoza
argues that all rights are natural, and it is “the natural right of everyman is deter-
mined not by sound reason but by his desire and his power” (E 174), it is clear that
for him this power is really most powerful when it is rational.
Spinoza’s sense of tolerance is thus quite far from being empty or neutral
in either Negri or Israel’s senses, respectively: it clearly stems from and attempts
to cultivate a specific conception of human life. It is undoubtedly the innovative
character of Spinoza’s thought that prompts theorists like Israel to dismiss all of
Spinoza’s references to true religion as disingenuous. Yet doing so ignores the fact
that Spinoza seems to go to great lengths to ground his conception of human right
in a correlating conception of natural, even divine right—and we will explore the
exact religious nature of this right more fully in the next chapter. For now it is
important to note that Spinoza’s conception of right certainly combines compul-
sion, obedience, and community in such a way that takes us far from the ideas of
religious tolerance that theorists like Negri or Israel would like.
What we might call Spinoza’s “asecularism” becomes much clearer if we return
to the role of obedience in his thought, an idea that is central to his conception of
reason and freedom. As we have seen, if freedom is a factual matter rather than a
volitional one—that is, freedom is indifferent to the efficient cause or immediate
agent who brings it about —then the line that exists traditionally between freedom
and obedience is completely reworked in Spinoza. Freedom simply does not have
any regard for particularity at all, other than its desire to bring that particularity in
line with rational order. We achieve a rational order, and the freedom that comes
with its obedience, through our participation in political life generally and demo-
cratic political life specifically. As Nancy Levene puts it, freedom “is not about the
individual acting in accordance with the sovereign as an individual, i.e., as some-
one who could choose to act otherwise, but rather about someone who has already
granted to the sovereign the right to determine through law the direction of action
itself.”75 Spinoza makes this clear when he writes that the purpose of the state is
freedom, a freedom that comes through the passage from particular emotions and
fears to rational behavior.
It follows quite clearly from my earlier explanation of the basis of the state that its
ultimate purpose is not to exercise dominion nor to restrain men by fear and deprive
them of their independence, but on the contrary to free every man from fear so that he
may live in security as far as is possible, that is, so that he may preserve his own natural
right to exist and to act, without harm to himself and to others. It is not, I repeat, the
purpose of the state to transform men from rational beings into beasts or puppets, but rather
to make them develop their mental and physical faculties in safety, to use their reason without
restraint and to refrain from the strife and the vicious mutual abuse that are prompted by
hatred, anger or deceit. Thus the purpose of the state is, in reality, freedom. (TTP 567)
In this conception of the state, not only does Spinoza undo the opposition between
freedom and obedience, but he undoes the opposition between freedom and sov-
ereignty as well. If a free life is one lived rationally, and it is the purpose of the
state—and its sovereign rule—to bring such lives about, then the state is clearly a
pivotal, even a necessary element in the realization of freedom.
There will certainly, undoubtedly, be tensions between sovereigns and sub-
jects, and these tensions can certainly be productive (we need only consider the
example of the undemocratic or irrational sovereign to see this), but it certainly
does not follow from this that freedom can only be found when sovereignty is
undone. Levene makes this point quite clear:
Spinoza is saying here that minds cannot be free unless the sovereign is free, because
sovereigns control minds…A democratic sovereign is not simply a sovereign that
allows freedom of belief and expression, or even freedom of action within the bounds
of the law. It is, rather, a sovereign that ‘guides,’ a sovereign that understands its own
‘mind’ to be enlarged by the minds of its members.76
The point here is simply about the nature or definition of sovereignty—what it

requires, and whether those requirements can be met in a democratic way. It is a
mistake, from Spinoza’s point of view, to set sovereignty in opposition to democ-
racy—simply because democracy is impossible without it.
Indeed, given the simple, factual necessity of political life, Spinoza seems to
say that sovereignty is inevitable—what’s variable is the form it takes and how
effective it ends up being (how sovereign it ends up being). Indeed, all human
beings do live under some form of sovereignty—be that sovereignty rational or
irrational, of their own making exclusively or developed with other people. Spi-
noza writes:
Among men, as long as they are considered as living under the rule of Nature alone,
he who is not yet acquainted with reason or has not yet acquired a virtuous disposi-
tion lives under the sole control of appetite with as much sovereign right as he who
conducts his life under the rule of reason. That is to say, just as the wise man has the
sovereign right to do all that reason dictates, i.e. to live according to the laws of reason,
so, too, a man who is ignorant and weak-willed has the sovereign right to do all that
is urged on him by appetite, i.e. to live according to the laws of appetite. (TTP 527)
All this is to say that human beings, on either a political level or on a metaphysical
one, are not the authors of their worlds. As parts of nature, as parts of substance,
we are all ruled. This does not mean, however, that we cannot be free at the same
time, and that we cannot make the best of the forces that govern us. Indeed, Spi-
noza thinks that we can certainly understand and respond to these forces in ways
that turn them to our advantage—and that living together, under our own demo-
cratic, sovereign authority is the best way to realize freedom.
chapter four
“The Supreme Reward of

the Divine Law”
Law and Religion in Spinoza
Introduction
If we are properly to recognize that we are a part of God, Nature, or Substance,

and if we are to live our lives in response to this reality, we must be able to under-
stand the order and structure of that reality. Spinoza, as we have seen, is especially
concerned with correcting the prevailing notions of agency and sovereignty in this
regard. We are free, Spinoza argues, when we are brought under the authority of
a rational form of sovereignty. Yet sovereigns are at their most rational when they
are democratic—when the laws enforced by the sovereign are the same ones put
forward by the people. Happily, Spinoza concludes, people are more rational the
more they come to work and live with other people—for, “to man, there is nothing
is more useful than man” (4p18s/331). Thus, to live among others, even “under”
the rule of another, is an inherently desirable condition for human beings.
This chapter considers how true or universal religion (“vera religio”), Scripture,
and what Spinoza calls the “divine law,” can help to cultivate the sovereignty of
reason amongst a populace. I argue here that Spinoza sees religious life in gen-
eral and Scripture in particular as advancing simple yet essential ideas—common
notions—that form the basis of any successful political body. While notions
such as justice, charity, and the love of God may strike us as exceedingly gen-
eral (and rightfully so), they form a central part of Spinoza’s philosophy. Indeed,
for Spinoza, it is precisely the generality (the commonality) of these notions that
makes them so essential, for since all people have access to them (through what
Spinoza calls our “natural light”) these notions are the natural means by which
people are brought together and, subsequently, thereby are made more rational.
Spinoza calls the observance of these notions, be it through a religious tradition
or no, the law of God, and sees such observance as central to achieving human
happiness or what Spinoza calls “blessedness.”
Yet to appreciate how religion and Scripture communicate these common
notions to us we need to get a better sense of how Spinoza treats these themes
more generally. This chapter thus begins by considering the roles that religion
and Scripture played in the first theocracy—the “Hebrew commonwealth.” While
many read Spinoza’s analysis of ancient Israel as an attempt to diagnosis the inher-
ently particular, and thus limited, nature of religious life, I argue here that Spinoza
actually sees a great many virtues in this early republic—virtues he thinks modern
political states would do well to observe. I then consider how the form of reli-
gious rule demonstrated by the Hebrew commonwealth relates to what Spinoza
calls the love of God. In contrast to many thinkers (most notably Maimonides)
who take the love of God to be essentially a personal or private affair, Spinoza
sees the love of God as essentially social—as it is increased the more people are
brought to it. The final two sections of this chapter consider how this social bond
is promoted through Scripture as well as its language: Hebrew. I argue here that
Spinoza’s theory of biblical interpretation is radically egalitarian, both in terms of
who can interpret the Bible and in terms of the actual moral promoted by the text
itself. Further, I argue that Spinoza undertakes the instruction of Hebrew (in his
Hebrew Grammar) to communicate the nature and importance of community to
his friends.
As we’ve seen, Spinoza has been claimed by all manner of philosophical
schools. Political thinkers as diverse as Strauss, Smith, and even Louis Althusser1
all name Spinoza as an intellectual ancestor. Spinoza, indeed, is something of a site
of conflict between competing theoretical perspectives. Yet what all of these per-
spectives share (admittedly to greater or lesser degree) is the notion that Spinoza
is involved in a critique of religion, especially as it exists in public discourses and
political bodies. While modern commentators generally think of Spinoza as being
one of the earliest opponents of religious authority (if not of religion per se) and
consequently of theocracy, an open minded examination of his work, particularly
the end of the TTP, reveals a completely different picture: that Spinoza argues for
religion playing a central role in public life. This chapter examines how Spinoza’s
conception of religion manifests itself politically, historically, linguistically, and
naturally, to promote the ability of human beings to live together.
“ the supreme re wa r d o f t h e d i v i n e l aw ” | 119
Spinoza’s Theocracy
The TTP is an odd book, one that seems to focus on several distinct themes.
Indeed, the TTP begins as a critique of (at the very least) traditional Biblical
interpretation and ends with extensive reflection on the character of the proper
state. Troubling for those who are interested in discerning Spinoza’s view on the
legitimacy or illegitimacy of theocracy is the fact that there seem to be competing
depictions of what legitimate government looks like in chapter 5 as against those
in chapters 17 and 18. Attending to these specific chapters illustrates the diffi-
culties an interpreter faces when considering the exact relationship between the
religious and the political in Spinoza.
Spinoza begins chapter 5 of the TTP by establishing a distinction between
two types of law. On the one hand, there is that what Spinoza calls the Divine
Law, that law “which makes men truly blessed and teaches the true life” (TTP
425) and is innate in the mind of every human being. Thus, whatever the Divine
Law actually teaches (and we shall examine this below) its purpose is instruction,
education. Spinoza’s “true life” is one in which an individual seeks out “the true
knowledge and love of God” (TTP 427). The true knowledge and love of God are
inter-related states that move human beings to consider the basic cause of all that
exists. For Spinoza, we live a shallow, timid, and impious life if we respond only
to the effects that we experience rather than the cause that brought them about.
Thus, Spinoza contends that, “he who loves above all the intellectual cognition of
God, the most perfect Being, and takes especial delight therein, is necessarily most
perfect, and partakes in the highest blessedness.” (TTP 428)
Such a conception of the Divine Law’s purpose is decidedly intellectual, and
seems to be quite distinct from the particular laws or observances that Spinoza
ascibes to the “Old Testament.” While Spinoza does not spend much time detail-
ing the specifics of this second sense of law, it would appear that what he has
in mind were simply what we would understand as the religious traditions, rit-
uals, and observances that permeated all of the nation’s life and which made the
“Hebrews” Jews. What seems to prevail in Spinoza’s account of these religious
practices is a persistent refrain that these laws were irrelevant to the Divine Law
(properly understood), and therefore did not contribute directly to the blessedness
and virtue of the members of the Hebrew commonwealth. These practices had
“regard only to the election of the Hebrews, that is, to their temporal and material
prosperity and peaceful government, and therefore could have had practical value
only while their state existed” (TTP 435).
One cannot help but be struck by how Spinoza goes so far as to contrast these
administrative, temporal laws with those “moral doctrines” offered by Jesus Christ,
who “promised only a spiritual reward, not, like Moses, a material reward” (TTP
436). Christ, Spinoza writes, went to great lengths to distinguish his “universal
moral precepts” from the laws of the state, while the Pharisees of his day “thought
that the blessed life was his who observed the laws of the commonwealth, i.e. the
laws of Moses” (TTP 436). For Spinoza this second conception of law, the law of
the Hebrews, “concerned only the public good” and was instituted by the Pharisees
“to coerce the Hebrews rather than instruct them” (TTP 436).2 In this apparent
opposition of law to morality, Spinoza seems to many to line up pretty clearly as an
early expositor of liberal Enlightenment philosophy, and, as Sutcliffe has argued,
especially seemed so to many during the Enlightenment itself. “Spinoza,” Sutcliffe
writes, “was undoubtedly the crucial conduit connecting this Jewish heretical tra-
dition to the wider Enlightenment.”3 The reason for this was that his Jewishness,
though “semi-invisible,” was “nonetheless [of ] profound significance in his rise
to iconic status as the philosophical hero par excellence”—the, “no longer Jewish
harbinger of a new philosophical age.”4 In this way, one can even go so far as to say
that Spinoza seems to embody a certain ideal that had wide appeal throughout the
Enlightenment and beyond: the tribal insider turned enlightened outsider who,
in his rational conversion from the particular to the universal, illustrates the flaws
in his previous form of life. Jonathan Hess describes the intellectual production
behind this image:
For so many intellectuals concerned with imagining new forms of political community
… Judaism also appeared to offer up the perfect antithesis to the norms of the modern
world. Typically cast as a clannish and coercive form of legalism irreconcilable with
the Enlightenment’s insistence on individual autonomy, freedom of conscience and
the very power of reason itself, Judaism seemed to provide the perfect point of contrast
for intellectuals wishing to imagine a secular political order grounded in the principles
of rationalism and universalism.5
In light of this all too common trope many thinkers, such as David Novak, see
Spinoza’s work as an attempt at the “deconstruction”6 of Judaism—a bid to reduce
it to nothing more than an empty “legalism.”7 Is this a fair depiction of Spinoza?
A first step towards answering this question is to note that Spinoza clearly
asserts that the observances of the Hebrews were not merely superstitious illu-
sions. Spinoza argues that when the Hebrews were liberated from Egypt, they
were thrown into a state of liberty that was quite alien to a band of ex-slaves.
As they were “no longer bound by the laws of any nation, they were at liberty to
sanction any new laws they pleased” (TTP 439). Yet, due to their physical and
spiritual emaciation, the Hebrews were quite “beyond” the task of establishing
a wise system of laws and so the participation of the whole community in its
own government was not feasible. Thus, after making their covenant with God
on Sinai, they elected Moses to be their sovereign—the one who would interpret
God’s laws and enforce them amongst the people. In keeping with Spinoza’s own
ideal of what a proper sovereign should be, Moses, in his wisdom, “made every
effort to see that the people should do their duty willingly rather than through
fear,” and subsequently instituted a state religion whose laws were ubiquitous
throughout all activities within the commonwealth (TTP 440). The laws were
far-reaching: the Hebrews could not “eat, dress, cut their hair, shave, make merry
or do anything whatsoever except in accordance with commands and instructions
laid down by the law” (TTP 440). Further, the Hebrews had to “have certain signs
on their doorposts, on their hands and between their eyes to give them constant
reminder of the duty of obedience” (TTP 440). Chapter five of the TTP argues
that Moses instituted all of these laws not merely to please God but to prompt the
Hebrews into an organized, cohesive, political body.
Spinoza draws two important conclusions in Chapter Five about the institu-
tion of Mosaic law. The first of course is that the laws themselves did nothing to
contribute to the “blessedness” of the Hebrews. The second is that the laws laid
out “in the Old Testament, and indeed the whole Mosaic law, were relevant only
to the Hebrew state, and consequently to no more than [their] temporal posterity”
(TTP 440). In Spinoza’s view, Judaism ends with the Hebrew commonwealth (as
it is the religion of the Hebrews), so the laws it commands do little in themselves
to make the members of the commonwealth blessed. Rather, the laws work—or
rather worked—more specifically to make the Hebrews into an orderly, well con-
stituted, and secure nation. Given this view, we might be inclined to conclude that
there is nothing inherently good or necessary about religion as such, and we may
even understand Spinoza as seeing religion only as an occasionally instrumental
means to a political end. Indeed, we may go so far as to conclude that, as the laws
of the Hebrews were confined to one very particular group of people in one very
particular time, religion is just a rather antiquated form of communal organization
that is occasionally necessary—though hardly desirable.
Such an interpretation seems to gain more credence when we note that Spi-
noza appears to stop in the midst of chapter five and remark at some length on the
usefulness of appealing to the “experience” of the oft-uneducated masses in order
to persuade them of proper morals. Appeals to logic and reason, Spinoza writes,
are of course always preferred in the abstract, as they produce more of a “decisive
effect on man’s understanding and dispel the mists of doubt” that can plague one’s
mind (TTP 441). Building on his earlier distinction between the Mosaic laws
and the moral precepts of Christ, Spinoza goes so far as to assert that reason is
especially important “if the point at issue is a spiritual matter and does not come
within the scope of the senses” (TTP 441). However, as he quickly notes, “the pro-
cess of deduction from intellectual axioms usually demands the apprehension of a
long series of connected propositions, as well as the greatest caution, acuteness of
intelligence, and restraint, all of which qualities are rarely to be found among men”
(TTP 441). Unfortunately, then, it is necessary that men “be taught by experience
rather than engage in the logical process of deduction from a few axioms” (TTP
441). The well ordered and established rites and traditions of the Hebrew com-
monwealth would seem to be an excellent example of what a successful appeal to
experience would look like.
If we consider the fate of the Hebrew commonwealth in light of Spinoza’s
clear delineation of logical argumentation from experiential motive we may be
tempted to understand in the downfall of this state as an inevitable outcome. The
motivations, or affects, produced by the laws of Moses seem to have proven simply
too contingent to be able to withstand the pressures of social organization. On
some level, this is no doubt what Spinoza is arguing. The Hebrew commonwealth
was fundamentally an entropic creation. But to get a clearer sense of the reasons he
sees as being behind the downfall of this state, we have to turn to Chapter Seven-
teen, and it is there that we see a considerably more complicated picture.
A central difference between Chapters Five and Seventeen is that, in the
former, Spinoza emphasizes Moses’ wisdom and administrative acumen while in
the latter he emphasizes the true sovereignty of God. In Chapter Seventeen, Spi-
noza interprets Moses as a proxy through whom the Israelites handed over their
natural rights to God in a mutually binding contract: “It was God alone, then,
who held sovereignty over the Hebrews, and so this state alone, by virtue of the
covenant, was rightly called the kingdom of God, and God was called the king
of the Hebrews” (TTP 540). The enemies of the Hebrews were the enemies of
God and those who broke the laws of the state broke the laws of God. Yet what is
perhaps most interesting about Chapter Seventeen is Spinoza’s emphasis on the
radically egalitarian character of this theocracy. Spinoza argues that the defining
characteristic of the Hebrew commonwealth was the “promise, or transference of
right to God” which was made by all Hebrews and thus respected the sovereign
right of all Hebrews (TTP 539). Moreover, this transference of right was executed
“in the same way as we have … conceived it to be made in the case of an ordinary
community when men decide to surrender their natural right” (TTP 539). While
Spinoza notes that this contract was entirely theoretical (after all it was Moses
who implemented the laws and oversaw them) he argues that this contract did
actually result in democracy, for “all surrendered their right on equal terms” (TTP
540). Even though the Hebrews decided to put in Moses’ hands the ability to
interpret and enforce the laws of God, the ability to be the sovereign’s voice and
hand, the egalitarian quality of this theocracy persisted.
A central thesis of the second half of the TTP in general is that just as the state
is determined by the volitions of the individuals that come to compose it, so too
should any religion be. Just as the prevailing politic of a group should reflect, and
thus unite, its members, so too should a religion spring from the thoughts of its
adherents, and unite them together. Further, just as a political body is presided over
by a sovereign, so too should a religion be ruled: by a sovereign, and not a distinctly
religious leader. Spinoza pursues the correlate of this point in Chapter Nineteen
specifically, where he asserts that outward acts of religion and piety must be deter-
mined by the sovereign of any given state and that sovereign alone. Spinoza bol-
sters this point with a thoroughly religious rationale when he writes that both “the
external forms of religion and the entire practice of piety must accord with the
peace and preservation of the commonwealth, if we should serve God aright” (TTP
560). That is, religious practice should not just be conducive to the state’s goals
but must rather be complicit in their realization—in the realization of “peace” and
“preservation,” if God is to be properly worshiped. In this way, Spinoza argues,
one simply cannot truly serve God if one opposes the laws of the state. This is
because, for Spinoza, “devotion to one’s country is the highest form of devotion that
can be shown; for if the state is destroyed nothing good can survive, everything is
endangered, and anger and wickedness reign supreme amidst universal fear” (TTP
560; emphasis mine). Devotion to God, in other words, manifests itself not just
within religious practice but within political practice as well. Consequently, “the
welfare of the people is the highest law, to which all other laws, both human and
divine, must be made to conform” (TTP 561; emphasis mine). A commitment to
living with and for other human beings is thus at the heart of Spinoza’s concep-
tion of religion, and therefore any law whatsoever must be in accordance with this
good. The duty to decide these laws—to interpret them and institute them—falls
to the sovereign alone. Spinoza makes this point plainly when he writes that the
sovereign alone figures “in what way every man is required to obey God … so no
one can exercise piety towards his neighbor in accordance with God’s command
unless his piety and religion conform to the public good” (TTP 561; emphasis mine).
It follows that while private individuals may be able to contemplate freely the
truth of various religious values or practices in the confines of their own thoughts,
they are thoroughly barred from attempting to bring those thoughts into material
action. This is the case not simply so the public welfare can be preserved, but so
that the authority of the sovereign can be observed as well—for Spinoza sees these
as fundamentally intertwined. When it comes to actual behavior “no private citi-
zen can know what is good for the state except from the decrees of the sovereign,
to whom alone it belongs to transact public business. Therefore no one can practice
piety aright nor obey God unless he obeys the decrees of the sovereign in all things” (TTP
561; emphasis mine). Spinoza continues this line of thought with his clearest dis-
missal of secularism:
As for arguments by which my opponents seek to separate religious right from civil
right, maintaining that only the latter is vested in the sovereign while the former is
vested in the universal church, these are of no account, being so trivial as not to merit
refutation. (TTP 562)
We see here that while chapter five emphasizes the inherent distinction
between the conventional laws of political organization and the inherent obliga-
tion of human beings to apprehend God intellectually through the power of reason
(a distinction between conventional law and Divine law), chapter seventeen begins
to show how these laws are ultimately, and even necessarily, woven together. Spi-
noza’s re-description of the Hebrew commonwealth in chapter seventeen shows
how a politically stable and continuous social body is the condition that makes
the worship and even proper apprehension of God possible. Far from depicting
religious laws as the inadequate yet helpful relics of a superstitious or ignorant
community, Spinoza argues here that religious laws are essential to the true knowl-
edge and love of God. Human beings simply must be united in an equitable social
organism where they recognize each other under some kind of specific, unified
authority before they can begin to inquire into the cause of their lives. While the
divine law may be inherent in all human beings, Spinoza insists that the laws of
religions and political bodies are the only proper responses to that law—that is,
they are the only ways of not simply encouraging the Divine law but conceiving of
it and living in regard to it. While Spinoza is clear that there is nothing necessary
about the forms these ceremonies take in response to the Divine law, he does insist
that a response is necessary, and the more communal the response is the more it is
prone to be rational and ultimately profitable for all involved.
Spinoza thus argues that these two types of law, these two types of authority,
are so interrelated that a given sovereign must not forfeit her claim to authority
over all religious matters. Indeed, according to Spinoza, there simply is no dis-
tinction to be made between religious authority and political authority, for both
present themselves as the legitimate power of and (yes) over the collective. In this
way, to claim that there is a power that exists outside the proper power of the sov-
ereign is to challenge the sovereign—in fact, to claim to be the new sovereign. The
people cannot be held, Spinoza argues, simultaneously to two laws, as they will
inevitably be set against each other, resulting in atrophy or war. As we have seen,
authority cannot be compartmentalized without being compromised or destroyed
all together. Spinoza argues that the proper state must recognize this fact and
present a single, unified authority in response to it. The Hebrew commonwealth
was emblematic of this unity for Spinoza and this is why he held it up as a model
of sorts for the nation-states of his day.
But how, then, did the Hebrew commonwealth—a nation in which all were
united in obedience and love of God, and thus in safety and even wisdom—come
to its demise? In Spinoza’s view of ancient Israelite history, problems began for
the Hebrew commonwealth when the Hebrews broke their covenant (essen-
tially rescinded their transference of right to God) by worshiping the golden calf
(Exodus 32). Moses and the Levites, acting “for the Lord,” slaughtered “’brother,
neighbor, and kin,” approximately 3000 of them, and thereby taking their most
significant step towards establishing their one tribe as the proper interpreters of
God’s will (as Spinoza understands this chapter). Reflecting on God’s punishment
Spinoza writes:
I cannot sufficiently marvel that such was the wrath of heaven that God framed their
very laws, whose sole end should always be the honor, welfare and security of the
people, with the intention of avenging himself and punishing the people, with the
result that their laws appeared to them not so much as laws—that is, the safeguard of
the people—as penalties and punishments. (TTP 549)
How is the elevation of the Levites to the position of the priestly caste a punish-
ment from God? After the death of Moses, the Levites alone were left to interpret
the will of God, and the consolidation of this power in one tribe caused, for Spi-
noza, a decisive fissure in the commonwealth. Rather than having a cross section of
eldest from all the tribes to both interpret the will of God and enforce that will as
law, the Hebrews were now faced with the emergence of one tribe with an exclu-
sive claim to be the arbiters of God’s laws. This caused a backlash, as the other
tribes sought to exercise, for themselves, the ability to enforce the laws prescribed
by the Levites. So the commonwealth came to be divided between two sovereigns.
As Spinoza describes it:
There ensued great challenges, unbounded license, self-indulgence and sloth, leading
to a general decline until, after being frequently subjugated, they came to open rupture
with divine rule and sought a mortal king, making the seat of government a court
rather than a temple, with all tribes no longer retaining a common citizenship on the
basis of divine rule and the priesthood, but by allegiance to the king. (TTP 450)
Here Spinoza clearly points to the division of religion from politics as the cause
of the commonwealth’s demise. Are we supposed to conclude from this, then, that
Spinoza sees secularism as a punishment from God? It goes without saying that
such an idea demands an anthropomorphic understanding of God that disavows

everything that Spinoza writes of God elsewhere. What then are we to make of
this seemingly decisive passage, which speaks directly to the reasons why perhaps
the only legitimate theocracy failed?
As I see it, Spinoza is up to two things here. The first is that he is yet again
using common, anthropomorphic language to draw attention to the unwelcome
fashion by which the Levites themselves came to exercise power. Of course that
he appeals again to a general conception of God (of how God acts), does not mean
that Spinoza is not at the same time making a serious point or that he is simply
mocking a simplistic theology of the inflicted on the masses. If we take Spinoza’s
phrasing seriously, as I believe we should, we must assume that secularism is a
punishment from God. This understanding necessarily means that we must see
“religion” (at least as it is widely understood) as a punishment as well—indeed, the
same punishment as secularism—namely, the dilution of our political bodies and
the concession of any possibility of a single vision of authority. The punishment
we are left with is life divided, seemingly naturally, between two opposing arenas
that make competing claims on us, encouraging us to live in different ways and by
different laws.
Beyond this state of fragmentation is Spinoza’s even more troubling sugges-
tion of the inherent fraudulence that comes to characterize both the religious and
the secular domains in human life. Contained within the separation of the religious
from the political (and vice versa) lurks the tacit assertion that both have their
own proper domains, unique unto themselves with their own forms of sovereignty.
While the construction of these domains is obviously quite different in Spinoza’s
day than in the last days of the Hebrew commonwealth, it is clear he sees the
effects of this dichotomy in liberal political philosophy. Here, the truly “religious”
is the personal space of the individual, usually conceived of as the conscience or
the interior, where it is confined and yet taken to be sovereign.8 The “political”
is the secular sphere, taken to be the space of public action and discourse, where
individuals are expected to curb their “outside” allegiances. Both of these author-
ities attempt to exercise their power on their subjects (compelling them to con-
form to their specific laws) but neither is explicit about its claim to power. Both
“the religious” and “the political” assert themselves as authoritative but do so only
within the confines of their own domains. Each makes a claim that intrudes on
some aspect of human life to which the other would equally make a claim, but
any ensuing confrontation turns into one about boundaries, not legitimate power
or rational authority. Both the religious and the political end up debating which
territory is theirs, rather than defending their own claim to territory. As a result,
the power asserted by each is assumed to be proper and is never forced to account
for itself in the sight of the people.
I agree with Smith when he writes that, for Spinoza, “the elevation of the Lev-
ites to priestly status was the prototype for all later theologico-political conflicts,”9
although I believe that the nature of these conflicts, as Spinoza sees them, is not
simply the intrusion of religion into politics or politics into religion, for Spinoza
clearly sees no problem in this. The problem, rather, is that the very legitimacy
of these spheres of authority has become a given, and neither is forced to present
itself openly for inspection by the people they claim to govern. In this respect, the
problem for Spinoza is not that there is a conflict between the theological and the
political, or between church and state, but that this conflict has long stagnated and
degenerated into a cold war where the positions of either party are maintained and
enforced above all else.
Spinoza is thus interested in considering the law and its authority completely,
and not in any bifurcated manner. It follows from this that any consideration of
politics in Spinoza must also be an examination of religion as well—because while
it is the boundary between politics and religion that commonly helps bring each
of these respective identities into focus, Spinoza’s theory of law seeks to unsettle
this boundary. While it is common in modern discourse to position religion and
politics as opposing and even competing poles, such a dualistic antagonism is alien
to Spinoza’s work. Indeed, if there is one guiding theme that pervades what we
might call Spinoza’s (explicitly) political philosophy it is that human beings are by
their nature social beings and that the unity or totality of their social body must
be promoted. While religion—broadly conceived—has all too often been a schis-
matic force in a number of communities, Spinoza sees a proper synchrony between
religion and politics, thus blurring the traditional differences between the terms.
Yet this synchrony only becomes apparent when we see what it is that true religion
requires of us. In the remainder of this chapter, I argue that Spinoza’s concepts of
sovereignty and obedience are just as applicable to his theory of religion as they
are to his theory of politics, for a proper understanding of either sovereignty or
obedience necessitates the unification of both of these theories. Subsequently, this
chapter focuses on the intrinsically political nature of Spinoza’s religious thought.
However, we can only really understand how Spinoza thinks God should be
obeyed by understanding how Spinoza thinks God should be loved, so it is to this
topic that we must first turn.
The Love of God
As we have seen, a central concern for Spinoza is how human life seems to be
inevitably tossed about and even turned upside down by what seem to be the
oscillating conditions of our existence; what Spinoza calls “fortune” [“fortuna”].
Political organization is one of the ways in which we temper and control such
contingencies, for such organization makes us more rational and less prone to react
according to our own particular passions. Another, seemingly distinct (at least ini-
tially) way in which we are able to see past the intense sentiment of our own for-
tunes is through philosophy and the acquisition of knowledge. Spinoza argues that
philosophy enables us to see the unalterable reality of God at the heart of all that
appears to be contingent. In this way, philosophy re-orders the way we engage the
world, moving us from passion and sentiment to self-awareness and reason, and in
doing so makes us more active—better equipped to directly take on any problems
with which we might be confronted, rather than wallowing in sentiments. In the
Ethics Spinoza identifies this knowledge of God as the primary means for over-
coming fortune in EvP39: “He whose body is capable of the greatest amount of activity
has a mind whose greatest part is eternal” (E 380). Indeed, for Spinoza, what we are
able to realize physically, or materially, is directly related to how well we are able
to manage our reaction to our circumstances—whatever they may be. If we do not
know God, if we do not understand our place in Nature, then we are like young
children, forced to appeal to a source outside ourselves for comfort:
It should here be remarked that our lives are subject to continual variation, and as the
change is for the better or the worse, so we are said to be fortunate or unfortunate.
… he who, like a baby or a child, has a body capable of very little activity and is most
dependent on external causes, has a mind which, considered solely in itself, has prac-
tically no consciousness of itself and of God and of things. In this life, therefore, we
mainly endeavor that the body of childhood, as far as its nature allows and is condu-
cive thereto, should develop into a body that is capable of a great many activities and
is related to a mind that is highly conscious of itself, of God, and of things. (E 380)
The range of activities we are capable of, and the power with which we can execute
them, are in large part determined by how well we understand ourselves and our
place in God or Nature. For Spinoza “the more the mind enjoys … divine love or
blessedness… the more it understands (Pr. 32, V); that is (Cor. Pr. 3, V), the more
power it has over the emotions and (Pr. 38, V) the less subject it is to emotions that
are bad” (E 382). The blessed life is the one that knows God as God truly is, and
thus can only love God and is literally saved from other corruptive forms of love.
The ignorant man, Spinoza writes, is “driven hither and thither by external causes,
never possessing true contentment of spirit, [and] lives as if he were unconscious

of himself, God, and things” (E 382). The wise man, on the other hand, “suffers
scarcely any disturbance of spirit, but being conscious, by virtue of a certain eternal
necessity, of himself, of God and of things, never ceases to be, but always possesses
true spiritual contentment” (E 382). In this way the love of God brings with it
clarity of both place and purpose which increases human power. This point is not
limited to Spinoza’s specifically metaphysical writings, but orients his more polit-
ical work as well, such as the TTP:
… man’s perfection is the greater, or the reverse, according to the nature and perfec-
tion of the thing that he loves above all others. So he who loves above all the intellec-
tual cognition of God, the most perfect Being, and takes especial delight therein, is
necessarily most perfect, and partakes in the highest blessedness. (TTP 427–8)
For Spinoza then human beings live better, happier lives—that is, they are
saved10—when they are able to see past their own passing wants and emotions and
come to see and love what truly is. This perspective obviously has a strong affinity
with Stoicism, but it is also quite different. For Spinoza, the love of God produces
a life of contentment because such love is not merely the love of another—or,
more precisely, the love of the other—but must necessarily be a love of others,
of one’s self, and of course of the larger totality that is the world. Indeed, it is
the infinite character of God that not only makes a philosophically compelling
“object” of our contemplation of love, but it is also what unites us to our larger
reality—because it is that reality. God is the only object that reason can identify
as deserving of our love precisely because God, per se, is not a separate object at
all but the actual essence of ourselves and the world at large. Thus Spinoza argues
that the love of God is realized hand in hand with the realization of our union
with God.
This emphasis on “union” is especially important here, for Spinoza sees love
as “nothing else than the enjoyment of a thing and therewith” (ST 68). Love is not
the creation of a union but, as Spinoza puts it, the “enjoyment” of one already in
existence (though preciously unrealized). To say that when we love God truly (that
is, understand God truly) we participate or “partake” in God’s blessedness is to say
that we realize how we are always-already participating in God. We see this also in
1p33, where Spinoza asserts that our intellectual love of God is eternal, as the true
love of God “has no beginning” (E 377). With this union, the mind comes to real-
ize that it has “possessed from eternity those perfections which we then supposed
to be accruing to it” (E 377).11
Spinoza thus sees in the true love of God the realization of a common identity, and
he explains this specifically in Proposition 36. Here, Spinoza writes that “The mind’s
intellectual love toward God,” is also “the love wherewith God loves himself ” (E 378).
Our love for God is, ultimately, also God’s love for himself, only manifested through
the human mind. Although we do not love God as God completely is—that is, in
God’s infinite nature—we do love God “insofar as he can be explicated through the
essence of the human mind considered under the form of eternity” (E 378). In this way,
while the form by which God loves himself is through the mode of the human intel-
lect, it is nonetheless God who loves himself, and thus there is an identity between
the lover and the loved. Our intellectual love of God is, for Spinoza: “an activity
whereby God, insofar as he can be explicated through the human mind, regards
himself, accompanied by the idea of himself. And therefore this love of God is part
of the infinite love wherewith God loves himself ” (E 378). That is to say that though
the love we have of God is only one of the infinite ways in which God loves God’s
self, it is an identity all the same. Spinoza makes this plain when he argues: “that
God, insofar as he loves himself, loves mankind, and, consequently, that the love of
God toward men and the mind’s intellectual love toward God are one and the same”
(E 378). What we are talking about is then not only a love held in common but a
love that recognizes a common identity.
Spinoza’s conception of the love of God, and the union it realizes, becomes
especially clear if we compare it to Maimonides’ view (from which Spinoza
seems to draw heavily). Like Spinoza, Maimonides begins with the assertion
that knowledge and love are intertwined—if not identical, as he writes in his
Mishanh Torah:
A person loves God only through the knowledge he has of Him. Love is propor-
tional to knowledge he has of Him. Love is proportional to knowledge—little, if the
knowledge is little, and great, if the knowledge is great. Man must therefore devote
himself to understand and comprehending the sciences [hokmot] and disciplines that
inform him about his Maker, to the extent, of course, that a human being is able to
understand and know.12
While it is debatable whether Spinoza ultimately accepts the strict equation of

love to knowledge that Maimonides puts forward, it is clear that both men think
of knowledge as the way (Maimonides would say the only real way) to love God.
The symmetry between these two thinkers is further enhanced when we see that
loving God not is an abstractly spiritual or narrowly intellectual undertaking but
one that benefits us in our everyday lives—one we can enjoy in the world.
We can get a sense of the profit which stems from loving God if we turn to
Maimonides’ discussion of the Book of Job. In Maimonides’ interpretation, Job is
an allegory that presents, and then ultimately corrects, several theories of God’s
providence. Job’s respective friends, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar all represent for
Maimonides, various faulty rationalizations of the troubles that befall Job. All of
these theories focus, to greater and lesser extents, on the actions and beliefs that
Job has exhibited, and their sinful nature in the eyes of God. As such, all encourage
Job to examine the particular details of his own actions, the ways these have led to
his specific situation, and how he should act to rectify them.
God of course rebukes Job’s friends and their respective theologies. The story
then reaches its climax when the Lord appears to Job and “speaks out of the tem-
pest” and asks: “Who is this who darkens counsel, Speaking without knowledge?”
( Job 38:2) The Lord then scolds Job, asking “Where were you when I laid the
earth’s foundations? Speak if you have understanding. Do you know who fixed its
dimensions? Or who measured it with a line? Onto what were its bases sunk?” The
difference between the knowledge the Lord has of his creation and the knowledge
that Job has shames the mortal, and he exclaims to the Lord:
I know that You can do everything, / That nothing you propose is impossible for You. /
Who is this who obscures counsel without knowledge? / Indeed, I spoke without
understanding / Of things beyond me, which I did not know. / Hear now, and I will
speak; / I will ask, and You will inform me. / I heard You with my ears, / But now I see
You with my eyes; / Therefore, I recant and relent, / Being but dust and ashes. ( Job
41:22–41:26)
When Job declares that, up until this point, he had only spoken of the Lord from
knowledge he had heard, Maimonides understands him to be saying that the only
thing he knew of the Lord was “because of his acceptance of authority,” specifi-
cally liturgical authority, “just as the multitude adhering to the Law know it.”13
When Job says he now sees God, Maimonides writes, Job means that he has come
to know “God with certain knowledge” which is “that true happiness, which is
the knowledge of the deity, is guaranteed to all who know Him and that a human
being cannot be troubled in it by any of the misfortunes in question.”14
The distinction Maimonides draws then is between a conception of God that
one has received from without—from a superficial experience of custom, law, and
ritual—and the knowledge of God that one can come to through the intellect; a
knowledge of God that is also, ultimately, the proper knowledge of one’s self as
well.
While he had known God only through the traditional stories and not by the way of
speculation, Job had imagined that the things thought to be happiness, such as health,
wealth, and children, are the ultimate goal. For this reason he fell into such perplexity
and said such things as he did. This is the meaning of his dictum: I had heard of Thee by
the hearing of the ear; but by now mine eye seeth Thee; wherefore I abhor myself and repent
of dust and ashes.15
What is crucial here for Maimonides is how Job comes to see himself in light of
his true knowledge of God, and then how his life changes accordingly. It is the
knowledge of God which allows Job to see beyond the unfortunate state of his
own affairs and appreciate just how small he is in the big picture: Job comes to see
that he is “of small worth” ( Job 40:4) and this knowledge liberates him from his
own ultimately trivial problems. It is in this sense that “The Lord restored Job’s
fortunes” ( Job 42:10). Job’s actual, immediate life became better (“the Lord gave
Job twice what he had before.” ( Job 42:10)) when he came to know God.
While Maimonides obviously insists that God is fundamentally the transcen-
dent God, it nevertheless seems that knowledge of God brings about a unity with
“Him.” Indeed, one cannot help but be struck by just how immanent Maimonides’
God seems to be, at least occasionally. “If a man’s thought is free from distraction,”
Maimonides writes, and “if he apprehends Him, may He be exalted, in the right
way and rejoices in what he apprehends, that individual can never be afflicted with
evil of any kind” simply because “he is with God and God is with him.”16 While
quite difficult to achieve, the knowledge of God makes the realization of God’s
presence possible (or something close to it), and thus a happy life inevitable. Con-
versely, when that man “abandons Him, may He be exalted, and is thus separated
from God and God separated from him, he becomes in consequence of this a
target for every evil that happens to befall him.”17 The man shrinks back into his
own lowly state, thinking only of how the seemingly opaque and cruel vicissitudes
of chance plague him.
It is no wonder, then, that Maimonides does not simply see the knowledge
of God as highly desirable but, in his Book of Commandments, interprets it as both
the first positive commandment.18 Reflecting on Exodus 20:2 and Deuteronomy
5:6, Maimonides argues that all must “believe that a cause exists which produces
all existent things, as embodied in God’s saying: ‘I am the Lord your God.’”19
“Believe” here, Herbert Davidson argues, should “be read as enjoining belief not
at any level, but at the level that is tantamount to knowledge.”20 Further, as Mai-
monides explains in the Guide, one’s love of God “is proportionate to the degree of
apprehension,” to such an extent that those who properly perceive God are com-
pelled to foster as much as possible a state wherein “the aim should be complete
devotion to God and perpetual exercising of intellectual thought in His love.”21
Davidson explains this obligation so:
The Torah and its commandments are not ends in themselves. Their purpose is to
provide man with the guidance he needs for perfecting his intellect and to create
social conditions that promote the intellectual life. The unlettered who observe the
ritual side of the Written and Oral Torahs while ignoring the intellectual side—who
attend only to the means and ignore the end—resemble inhabitants of a city who wish
to go to the ruler’s palace and behold the ruler in his chambers yet do not even get to
see the palace’s outer wall. Men who devote their lives to the study of religious law
while relying on others for the beliefs and principles of religion and never bother to
investigate those beliefs and principles are not much better. They—the vast majority
of rabbinic scholars—are like inhabitants of the city who do succeed in reaching the
palace yet keep walking around it and never find the entrance. Put still more strongly,
persons who think and talk about God at length without having scientific knowledge
of Him are not merely distant from God, they in fact talk and think not about God at
all but about something nonexistent, a figment of their imagination.22
Perhaps surprisingly, Spinoza seems also to follow Maimonides on this point:

we are commanded to love God. Yet here, as before in our analysis of Spinoza’s
theory of the obligations of natural law, we cannot expect Spinoza’s sense of law to
be something which preemptively restricts or limits those under its authority. For
Spinoza, like Maimonides, understands the “command” to love God as being the
furthest thing from restricting or limiting human beings. Indeed the command to
love God is one that cultivates and advances our human nature—through our obe-
dience to it. For Spinoza, the love of God is “our supreme good and blessedness”
(TTP 428). Anything that helps us towards this goal is obviously a blessing, not a
curse, and Spinoza argues that the truth of this blessing, “is told us by the idea of
God, that God is our supreme good, i.e. that the knowledge and love of God is the
final end to which all our actions should be directed” (TTP 428).
Spinoza echoes this in Part V of the Ethics where he asserts that “Nobody can
hate God” (E 371). The reason for this is that, as a simple logical matter, “there can
be no pain accompanied by the idea of God” (E 371). God, if understood aright,
cannot be hated just as, in the same way, something loved cannot be hated (or in
the way a bachelor cannot be married). The love of God is, again, “the highest
good that we can aim at according to the dictates of reason (Pr. 28, IV) and is
available to all men (Pr. 36, IV), and we desire that all men should enjoy it (Pr. 37,
IV)” (E 372).23 In this sense while the language of ends is somewhat misplaced
in regard to Spinoza it is clear that the purpose of human life is to understand and
participate fully in this love. That God is good is readily apparent in the very idea
of God—if we truly understood this idea we would obviously try to undertake
actions in accordance with this idea. Such actions, Spinoza argues, “may be termed
God’s commands, for they are ordained for us by God himself ” (TTTP 428).
Thus, Spinoza quite clearly establishes the love of God as the principal com-
mandment. The “chief command is to love God as the supreme good; that is, as
we have said, not from fear of some punishment or penalty nor from love of some
other thing from which we desire to derive pleasure” (TTP 428). When properly
understood, we observe this law simply because “the supreme reward of the Divine
Law is the law itself, namely, to know God and to love him in true freedom with
all our heart and mind” (TTP 429). Such a benefit is one that speaks for itself, and
speaks to the heart of what Spinoza takes to be the human condition, as the story
of Job illustrates. The “force” of this law is found purely in this benefit, for indeed,
the only “penalty it imposes is the deprivation of these things and bondage to the
flesh, that is, an inconstant and irresolute spirit” (TTP 429). But even though such
a law is not an alien imposition, it is nonetheless a command.
This, then, is the sum of our supreme good and blessedness, to wit, the knowledge
and love of God. So the means required to achieve this end of all human action—that
is, God insofar as his idea exists in us—may be termed God’s commands, for they are
ordained by God himself, as it were, insofar as he exists in our minds. (428)
In a letter to Jacob Ostens in 1671 Spinoza reaffirms this conviction. There

Spinoza responds to the complaints of Lambert van Velthuysen, who accused him
of denying the reality of divine law. Referring Ostens back to chapter four of the
TTP, Spinoza again argues that “the substance of the divine law and its supreme
commandment is to love God as the highest good” and thus “not from fear of
some punishment (for love cannot spring from fear) nor from love of something
else from which we hope to derive pleasure—for then we will be loving the object
of our desire rather than God himself ” (L 880). This, Spinoza adds, is the law that
God revealed to (and through) his prophets. Whether or not we take the exact
form of such prophetic revelations to be exclusive or unique, and not equivalent
to “the rest of God’s decrees which involve eternal necessity and truth” is irrele-
vant—at least insofar as we are trying to understand the crux of the divine law.
After all, the divine law commands that we recognize the laws and general order
that pertain to the world, and to be aware of how, in light of this, we are a part of
that world.
The particular virtues of specific revelations all too often run afoul of these
laws and this emphasis on unity. Indeed, if we consider the legitimacy of a partic-
ular revelation in light of their supernatural or miraculous character, we can only
find them wanting, as the very basis of their legitimacy is their particularity—their
distinction from the natural order or state of affairs. This particularity is apparent
in the historical specificity of such revelations (occurring in a specific time, place,
and to specific people) and subsequent generation’s distance from them. Such rev-
elations simply don’t address or assert themselves over all in the same way (they
don’t assert themselves in the all, but only in part—as, for example, Virgil knew all
too well in Dante’s Inferno).
For Spinoza, then, it is clear that the historical specificity of particular revela-
tions, taken in themselves, are of no help—they are too particular, too conceptually
muddled to be of any universal worth. Hence Spinoza goes on to argue to Ostens

that Muhammad (“Mahomet”) was an imposter, not because Spinoza thinks some
forms of supernatural revelation are true and Muhammad’s was false, but because
Muhammad’s teachings, as Spinoza understands them, are fundamentally in con-
flict with the precepts of the divine law. Muhammad, Spinoza argues, “was an
imposter, since he completely abolished the freedom which is granted by that uni-
versal religion revealed by the natural and prophetic light” (L 881). What Spinoza
specifically sees as problematic in Muhammad’s teachings (how he precisely “abol-
ished freedom”) is not entirely clear. Spinoza writes that the prophets, in general,
“taught only very simple doctrines easily comprehensible by all, setting them forth
in such a style and confirming them by such reasoning as would most likely induce
the people’s devotion to God” (TTP 392), so perhaps Muhammad failed in one of
these areas. It is telling, moreover, that Spinoza did not feel the need to elaborate
on this point, for it shows not only that he understood the problem with Muham-
mad to be clear enough, but also that he understood the nature of prophecy to be
plain as well.
Indeed, when we turn to the idea of prophecy in Spinoza’s work, we cannot
help but be struck by how Spinoza’s discussion of it is structured around the obvi-
ous and the opaque, as well as the common and the particular. On the one hand,
Spinoza is keen to emphasize the peculiarities of the prophets. He argues that
“those who look to find understanding and knowledge of things natural and spir-
itual in the books of the Prophets go far astray” (TTP 404). “We can have no
hesitation,” Spinoza writes, “in affirming that the prophets perceived God’s reve-
lations with the aid of the imaginative faculty alone, that is, through the medium
of words or images, either real or imaginary” (TTP 403). On the other hand, Spi-
noza is clear that the prophets possessed an exemplary understanding of common
knowledge—that is, they understood clearly and passionately, as well as simply, the
necessity of piety and justice.
Thus, Spinoza insists that three considerations go into a prophet’s revelation:
the occurrence of a sign and a vivid imagination to consider that sign, as well as
the fact “that the minds of the prophets were directed exclusively toward what
is right and good” (TTP 406). When we hear that “the Spirit of the Lord was
upon a prophet” or that “the Lord poured his Spirit into men,” Spinoza insists
this merely “that the prophets were endowed with an extraordinary virtue exceed-
ing the normal” (TTP 403). This is not to imply, of course, that the prophets
had some supernatural (extra-natural) virtue bestowed upon them, but only that
their natural virtue was exceedingly well developed. That is to say, the prophets
“devoted themselves to piety with especial constancy” to such an extent that even
“they perceived the mind and thought of God” (TTP 403). Such perceptions are
not properly knowledge but rather awareness of God’s law, as “the Law … displays
the mind of God” and is in this way understood as “the Spirit of mind of God” (TTP
403; emphasis mine). Despite their proclivity for imaginative and even irrational
beliefs, the prophets were ultimately dedicated to promoting God’s law. In this
way it is important to emphasize that shortly after Spinoza offers his critique of
Muhammad, he adds:
As for the Turks and the other Gentiles, if they worship God by the exercise of justice
and by love of neighbor, I believe that they possess the spirit of Christ and are saved,
whatever convictions they may hold in their ignorance regarding Mahomet and the
oracles. (L 881)
Whatever one concludes in the end about, for example, whether Muhammad
actually recited the word of God or not, it is clear that Spinoza sees such consid-
erations as ultimately beside the point. It is perfectly possible to both subscribe
to the divine law and have some irrational ideas about Muhammad. Islam—like
other religious traditions—may, on some level, hinder a thorough understanding
of the intellectual love of God, but to the extent that it seeks out justice and piety,
it is of the divine law. Spinoza insists that Divine Law is “natural” and “of universal
application…common to all mankind” and as such, “it does not demand belief in
historical narratives of any kind whatsoever” (TTP 429). Indeed, Spinoza goes so
far as to say that God’s law was packaged so that it could best be understood and
proclaimed by its prophetic recipient.
So now the point we set out to prove has been made abundantly clear, namely, that
God adapted his revelations to the understanding and beliefs of the prophets who may
well have been ignorant of matters that have no bearing on charity and moral conduct
but concern speculation, and were in fact ignorant of them, holding conflicting beliefs.
(TTP 414; emphasis mine)
Spinoza considers this point in detail in his analysis of the particular styles of
individual prophets. While “the prophecies of Ezekiel and Amos were lacking in
refinement,” those of “Isaiah and Nahum … were composed in a cultured style”
(TTP 407–8). “God,” Spinoza argues, “when rightly examined… has no partic-
ular style of speech” but his laws must be articulated by specific human beings,
and this means that such articulations must inevitably be “in accordance with the
learning and capacity of the prophet the style was cultured, compressed, stern,
unrefined, prolix, or obscure” (TTP 408). Regardless of the cosmetic differences
distinguishing these prophets, they are all legitimate only insofar as they all con-
cern themselves with the teaching of the divine law. That said, despite their own
particularities these prophets all express some common themes—indeed, themes
about commonality as such. Ezekiel, for one, is noted for his persistent effort to
take up, and undo, the prevailing maxims of his age. Speaking to his own exiled
community—that is, a community that had been displaced and subsequently
undone—Ezekiel attempted to correct the prevailing wisdom, specifically that
wisdom which spoke to the future of his nation:
O mortal, what is this proverb that you have in the land of Israel, that you say, “The
days grow many and every vision comes to naught?” Assuredly, say to them, Thus said
the Lord God: I will put an end to this proverb, it shall not be used in Israel any more.
Speak rather to them: The days draw near, and the fulfillment of every vision. For
there shall no longer be any false visions or soothing divination in the House of Israel.
But whatever I the Lord speak what I speak, that word shall be fulfilled without any
delay, in your days, O rebellious breed, I will fulfill every word I speak—declares the
Lord God. (Ezekiel 12.22–26)
Here Ezekiel touches upon two important points for Spinoza: the correction of
superstitions and false wisdom, as well as the ultimate sovereignty of God. These
points are closely related, as it is clear that Ezekiel wants his community to come
to understand how God rules the world, and what actions should follow from that
understanding. Indeed, Ezekiel insists that while all Israelites are Israelites, they
will all be judged, ultimately, individually.
The person who sins, he alone shall die. A child shall not share the burden of a par-
ent’s guilt, nor shall a parent share the burden of a child’s guilt; the righteousness of
the righteous shall be accounted to him alone, and the wickedness of the wicked shall
be accounted to him alone. (Ezekiel 18.20)
Here, Ezekiel’s message is clearly concerned with some of the basics of moral life
(who is responsible for what). Moreover, it is worthwhile to note that Ezekiel is
taking issue not only with the conventional wisdom of his day but with Scripture
itself, specifically Genesis 18.22–33 (with its emphasis on collective punishment)
and Deuteronomy 11.13–21 (with its concern for ritual acts, such as wearing tefel-
lin during morning prayer). For Ezekiel, it would seem, the basic principles of
moral life take precedence over such biblical passages.
On this point, Isaiah is quite similar. Isaiah insists that God is a universal
God, concerned with a moral code quite distinct from the ritual offerings that
preoccupied his community. Indeed, the God of Isaiah seems to take great offense
at suggestion that He would be interested in anything other than justice.
“What need have I of your sacrifices?” / Says the Lord, “I am sated with burnt offer-
ings of rams, / And suet of fatlings, / And blood of bulls, / And I have no delight / In
lambs and he-goats. That you come to appear before Me—/ Who asked that of you? /
Trample My courts no more; / Bringing oblations is futile, / Incense is offensive to
Me. New moon and Sabbath, / Proclaiming of solemnities, / Assemblies with iniq-
uity, / I cannot abide. Your new moons and fixed seasons / Fill Me with loathing; /
They are become a burden to Me, / I cannot endure them. And when you lift up your
hands, / I will turn My eyes from you, / Though you pray at length, / I will not listen, /
Your hands are stained with crime—Wash yourselves clean, / Put your evil doings, /
Away from my sight. / cease to do evil, Learn to do good. / Devote yourselves to jus-
tice; / Aid the wronged. / Uphold the rights of the orphan; / Defend the cause of the
widow.” (Isaiah 1.11–17)
The God of Amos clearly echoes Isaiah’s disgust with people who believe that
God would be interested in their finite, particular actions and material goods.
Instead, he prompts his reader to embrace justice, as if it were a simple, all-too
evident undertaking.
I loathe, I spurn your festivals, I am not appeased by your solemn assemblies. If you
offer me burnt offerings—or your meal offerings—I will not accept them; I will pay
no heed / To your gifts of fatlings. Spare Me the sound of your hymns, / And let Me
not hear the music of your lutes. / But let justice well up like water, / Righteousness
like an unfailing stream. (Amos 5.21–24)
The promotion of justice emerges in particular circumstances and particular cul-

tures, but this simple virtue must not be confused with various particularities that
often emerge alongside it. Both of Ezekiel and Isaiah emphasize and even dwell
on the particularity of their peoples’ actions, in stark contrast to the will of God.
The Lord, Isaiah insists, is not satisfied with burnt offerings and never asked for
them to begin with. Instead, the Lord asks only—simply—that his people devote
themselves to justice and avenge the wronged. Amos emphasizes that the rites
performed are “yours”—that is, Israel’s—they are not of God’s own ordering of
the world, as justice and righteousness are. Nahum is also keen to emphasize these
themes, as well as the total sovereignty of God (“The earth heaves before Him, /
The world and all that dwell therein. / Who can stand before His wrath? / Who
can resist his fury?” (1.5–6)). Nahum mirrors Isaiah’s message, arguing that the
Assyrians had become too enamored with their own power
You had more traders / Than the sky has stars—/ The grubs cast their skins and fly
away. / Your guards were like locusts, / Your marshals like piles of hoppers / Which
settle on the stone fences / On a chilly day; / When the sun comes out, they fly away, /
And where they are nobody knows. / Your shepherds are slumbering, / O king of
Assyria; / Your sleep masters are lying inert; / Your people are scattered over the hills, /
And there is none to gather them. / There is no healing for your injury; / Your wound
is grievous. / All who hear the news about you / Clap their hands over you. / For who
has not suffered / From your constant malice? (Nahum 3.16–19)
Pride is a major theological problem for Amos. The belief that particular human
beings are fundamentally better (or above) any others distorts their true place in
the world and, even worse, effectively forestalls the possibility of justice—itself a
rather easy idea to come to consider, though hard to fully know.
Addressing themselves to specific cultures in specific situations the prophets
were driven to address those communities where they found them—religiously,
politically, and socially. Such a form of address requires the prophets to shape their
language around the variety of particular details, while insisting that God’s law is
fundamental yet easy to comprehend and bring to fruition. Yet whatever deficien-
cies prophet’s language and even beliefs may have Spinoza sees them as more than
overcome by their common moral teaching. It follows from this that as belief in
the particular “historical narratives” of the Bible cannot, by their historical legiti-
macy, give us “knowledge of God” nor can they of themselves accomplish for us
“the love of God,” as knowledge and love are intertwined (TTP 429). Instead, the
love of God “arises from the knowledge of God, a knowledge deriving from gen-
eral axioms that are certain and self-evident, and so belief in historical narratives
is by no means essential to the attainment of our supreme good” (TTP 429). Yet
Spinoza insists here—and throughout—that as the idea of God is a common idea
so too is the availability of our love for God. While irrational beliefs about God’s
character or will can and do lead us away from this love, Spinoza is clear that God
is a simple idea, and that the love of God is easily attainable.
The salvation of human beings, Spinoza argues over and over again, occurs
in the here and now, in the triumph over fear and passion through the cultivation
of reason and the love of what truly is. Spinoza is clear though that neither of
these things are likely without the cooperation of human beings with one another.
Spinoza puts this point quite succinctly—as well as quite generally—in 1p40:
“Whatever is conducive to man’s social organization, or causes men to live in harmony, is
advantageous, while those things that introduce discord into the state are bad.” (E 342).
On its face, and by traditional criteria, 1p40 might not seem all that religious.
Yet when we consider this proposition alongside Spinoza’s discussion of biblical
prophecy this social aspect his thought becomes much more clear: the good of
social unity is rational (if not fully intellectual) and all that leads to true unity is
good—or rational. Indeed, we have seen ample evidence of Spinoza’s concern with
social unity, but here Spinoza makes it clear just how broad-minded he is about
how this unity can be brought about. The proof of this lies in the fact of those
things which “cause men to live in harmony” are by their very nature under “the
guidance of reason” (343). On the other hand, those things that produce “discord
are bad (by the same reasoning)” (343).
In this respect, Spinoza clearly aligns himself with the teachings of the biblical
prophets discussed above. Social cooperation and harmony is—for Spinoza—a
divine decree, for though it is not revealed in the fashion Ezekiel thought (or
described), it is evident all the same in the very (rational) idea of God. We can
begin to understand the simple logic of this idea by noting how Spinoza writes in
the Ethics that the knowledge of God “begets love toward something immutable
and eternal (Pr. 15, V) which we can truly possess (Pr. 45, II), and which therefore
cannot be defiled by any of the faults that are to be found in the common sort of
love, but can grow more and more (Pr. 15, V) and engage the greatest part of the
mind (Pr. 16, V) and pervade it” (E 373). The use of “possess” here is quite import-
ant for Spinoza, who argues “that love is a union with the object which our under-
standing judges to be good and glorious; and by this we mean such a union whereby
both the lover and what is loved become one and the same thing, or together
constitute one whole” (ST 69). It is a mistake—indeed, the same old individualis-
tic mistake—to limit our conception of this union to God and one soul, to a love
only truly realized in a world beyond this one. In this way, though Spinoza rejects
common sense of love, it is not because it is common but because it is not common
enough—that is, it does not unify the entirety of a community. Spinoza argues that
love brings about a union, in the here and now, between God and men, as a whole.
Like Maimonides then, Spinoza argues that knowledge of God and love of
God turn on one another, and that this knowledge and love manifests itself in
a real union. In contrast to Maimonides, however, Spinoza argues that the love
of God is far from a private affair.24 For Spinoza, the love of God permeates all
aspects of creation, including the relationships—political and religious—between
human beings. As such, this love brings about harmonious social bodies—not as
effects (distinct from the love of God as such) but as the proper realizations of
that love. We can see this aspect of Spinoza’s theory when he asserts that the
love of God “cannot be sustained” alongside antisocial emotions such as “envy” or
“jealousy.” Such emotions pit us against others and thereby forestall love of God,
simply because such love is (by definition) a love of all, and cannot be in any way
ill-disposed to one segment of that “all.” In this way, Spinoza argues, the love of
God is “fostered [all the more] as we think more men to be enjoying it” (E 372; empha-
sis mine). While it is certainly possible for an individual to come (via philosophy)
to love God on the basis of their own enterprise, such love does not merely concern
“God” and “themselves,” but permeates into the wider society—if God is properly
understood. The experience of love is intertwined with the experience of other
people. There is a sense here in which Spinoza is arguing that the love of God is
both quantitative as well as qualitative: it is not simply concerned with fostering a

certain sort of intimacy, but wants to see that intimacy as widely shared as possible.
In this way Spinoza concludes that the love of God is the only true remedy against
socially disruptive and even violent emotions. Hatred should always be overcome
by love, and courage should always win out over fear. To do this we need to:
think about and frequently reflect on the wrongs that are commonly committed among
mankind, and the best way and method of warding them off by nobility of character.
… If we always have in readiness consideration of our true advantage and also of the
good that follows from mutual friendship and social relations, and also remember that
supreme contentment of spirit follows from the right way of life (Pr. 52, IV), and that
men, like everything else, act from necessity of their nature, then the wrong, or the
hatred that is wont to arise from it, will occupy just a small part of our imagination
and will easily be overcome. (E 369)
The knowledge we have of God and the love that comes from this knowledge
allows us to understand the true causes of civil unrest and prompt us to see those
causes properly and even diagnose them publicly. In this way, we move from strictly
considering our own mere personal fixations (Spinoza highlights, particularly, as
focusing on wrongs done to us) to seeing how our own particular goods are invari-
ably bound up in the social relations that surround us.
Personal, particular fixations are clearly a problem from Spinoza’s point of
view. But is Spinoza’s solution, when faced with such preoccupations, to insist that
they be jettisoned? That, if we are to live a good life, we must simply move from
the particular to the universal, from the historical to the rational? These questions
seem especially problematic when we consider them in light of Spinoza’s emphasis
on community, for are not all communities particular ones? How could we exist in
any form of concrete relationship with other people if the very quality of that rela-
tionship was (being so particular), inherently unsatisfactory? To avoid an inher-
ently abstract conception of politics Spinoza would seem to have to have some
appreciation of particularity, especially as it exists in cultural or political terms.
We can get a better sense of Spinoza’s approach to the particular, as well as his
emphasis on social unity, if we consider the way he appreciates the actual language
of the biblical prophecy—Hebrew. Hebrew was a decidedly antiquated language
for Spinoza; a language of a particular people of a particular era, at a great great
distance from Spinoza’s own. Still, if we look at how Spinoza considers the Hebrew
language and why he thought it was something his contemporaries should learn,
we can see that Spinoza not appreciated (at least in part) how universal common
notions can be found imbedded in particular, historical communities.
Spinoza’s Idea of Hebrew
In a letter dated December 16th 1675, Benedict de Spinoza was challenged by

one of his longtime acquaintances, Henry Oldenburg, in regard to the divinity of
Christ. “…Since you admit that you cannot grasp,” Oldenburg writes, “the idea
that God did indeed assume human nature, one may ask in which way you under-
stand those texts of our Gospel and the passages in the Epistle to the Hebrews,
of which the former declares ‘the Word was made flesh’, and the latter ‘the Son of
God took not on him the nature of angels, but took on him the seed of Abraham’”
(L 944). Since these are texts, Oldenburg seems to remind Spinoza, “to which you
are well disposed,” how can you deny the divinity of Christ? How is it possible to
accept these texts as legitimate and yet—at the same time—deny what they plainly
say?
In his reply, Spinoza asserts that the reason for Oldenburg’s confusion lies in
the fact that he interpreted “the phraseology of Oriental languages according to
the norm of European speech,” for, “although John wrote his Gospel in Greek, his
idiom was Hebraic” (L 947). This distinction is crucial for, as Spinoza writes in his
Hebrew Grammar (a work that Spinoza was presumably working on slightly before
his exchange with Oldenburg), the practitioners of the Hebrew language “were
not by any means strongly moved to avoid ambiguity” and even seemed often to
linger in allegorical or metaphorical parlance. This fact is clear, Spinoza reminds
Oldenburg, in Paul’s own letters, for here we see plainly that “Paul … rejoices that
he knows Christ not after the flesh, but after the spirit” (L 953).
That Spinoza would have been especially cognizant of such equivocations
makes a good deal of sense; as we saw in Chapter 1, he espouses an overreach-
ing commitment to precise, unequivocal language to describe God and the world.
What is less than clear, I suggest, is why Spinoza would emphasize, much less
recommend, the study of any text in which what is said is, often, not what is meant.
Indeed, it is especially curious in this respect that Spinoza would not simply rec-
ommend the study of Hebrew but actually take it upon himself to produce a text
for its instruction.
Spinoza never finished his Compendium, at least not for general publication.
It was, however, published posthumously by Ludewijk Meyer and Johan Bouw-
meester, who wrote in its introduction that Spinoza took up its composition at
the behest of his friends—presumably those acquaintances of Spinoza’s who, like
Meyer and Bouwmeester, engaged Spinoza on all manner of philosophical and
theological matters. Assuming this to be true, our question is compounded: why
would Spinoza be inclined to prompt the study of Hebrew for those who had
already, it would seem, demonstrated an appetite for philosophy? Why recommend
the study of Hebrew not simply to ministers and churchmen but to admirers of
Descartes, to those who had already accepted the sovereignty of reason when it
comes to understanding the reality of the world? What possible merit did Spinoza
think that such philosophers could gain from learning a language so particular?
Perhaps the first thing to take note of when considering this issue is that, in
Spinoza’s day, the study of Hebrew was not uncommon.25 Indeed, as Frank E.
Manuel has shown, the period in which Spinoza lived and wrote saw the study
of Hebrew undergo a certain renaissance, wherein the language was considered
to be one of the languages, along with Greek and Latin, that one would at least
familiarize oneself with if she fancied herself an educated person.26 Spinoza, how-
ever, seems to go to good lengths to emphasize the dubious prospects of such an
undertaking. Hebrew was, for Spinoza, a decidedly lost, fragmented language of
the past. Our ability to fully understand Hebrew has “with the passage of time…
become exceedingly difficult and almost impassable” (TTP 467). Indeed as soon as
Spinoza commends the study of the language he asks his reader,
Where is this now to be obtained? The men of old who used the Hebrew language
have left to posterity no information concerning the basic principles and study of this
language. … we possess nothing at all from them, neither dictionary nor grammar nor
textbook on rhetoric. The Hebrew nation has lost all its arts and embellishments …
and has retained only a few remnants of its language and of its books” (TTP 463).
Spinoza laments further that “the meanings of many nouns and verbs occurring
in the Bible are either completely unknown or subject to dispute” (TTP 463).27
Moreover, we are especially deprived of “the knowledge of Hebrew phraseology
… The idiom and modes of speech peculiar to the Hebrew nation have almost all
been consigned to oblivion by the ravages of time” (TTP 463). With Hebrew lost
to history, Spinoza argues, it is impossible to “discover to our satisfaction all the
possible meanings which a particular passage can yield from linguistic usage; and
there are many passages where the sense is very obscure and quite incomprehensi-
ble although the component words have been a clearly established meaning” (TTP
463). Thus, while Hebrew was not the language of the Bible alone, the community
that spoke it is now lost to history.
Apart from these problems Spinoza also argues that there are problems
endemic to the “structure and nature” of the language itself. We can see just how
lost Hebrew is if we only take notice of the fact that there are no letters for vowels
in Hebrew, and there is a dearth of punctuation in the Bible. Thus, “the accents
and points that we now have are merely contemporary interpretations, and deserve
no more credibility and authority than other commentaries” (TTP 464).28 The first
of these is the fact that Hebrew often substitutes letters of a common “organ of
speech” for one another (TTP 463). The letters produced orally by each of these
organs—the lips, tongue, teeth, palate and throat—are often mixed together.29
Given the considerable overlap between these letters, “any part of a text may
often be rendered ambiguous or appear to be meaningless utterances” (TTP 463).
Another problem lies in the “multiple meanings of conjunctions and adverbs”
(TTP 464). The letter “Vav” for example both joins and distinguishes while—
at the same time—can mean “and,” “but,” “because,” “however,” and “then.” Yet
another problem is that indicative verbs lack the tenses available in other lan-
guages: “Although all the tenses and moods thus lacking could have been supplied,
with the ease and even with great elegance, by definite rules deduced from the fun-
damental principles of language, the writers of old showed complete disregard for
such rules, and indiscriminately used Future for Present and Past, and contrariwise
Past for Future, and furthermore used Indicative for Imperative and Subjunctive,
to the great detriment of clarity” (TTP 464). Spinoza argues that it is impossible
to devise a method to remove all the ambiguities of this ancient language, and we
are forced to arrive at the position that we cannot conclude with certainty how to
discover the true meaning of all Scriptural passages (TTP 463). This means that
we can “draw no conclusion as to the meaning of one prophet or apostle from the
meaning of another” (TTP 465).
So we are brought back again to the question of why Spinoza was inter-
ested—on a theoretical level—in Hebrew at all. By far the most widely accepted
answer to this question is that Spinoza wanted to historicize (or perhaps nat-
uralize) Scripture. By arguing that Scripture should be read and understood in
its original language, Spinoza was asserting that the Bible was the work of a
particular people from a particular time. Focusing on Spinoza’s emphasis on par-
ticularity, many have understood this attempt at historicization as an effort to
marginalize the Bible, to highlight its antiquated language and religious orienta-
tion and thus, in some sense, to repudiate it. Seen from this perspective, Spinoza’s
insistence that Biblical knowledge be rooted in the knowledge of Hebrew was an
attempt to undercut the authority of the Bible (especially the authority that spe-
cific people—Pharisees and Priests—derived from the Bible). Indeed, any claims
to authoritative transmission through time, “should be regarded with the utmost
suspicion” (TTP 462). While we should possess the languages of these traditions
such a requirement does not mean that we surrender our good judgment at the
door.30 Indeed, the exact opposite is the case: we should learn Hebrew so that
our own judgment can assume its proper deliberative role. In this sense, we study
Hebrew not to grasp more fully the real truth of the text, but rather to be able to
recognize the various confused and even contradictory ideas and descriptions that
collide within it for what they are.
In light of such a reading, it is essential to note that Spinoza’s critique of bib-

lical authority was not exclusively aimed at the purveyors of ecclesiastical authority.
It is clear that, for Spinoza, those who insist that the Bible must be interpreted
strictly in light of the authority of reason or philosophy are equally problematic.
Much like the various forms of traditional ecclesiastical authority, philosophical
authority, too, distorts the true meaning of Scripture in an illegitimate attempt to
consolidate power. The most obvious, and explicit, culprit behind this approach to
Scripture was Maimonides. “Maimonides,” Spinoza writes, “held that every pas-
sage of Scripture admits of various—and even contrary—meanings, and that we
cannot be certain of the true meanings of any passage unless we know that … there
is nothing in that passage that is not in agreement with reason, or is contrary to
reason” (TTP 468).31 Indeed, if Maimonides had been convinced that the world
has always existed, Spinoza argues, “he would not have hesitated to distort or
explain away Scripture until it appeared to teach the same doctrine … in spite of
its plain denials at every point” (TTP 468).32
On its face, Spinoza’s objection to the Maimonidean approach to interpreting
Scripture seems rather clear: Maimonides simply seems to be trying to understand
something fundamentally irrational as if it were rational. While there is obviously
some degree of truth to this conclusion (at least as it concerns what Spinoza is up
to), it does leave most of Spinoza’s point obfuscated. Spinoza argues that if the
views of Maimonides were correct it would also follow that the interpretation
of Scripture would become the distinct territory of the philosophers—just as it
has been, traditionally, the territory of religious authorities. If we accept the posi-
tion of Maimonides, Spinoza writes, it “would follow that the common people,
for the most part knowing nothing of logical reasoning or without leisure for it,
would have to rely solely on the authority and testimony of philosophers for their
understanding of Scripture, and would therefore have to assume that philosophers
are infallible in their interpretations of Scripture” (TTP 469). The ensuing result
“would indeed be a novel form of ecclesiastical authority, with very strange priests
or pontiffs, more likely to excite men’s ridicule than veneration” (TTP 469). This
sort of rationalist approach to Scripture was far from dead in Spinoza’s day and it
is important (as others have well noted) that one of Spinoza’s friends—and later
editors—Ludwig Meyer was one of its chief proponents. It seems certain that the
last thing Spinoza wanted to see from such friends was the undoing of ecclesias-
tical authority only to build a new, more sophisticated but more subtle, form of it
in its place.33
However, a clear problem arises from this: isn’t Spinoza arguing, inevitably,
for some new form of priestly class in his insistence that all legitimate Biblical
interpreters learn Hebrew? Isn’t Spinoza himself just creating a philological form
of authority? Spinoza seems to acknowledge this problem and respond to it when

he offers that “…although our own method demands a knowledge of Hebrew, for
which study the common people can likewise have no leisure, it is not open to the
same sort of objection” (TTP 469). The reason for this lies presumably in the fact
that no matter how select the membership may be of those who are lucky enough
to have the time, inclination, and skill to learn the Hebrew language, the language
itself will never be theirs per se—for Hebrew was once the language of a common
people; a people now at a great distance from Spinoza’s world, but a common
people all the same. Spinoza emphasizes this point when he insists that Scripture
was for “the common people of the Jews and Gentiles for whom the prophets
and apostles wrote” (TTP 469). These common people “understood the language
of the prophets and the apostles”—because it was theirs—“and thereby they also
comprehended the meaning of the prophets,” though they didn’t understand “the
rational justification of the prophets’ message” (TTP 469).
While Spinoza emphasizes that Hebrew is a lost language, he also empha-
sizes that it is a lost common language. When scholars and intellectuals—people
of leisure—study it, they appreciate not the divine language of God nor the dead
letter of a lost people, but the language, the idiom—even something of the world-
view—of a common people; common in the traditional, unimpressive sense of unre-
fined or even vulgar, but also in the sense of a people with some commonality
between them. While the knowledge of Hebrew is important because it highlights
the particularity of a specific people it is also important because it emphasizes
something shared—and this is for Spinoza, fundamentally, an ethical, political
bond. Spinoza writes that:
As to the common people of our own time, we have already shown that whatsoever
is necessary for salvation, even though its rational justification be not understood,
can readily be grasped in any language, because it is couched in ordinary and famil-
iar terms; and it is this understanding, not the testimony of biblical commentators,
that gains acceptance with the common people. And as for the rest of Scripture, the
common people are on the same footing as the learned. (TTP 469)
If we consider this quotation carefully, we can see why Spinoza would recom-
mend the study of Hebrew to his friends specifically—for they already possessed
an interest in the curious. Men like Meyer were quite different from the common
people of Spinoza’s Dutch Republic: they knew Latin and were devoted to phi-
losophy. Consequently, as we can see in Meyer’s own foray into biblical interpre-
tation, they needed to be reminded not only of the many inscrutable aspects of
Scripture, but of its fundamentally communal character as well.34 Spinoza drives
this point home when he writes:
…the teachings of true piety are expressed in quite ordinary [or we might say common]
language, and being directed to the generality of people they are therefore straight-
forward and easy to understand. … it … evidently follows that we can understand the
meaning of Scripture with confidence in matters relating to salvation and necessary to
blessedness. Therefore we have no reason to be unduly anxious concerning the other
contents of Scripture; for since for the most part they are beyond the grasp of reason
and intellect, they belong to the sphere of the curious rather than the profitable. (TTP
467)
Now for Spinoza, salvation or blessedness comes from the attainment of freedom,
which is of course primarily a rational capacity that increases an individual’s hap-
piness and power, as it provides awareness of nature’s order—nature at large. Yet in
spite of this point of emphasis—or perhaps rather along with it—we need to keep
in mind Spinoza’s maxim that for man “there is nothing more useful than man” (E
331). That is, as we have seen, life in common is always life empowered. Further,
it is this commonality of power, its communal nature (increasing when shared,
decreasing when alone), which leads him to the conclusion that “whatever things
cause men to live in harmony cause them also to live by the guidance of reason” (E
343). We can see from this that Spinoza believes that Scripture is written in the
language of human beings, and that this language is rational in its identification
and cultivation of moral and political truths.
This is not to imply that Spinoza sees Hebrew as in any way unique or
more rational than any other language. For Spinoza, Hebrew is only worthy of
our attention insofar as it can illustrate how the common can be perceived even
within the most foreign or strange. In this way, Spinoza is interested in Hebrew
principally as it serves to compellingly highlight the ubiquity of true religion and
its common notions such justice and charity. But, in this way, Spinoza’s argu-
ment for Hebrew is also intimately bound up with his political philosophy, and
specifically his advocacy of democracy. By urging his curious contemporaries to
study Hebrew, Spinoza was urging them to see beyond their own narrow interests,
and consider the value of the life lived in common. In this respect, Spinoza sees
both the development of Hebrew and the development of democracy as working
to undo entrenched, consolidated locations of authority, and both emphasize the
importance of community in their stead.
The Politics of Biblical Interpretation
If the above interpretation is correct, if Spinoza saw the instruction of Hebrew as

a way of conveying the importance of equitable, social harmony, then we need to
consider how Spinoza’s wider theory of biblical interpretation stands in light of

this theme. The communal character of Scripture is essential for Spinoza, not only
for the followers of philosophy but also for those who read the Bible in a more tra-
ditional, devotionally manner. Despite its equivocations elsewhere, Spinoza argues
that in regard to moral matters “Scripture itself tells us quite clearly over and over
again what every man should do in order to serve God, declaring the entire law
consists in this alone, to love one’s neighbor. Therefore it is also undeniable that
he who loves his neighbor as himself is truly obedient and blessed according to
the Law, while he who hates or takes no thought for his neighbor is rebellious and
disobedient” (TTP 515). While one clearly cannot, for Spinoza, draw unequivo-
cal conclusions when these texts “are dealing with philosophical questions, or are
narrating miracles or history” (TTP 465), there are what Spinoza calls “matters of
moral conduct” (TTP 465).
As we saw above, Spinoza thinks that biblical interpretation, the interpreta-
tion of the divine law, is the province of no special party or clique. Yet the issue
of who gets to interpret the Bible is not, I argue, the most egalitarian aspect of
Spinoza’s theory—it is, rather, a logical consequence of what Spinoza sees as ulti-
mately at stake in the Bible as such. Spinoza’s theory of biblical interpretation is
fundamentally egalitarian, both in terms of who can interpret the text but also
in regard to the actual good which results from interpreting the Bible in the first
place. Scripture clearly and simply reveals fundamental truths—truths that though
not complicated are nonetheless critical, both theologically and politically. “God’s
kingdom consists simply in the rule of justice and charity” (TTP 559). Spinoza
writes that “he who practices justice and charity in accordance with God’s com-
mand is fulfilling God’s law, from which it follows that the kingdom of God is
where justice and charity have the force of law and command” (TTP 558). More-
over, Spinoza argues that there is “no distinction whether it is by the natural light
of reason or by revelation that God teaches and commands the true practice of
justice and charity, for it matters not how the practice of these virtues is revealed
to us as long as it holds the place of supreme authority and is the supreme law
for men” (TTP 558). Motives and interests—loving for good reasons or for bad
ones—are clearly a concern for Spinoza but they are not an ultimate one. While
faulty knowledge of the divine or of mankind can lead to all sorts of illicit loves,
such loves are to be evaluated on the basis of the object they engage, rather than
the sentiment that seems to lie behind them.
In this way, Spinoza understands the dictum “practice love and charity” as a
“commandment,” one that “is the one and only guiding principle for the entire
common faith of mankind, and through this commandment alone should be deter-
mined all the tenets of faith that every man is in duty bound to accept” (TTP 515).
Spinoza’s point of emphasis falls on the law itself and our obedience to it, and not
(as is the case with a thinker like Kant, for example) how we really feel about it. The
problem of whether or not we really will the law when we deny it doesn’t register
for Spinoza, and in this way Spinoza argues not only for the authority of justice
and charity but for the clarity of these ideas as well. That is, for Spinoza, justice and
charity are essential to human life and, crucially, “it is abundantly clear that this is so
” (TTP 515).
Of course, many scholars read Spinoza as denying any such relevance (any real
relevance) to the biblical text outside of being a curious object of historical inter-
est. For these thinkers, Spinoza’s insistence on the clarity of Scripture’s message is
itself evidence of Scripture’s minimal importance. Thus, Richard Popkin, for one,
argues that Spinoza “totally secularized the Bible as a historical document,” to
such an extent that the text is “of interest only in human terms.”35 Similarly, Nadler
argues that Spinoza saw the Bible as “a highly corrupt human product”36 and that
the entire purpose of Spinoza’s foray into biblical interpretation was “to undermine
the general authority of Scripture.”37 What’s the basis for this interpretation of
Spinoza?
The means by which Spinoza disarmed Scripture was by turning the Ref-
ormation maxim of “sola scriptura” against itself. This inversion begins with the
insistence that Scripture itself is, exclusively, the only possible criteria by which
to understand Scripture “The universal rule for the interpretation of Scripture,”
Spinoza writes, is “to ascribe to teaching to Scripture that is not clearly established
from studying it closely” (TTP 458). However, by arguing that only “the word
of God” could be used to understand “the word of God” (that the Bible had to
be understood on its own terms), Spinoza effectively isolated the texts and those
arguments that spring from it. That is, by granting the Bible a distinct discourse,
Spinoza quarantined Scripture from philosophy and minimized, as much as possi-
ble, its claims to knowledge. In this way Spinoza reduced the importance of Scrip-
ture to such an extent that in regard to it “the point at issue is merely the meaning
of the texts, not their truth” (TTP 458). We separate the study of the Bible from
philosophy in order “to avoid confusion between true meaning and truth of fact,
the former must be sought simply from linguistic usage, or from a process of rea-
soning that looks to no other basis than Scripture” (TTP 458).38
By making the Bible both the responsibility of each individual exegete to grap-
ple with strictly on its own terms, and by consigning it to the realm of meaning
rather than truth, Spinoza seemingly neutralizes any power the text might have.
In light of his interpretive axioms, it seems that Scripture can only be a matter of
meaning between text and individual, and is thus properly understood as personal
or private. This has prompted many critics, such as Samuel Preus, to go so far as to
argue that Spinoza sees any attempt at interpreting the Bible as truthful as funda-
mentally alien to modern, liberal culture altogether. Preus writes:
This principle applies not merely in manners of natural science, but even more rad-
ically where the moral doctrines of Scripture and reason seem to collide: where such
doctrines “can be demonstrated from common notions, it cannot be proved from such
axioms that Scripture teaches such doctrines: this can only be established through
Scripture itself.” Scripture, not philosophy, must reveal its own meanings out of its
own discourse, not ours.39
Does Spinoza really oppose biblical discourse to “our” discourse—the discourse

of the modern world? It is precisely here where the whole theory of common
notions is crucial. In the above quotation, Spinoza seems to suggest that whatever
overlap may exist between the common moral notions of Scripture and philoso-
phy, those of the former cannot be proven, with the clear implication seemingly
being that those of the latter can. Yet in supplementary note 8 Spinoza lays the
nature of such common notions out in more detail. Here Spinoza writes that of
such conceptions:
I mean not only those which can be logically proved but also those which we are
wont to accept with moral certainty and to hear without surprise, although they can
by no means be proved. Anyone can comprehend Euclid’s propositions before they are
proved. Similarly, I call comprehensible those narratives whether of future or past
events, that do not exceed human belief, and likewise laws, institutions and customs,
although they cannot be proved with mathematical certainty. … Mysterious symbols,
and narratives that exceed all belief, I call incomprehensible. Yet even among these there
are many that yield to examination by our method, so that we can perceive the author’s
meaning. (TTP 575; emphasis mine)
Some elements of scripture, Spinoza writes, such as “mysterious symbols and nar-
ratives” can be understood, but only in terms of their particular author’s meaning.
That is, the meaning of such elements can only be specific and never common.
On the other hand, there are other elements of Scripture that are quintessen-
tially common, as (Spinoza maintains) they strike every reader as unquestionably
true. When presented with such moral teachings we do not need, nor are we even
prompted, to consider what the author means, for these passages are clear. Indeed,
in regard to such conceptions we do not even consider what might be “meant” by
their use, for they are so plain that they immediately foreclose the very possibility
of meaning. As we have seen, Spinoza compares such moral truths to Euclidean
geometry:
For things which of their own nature are readily apprehended can never be so obscurely
worded that they are not easily understood; as the proverb says, ‘a word to the wise is
enough,’ Euclid, whose writings are concerned only with things exceedingly simple
and perfectly intelligible, is easily made clear by anyone in any language for in order to
grasp his thought and be assured of his true meaning there is no need to have a thor-
ough knowledge of the language in which he wrote. A superficial and rudimentary
knowledge is enough.” (TTP 466)
While “meaning” is always meaning for someone, the “truth” of common notions
are clear to all. The nature of such truth is implicitly comprehensible, not meta-
phorically or even historically inferred. This does not mean, of course, that bib-
lical prophets were possessed of the same kind of certainty that Euclid obtained,
but only that the actual truth that underlies their prophetic expressions can be
understood with certainty, provided one is not blinded by peripheral desires or
concerns.40
We can get a better sense of the “implicitness” of these common notions if
we return to Spinoza’s explication of them in the Ethics. As in the TTP, Spinoza
argues in the Ethics that certain general notions present themselves to the human
mind, and one of the areas in which such notions are most evident is in Scripture.
As we saw in chapter two, Spinoza argues that while “the individual” is not, strictly
speaking, an ontological reality, it is an idea that insists itself upon all minds none-
theless. If we consider what truly constitutes an individual, Spinoza argues that we
have to take note of the fact that her mind and her body are not the same—they
do not partake of the same individual substance (only true Substance). Yet, all the
same, we do have an idea of ourselves as individuals, an idea that seems to arise
inevitably from the operations of the mind as governed by the laws of Nature.
Again, as Chapter 2 argued, the mind thinks the body. While mind and body do
not coalesce around an individual identity, the order of substance (real substance)
prompts the two into a rigorously intertwined relationship. Like the idea we have
of our bodies, and correspondingly the idea we have of ourselves, the idea that
one should “love your neighbor as one’s self ” is a common notion. While both are
not given ontological realities of Substance, they are patterns of order that Sub-
stance promotes. Neither of these ideas (common notions like the “individual” and
“justice”) are important in terms of their explanatory power, for they are not (of
course) ideas that represent other things. Rather, common notions are themselves
elements of Nature—elements to be recognized and lived in accordance with. The
fact that these two are as common as they are, Spinoza argues, means that they are
inevitably adequate. “Those things,” Spinoza writes, “that are common to all things
and are equally in the parts as in the whole, can only adequately be conceived” (E 265).
Thus, while the ethical teachings of Scripture may or may not be demon-
strable they certainly are plain; indeed, so plain that any doubt about their truth
strikes Spinoza as scarcely comprehensible. As Spinoza makes clear in the TTP,
even when we undertake the study of Scripture in all of its historical particularity
we can, at the same time, “readily grasp the meanings of its moral doctrines and
be certain of their true sense” (TTP 467). We are able to see past the vagaries and
contingencies of the historical elements of Scripture because “the teachings of true
piety are expressed in quite ordinary language, and being directed to the generality
of people they are therefore straightforward and easy to understand” (TTP 467).
So when Spinoza returns to the idea of common notions in the TTP he does
so because he is interested in discussing not only the nature of such ideas but the
history of their use. For Spinoza, “the mind of God and his eternal thoughts are
inscribed in our minds, too, and therefore we also, in scriptural language, perceive
the mind of God” (TTP 403). However, “since natural knowledge is common
to all men, it is not so highly prized,” and this is especially so “in the case of the
Hebrews, who vaunted themselves above all men—indeed, despising all men, and
consequently the sort of knowledge that is common to all men” (TTP 403). As we
have seen, the great failing of the Hebrew commonwealth was the self-importance
of its leaders and, especially as they styled themselves its political of religious
leaders.
What all of this points to, of course, is Spinoza’s inherently egalitarian theory
of scriptural interpretation. For Spinoza, “the supreme authority for the interpre-
tation of Scripture is vested in each individual,” and this means not only that his
theory of biblical interpretation revolves around a conception of liberty, but also
that “the rule that governs interpretation must be nothing other than the natural
light that is common to all, and not any supernatural light, nor any eternal author-
ity” (TTP 471). But by “natural light” Spinoza means not merely the powers of
philosophical logic but also the knowledge that arises implicitly from the order of
Nature. Consequently Spinoza insists that his rule must not be limited to “skilled
philosophers” but must be seen to “be suited to the natural and universal capacity
of mankind” (TTP 471). Nature supplies us with ideas, Spinoza argues, which are
simple yet common to all, and are thereby pivotal for the very enterprise of living
life together.
This is not to imply that Scripture is in any way necessary. Spinoza is clear that
there is nothing about Scripture per se that one must come to terms with in order
to be a free, virtuous person. Indeed, it is important to see here that it is precisely
what is most common, most domestic even, about Scripture that makes it so valu-
able. Of course in many ways it would be better if everyone could become philoso-
phers and come to know God intellectually; just as it would be better if, politically,
everyone enforced the law entirely upon themselves. If we were delivered entirely
from the sway of our emotions and were left to simply reason the political-reli-
gious orders that hold sway over our lives would be needless.
Such hypotheticals are interesting, perhaps, but not especially helpful. This is
especially so when they are considered in light of Spinoza since these hypotheticals
have tended to obscure the fact that regardless of how human beings are brought
under the sovereign authority of the divine law what ultimately matters is that
they are. It might be nice, perhaps, if human beings all dedicated themselves to
the philosophical path but it is not necessary since the knowledge we need to truly
worship God is already, Spinoza insists, plain. It is true, of course, that Spinoza
argues that one’s love of God increases proportionally to one’s knowledge of God
and so it is clear that Spinoza particularly esteems the philosophical life. However,
it is crucial to note that such a life is not achieved through transcending the simple
wisdom of the masses but rather through appreciating that simple wisdom all the
more.
If we wish to avoid the error of the ancient Israelites, we need to see that their
problem lay less in their superstitions and theological miscalculations than in their
pride and separatism. Spinoza’s account of Scripture and his critique of secular-
ism speaks to the larger theme of commonality in his work—of holding to and
being ordered by something in common. While the moral and political precepts
at the core of Spinoza’s thought are not difficult to discern or even—one must
admit—thoroughly detailed, it is their simplicity as well as their prevalence that
demonstrates their authority.
Conclusion
“Man Is God to Man”
Spinoza’s philosophy is governed by the assertion that God is one entirely com-
prehensive identity which can exist in distinction to nothing and can have nothing
outside of itself. While this God (or Substance, or Nature) expresses itself through
an infinite variety of attributes and in an infinite number of modes, this process
of expression does not separate God from any of these modes or attributes (this
expression is not the creation of something else). Human beings live happier, better
lives to the extent that they realize that they are (already) a part of this divine
totality, and come to see themselves not as individuals as such but rather as highly
orchestrated movements or moments within God’s expression. When we under-
stand that we are inevitably subject to the order that that expression produces,
we learn the virtue of cognizant obedience and reject the notion that we could
will for ourselves a “kingdom within a kingdom.” Further, Spinoza argues that
such rational compliance produces love—for oneself, God, and the other parts of
the world. Though there is certainly a strong sense that the degree to which the
love of God, in Spinoza’s work, is intellectual, this intellectual love stems from
and depends upon certain common notions that exist in all people. As religion
promotes these fundamental, conceptual virtues it is itself a rational activity that
brings human beings together in peace and virtue, thereby making them more
rational and expanding the scope of their power.
The interpretation of Spinoza’s understanding of Scripture and its theologi-
co-political implications offered in the last chapter might strike some readers as a
bit forced. The image of Spinoza as an early “free thinker,” as a “saint of secular-
ism,” is well established—despite its shortcomings. But the above interpretation
is not as uncommon as one might think and two unlikely sources present them-
selves in this regard: Leo Strauss and Emanuel Levinas. Both Strauss and Levi-
nas argue that Spinoza is, decidedly, a secular philosopher—a Jew who turned his
back on the tribal vestiges of Jerusalem for the promise of Athens. Yet, while they
are curiously and thoroughly entrenched in this interpretation, both Strauss and
Levinas see in Spinoza a strain of thought that presents Scripture as playing an
important, even decisive role in human life.
In this conclusion I will consider some of the implications of the picture
Spinoza sketched above, and will consider these in relationship to Strauss and
Levinas both. The purpose of such a comparison is not only to sum up the
portrait of Spinoza’s thought detailed in the preceding chapters, but also to
highlight some of the implications of Spinoza’s thought for contemporary
discussions of religion, reason, and politics. Strauss and Levinas are espe-
cially helpful refractors in this course, as they both—like Spinzoa—attempt
to critique the traditional idea of the human being as an individual subject
with a deliberating, freely choosing will. Like Spinoza, both Strauss and Levi-
nas are interested in re-interpreting the idea of obedience, and interjecting it
into their surrounding ethical-political culture. Moreover, both Levinas and
Strauss—again, like Spinoza—turn to Scripture and religion to help them in
their respective critiques (although they do so in very different ways). With
these two similarities established, I argue that Spinoza represents an attractive
alternative to both Strauss and Levinas’s antagonistic forms of liberalism. Thus,
I seek to show not only how Spinoza’s understanding of true religion and the
biblical text lead to the realization of the social whole, but also how Spinoza’s
understanding of politics makes these sensibilities actual possibilities. Yet, as I
shall discuss below, these elements of Spinoza’s thought are both positive and
negative. The purpose of this interpretation of Spinoza is not to lay out an
argument for Spinozism, but to show how Spinoza’s philosophy has been mis-
read, and how a new interpretation of Spinoza can help us re-think how we
consider the relationship between God and the world, the individual and the
social whole, as well as reason and Scripture.
co n c lu si o n | 157
Strauss
Whatever his ultimate conclusions about Spinoza’s philosophy, it is telling that,

in the Preface to his Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, Strauss agrees with Hermann
Cohen’s indictment of Spinoza.1 In his The Religion of Reason, Cohen describes
Spinoza as “the source of a fundamental misunderstanding of the Jewish religion
… such [that] it has affected the most noble ages of German literature.”2 Specif-
ically, Spinoza played a decisive role in Kant’s interpretation of Judaism as a form
of legalism, painting such a picture of the religion that Kant could only see it as
“rightly condemned.”3 In this way, for Cohen, the bald fact is that Spinoza was
guilty of an “incomprehensible betrayal.”4
While agreeing with Cohen’s characterization of Spinoza’s grievous mis-
step,5 Strauss goes even further, arguing that “our case against Spinoza is in some
respects even stronger than Cohen thought” for while we “may doubt whether
Spinoza’s action is humanely incomprehensible or demoniac but one must grant
that it is amazingly unscrupulous.”6 Cohen’s correct indictment, Strauss argues,
was the result of Spinoza’s “complete lack of loyalty to his own people, of his acting
like an enemy of the Jews and thus giving aid and comfort to the many enemies of
the Jews, of his behaving like a base traitor.”7 The reason for this comes not only in
the TTP’s “disparagement of Moses” but, more problematically, in its “idealization
of Jesus” for “the purpose of the work is to secure the freedom of philosophiz-
ing.”8 As he details in his Persecution and the Art of Writing, Spinoza unfaithfully
focused his critique of Scripture on the books of the “Old Testament” in order to
discretely and didactically prompt his Christian readers to tacitly unfurl his critical
form of biblical interpretation within their own tradition.9 “The peculiarly ‘Jewish’
character of the work [the TTP] must be understood,” Strauss argues, “in light of
Spinoza’s guiding intention,”10 which was to cultivate “potential philosophers” who
happen to be Christian.11 Spinoza chose to construct the liberal “spirituality” of
Christianity over what he took to be the legalism of Judaism because he saw it as
a powerful, if problematic, stepping stone towards developing the rational minds
of his intended audience and creating a stable, liberal political order. In this way,
Spinoza’s “amazingly unscrupulous” nature was clear, for in regard to the political
solvency of a political body, and the place of the philosopher within that body,
Spinoza tactically deployed Christianity towards his own philosophical, ultimately
unchristian ends.12 Spinoza saw his rhetorical use of Christianity as a way to undo
the very idea of Christ’s revelation itself:
He thus showed himself the way toward a new religion or religiousness which was to
inspire a wholly new kind of society and a new kind of Church. He became the sole
father of that new Church which was to be universal in fact, and not merely in claim
as other churches, because its foundation was no longer any positive revelation—a
Church whose rulers were not priests or pastors, but philosophers and artists whose
flock were the circles of culture and property.13
As the above quotation makes clear, Strauss sees Spinoza not only as attempting to
advance a new, philosophical political order but, in truly Machiavellian fashion14,
as also using Christianity to achieve such an end. From this perspective, religion
is entertained only long enough for it to be successfully overtaken by the powers
of secular reason.
Yet in this way, while he clearly (and influentially) draws a picture of Spinoza
as a secular atheist, Strauss does acknowledge that Spinoza sees a not so fleeting
good which can be realized through Scripture—though that good is not religious
in the traditional or typical sense. For Strauss, this good is best recognized when
we consider the rules that are at the heart of Spinoza’s theory of scriptural inter-
pretation. Precisely as Spinoza did in his interpretation of nature, Strauss argues,
Spinoza sees the interpretation of Scripture to be a matter of “setting out from the
thoroughly ascertained and methodically arranged data” to discern “the most gen-
eral structures common to nature as a whole,” and only then going on to consider
its particularities.15 While the specific content of different scriptural passages in
this regard is often (Strauss maintains) of little or no use, it is clear that the way
Scripture is implemented—as well as the core message at its root—unifies dispa-
rate parts into an organized whole.
It is this teaching, Strauss continues, which is “the weightiest matter, in the
sense that it is what is always in the same sense enjoined on all men by all proph-
ets, as the teaching most profitable to all men.”16 In other words, Scripture teaches
something common—common not simply in the sense of “unexceptional” (though
this is certainly an important dimension) but in the sense of a commonality that
brings all human beings together and is, in this simple yet decisive result, “the
most profitable” of all knowledge. Again, Strauss argues that Scripture teaches its
reader the importance of commonality “throughout, clearly and distinctly, in such a
way that its meaning is unambiguous.”17 Indeed, the clarity and prevalence of this
emphasis on commonality confirms the specific moral ideas of justice and clarity
espoused unequivocally in Scripture. For Strauss, the truth of this knowledge is
demonstrated not only by its ubiquity but also by the easiness with which it is
grasped:
For that reason, the passages of Scripture that speak of matters which are credible and
easy to grasp are mostly safeguarded from misunderstanding. But the moral teachings
are particularly easy to understand.18
The role of such simple moral truths is, to be sure, prominent in Strauss’s
own thought. For Strauss, given the dangers of historicism and its inherent rela-
tivism, it is important not to place too much confidence in what philosophy can
do, for fear of being dangerously disappointed. The confidence in what philosophy
can ultimately do—in what it can ultimately demonstrate—is termed by Strauss
science, or, as Strauss puts it, “Science with a capital S.”19 Such a conception of
“science” is “the authority for philosophy” and thus “the perfection of man’s natural
understanding of the world.”20 While the belief in this ideal has been (and to some
extent still is) widespread, it is—according to Strauss—unable to be sustained over
the long term. The steady progress of “Science,” Strauss writes, “is based on wholly
unwarranted hopes,” particularly in light of “the incredible barbarization which we
have been so unfortunate as to witness in our century.”21
Further, far from being an accidental parallel to the rise of science, Strauss
argues that this “barbarization” is the logical result of it. “The soul of the modern
development,” Strauss argues, “is a peculiar ‘realism,’” which concerned itself with
facts instead of values, and dismissed any “preaching” or “sermonizing…as ineffec-
tual.”22 This repudiation of any normative orientation leads logically to the con-
clusion that “the values of barbarism and cannibalism are as defensible as those of
civilization.”23 For Strauss, the stark unacceptability of such a result itself reinforces
the fact that there exists some fundamental preference for the good rather than the
bad. Instead of granting the epistemological overconfidence of science, Strauss
argues in Jacobi-like fashion, we must recognize that a certain amount faith (or at
least inference) must accompany all of our philosophical and moral commitments.
Thus, for Strauss, “the complexity of human affairs may blur, but they cannot
extinguish, the evidence of those simple experiences regarding right and wrong
which are at the bottom of the philosophic contention that there is a natural
right.”24 In this way, as Smith has shown, Strauss considers political philosophy to
be “a kind of first philosophy” but only in the sense of an “ultimate or ultimate pre-
supposition of all other branches of philosophy.”25 Political philosophy concerns
“the good for which all things are done”, and, ironically, it is this very presumption
of such a good—the presumption for which philosophy is done—that testifies to
its primacy.26 Thus Strauss writes that “it is impossible to define the political, i.e.
that which is related in a relevant way to the polis” without answering the question
of what constitutes this kind of society,” and this inevitably entails some “reference
to its purpose.”27
Strauss calls the purpose or good for which all things are done natural right.
But, as Smith rightly emphasizes, there is a surprisingly subjectivist dimension to
Strauss’s theory of natural right. For Smith, Strauss “appeals to a certain kind of
original experience uncontaminated by the presence later theoretical and scientific
constructions.”28 The reason for such an appeal cannot be demonstrated, but is

clear enough in our care for ourselves and our world. When we acknowledge such
care, we see that a number of specific problems are at the heart of it. There are “cer-
tain fundamental problems,” Strauss writes, “such as the problem of justice” which
unquestionably “persist and retain their identity in all historical change, however
much they may be obscured by the temporary denial of their relevance.”29 Indeed
Strauss seems to argue that we can see such an implicit appeal even in the work
of those who criticize the idea of natural right the most, for they always presume
some goal or normative content in the very purpose of their critiques—in their
rationale for offering a critique in the first place. We needn’t, Strauss maintains, be
able to demonstrate philosophically what such rights truly and finally are to appeal
to their authority, for merely noting their foundational quality is enough.
In grasping these problems as problems the human mind liberates itself from its his-
torical limitations. No more is needed to legitimize philosophy in its original, Socratic
sense: philosophy is knowledge that one does not know; that is to say, it is knowledge
of what one does not know, or awareness of the fundamental problems and, therewith,
of the fundamental alternatives regarding their solution that are coeval with human
thought.30
In a rather Heideggerian fashion, Strauss insists that we must always recognize

that the world in which we live, and especially the world in which we live together,
is a world to which we are disposed and committed. We always appeal to the
simple “nature” of such a world necessarily, and far from being questionable or weak
because of this mere necessity, our appeals to it should be seen as all the stronger.
To consider the world to be a simple and clear object of our analysis is to misun-
derstand the nature of its reality, and reduce it to an abstraction.
The natural world, the world in which we live and act, is not the object or the product
of a theoretical attitude; it is a world not of mere objects at which we detachedly look
but of “things” or “affairs” which we handle. Yet as long as we identify the natural or
prescientific world with the world in which we live, we are dealing with an abstrac-
tion.31
Spinoza would clearly find such a skeptical attitude unacceptable on its

face, and this difference between the two thinkers is certainly an important one.
Whereas Strauss argues that the basis of our relationship with one another can
only be assumed, Spinoza argues that that basis is demonstrated through philos-
ophy and enacted through Scripture. Yet we should not allow these differences
regarding philosophy’s demonstrable character to obscure the symmetry between
how both thinkers understand the importance of commonality and the common
notions through which it is explicated. Nor, for that matter, should we allow
Strauss’s insistence on the secular—strictly political—nature of these concepts to
distract from the affinity they share with Spinoza’s theory of common notions. In
the end, both thinkers see Scripture as communicating central, pivotal truths.
Levinas
Much like Strauss, and also following Cohen’s lead, Levinas argues that “Spinoza
was guilty of betrayal,” as “he subordinated the truth of Judaism to the revelation
of the New Testament.”32 While asserting that Spinoza clearly saw the New Tes-
tament as “only a stage” which would inevitably be “surpassed by the intellectual
love of God” in the philosophical maturation of the West, Levinas too understands
Spinoza’s betrayal to lie specifically in his temporary embrace of what he took to
be liberal, Christian spirituality and in the subsequent “decomposition of Jewish
intelligentsia” to which it contributed.33 Reading Spinoza in light of 300 years of
anti-Semitism and assimilation, Levinas takes Spinoza’s betrayal to be especially
egregious and hurtful. In response to David Ben-Gurion’s suggestion that Spi-
noza’s cherem be lifted, Levinas dissented. While Levinas argued that “‘one does
not judge conquerors’” (quoting Catherine the Great), “neither does one fly to the
assistance of [their] victory.”34 Here we can clearly see that for Levinas, Spinoza is
a partisan for the other side, one who opposed Judaism and greatly contributed to
its dissipation. “Alas!” Levinas writes, “Hebraism, in our day, is such a rare science
that it can no longer imagine itself to be nondescript or mediocre.”35
However, Levinas’s critique of Spinoza is not merely preoccupied with his
traitorous character or even the long-term ramifications of his treachery, but rather
with his actual philosophical conclusions. While Strauss sees Spinoza’s “betrayal”
as a response to the permanent and unbreachable divide between reason and rev-
elation, Levinas sees Spinoza’s betrayal of Judaism as a result of his simple philo-
sophical fallacies (though Levinas does not discount that Spinoza may have been
driven to these poor arguments by some amount of personal animosity). Indeed,
many of the distinctly philosophical differences between Levinas and Spinoza are
quite stark, and Levinas often elaborates his own position by opposing himself to
Spinoza.
On a basic level it is clear that Levinas’s insistence on both the priority and the
unintelligibility of transcendence sets him in stark contrast with Spinoza. Levi-
nas himself states this openly in Totality and Inifnity, where he writes that any
consideration of alterity—and especially the sense of alterity articulated within
Levinas’s notion of transcendence—is “at the antipodes with Spinoza.”36 Later, in
Otherwise than Being, Levinas identifies Spinoza’s idea of conatus and its emphasis
on the self-sustainability of being as “a deplorable and inevitable ontological truth,
namely, the bad positivity and negatively valorized plentitude of being and its
self-centered interest as such.”37 While Levinas clearly does hold that conatus is
an ontological truth, the “interest” which being has in itself, he also holds that the
retreat of beings into this self-interest is a form of philosophical bad faith. Such
egoism is the desire merely to persist in conatus without acknowledging the prior
address that the ontological subject receives from the other—an utterly transcen-
dent or exterior other—and how that other calls into question that subject and
thus constitutes its reality.38 To the extent, then, that Spinoza encourages human
beings to maximize their own power, their own conatus, he represents the worst
form of immoralism that the onto-theological tradition has to offer. In Totality and
Infinity, Levinas describes this sort of existence as “living from …” or “enjoyment,”
which Levinas describes as “the very pulsation of the I”39 which “characterizes all
sensations whose representational content dissolves into their affective content.”40
Individuals who bury their heads in their own conatus are then alive only to
their own sensations and preoccupations, and dead to everything that lies on the
other end of their own representations.
In enjoyment I am absolutely for myself. Egoist without reference to the Other, I am

alone without solitude, innocently egoist and alone. Not against the others, not ‘as for
me….’—but entirely deaf to the Other, outside of all communication, and all refusal
to communicate—without ears, like a hungry stomach.41
It is this denial of an other apart from being, of a “surpassing of being by the

good,” that is, for Levinas, at the heart of Spinoza’s offense.42 Yet, in this respect, it
is ironic that it is precisely what thinkers such as Smith identify as the core of Spi-
noza’s anti-religiosity—what Strauss describes as Spinoza’s attempt to lift Machia-
vellianism to theological heights—that is, in Levinas’s eyes, his saving grace. While
many thinkers read Spinoza’s insistence on reading Scripture as a human product
as fundamentally antithetical to a religious appreciation of it, Levinas argues that it
is this very humanness that clarifies its miraculous character, and (moreover) that
Spinoza appreciated this character. That is, for Levinas, the emergence of modern
biblical criticism (and its assumption of (multiple) human authors of Scripture)
not only proves itself to be a small obstacle to faith (in some sense) in that Scrip-
ture, but actually clarifies Scripture claim to be religiously significant.
Does not the truth of eternal ideas shine forth all the more when they are denied the
external support of a dramatic and theatrical revelation? When they are studied for
themselves, do they not bear witness to the divine value of their inspiration and the
purely spiritual miracle of their union? This miracle is all the more miraculous the
more we are dealing with numerous and disparate fragments, and all the more mar-
velous for the way in which rabbinism develops a form of teaching that tallies with it.43
That Spinoza’s theory of biblical interpretation establishes the meaning of Scrip-

ture in reference to human beings and not as the direct “Word” of a transcendent
God is not a problem for Levinas. Following the writing of Sylvain Zac, Levinas
argues that while Spinoza asserted that all of nature ultimately had to be considered
in terms of its cause, this did not—and should not—proscribe us from interpreting
Scripture as a good in itself. Indeed, far from being an attempt to disarm Scripture
of its intellectual and moral legitimacy, Spinoza’s method of biblical interpretation
sought to ensure both, as it insisted that Scripture (as Scripture) was only under-
standable in light of itself. Spinoza’s specific contribution, Levinas argues, was his
insistence that the interpretation of Scripture should have its own autonomy and
enjoy its own criteria. As we have seen, Spinoza explicitly and repeatedly criticizes
the attempt to consider Scripture in relation to reason alone. While Maimonides
maintained that Scripture’s worth must be considered in its relationship to reason,
Spinoza asserted that Scripture’s worth could only be understood in light of itself,
and—more importantly—that such worth was readily discernible once one did so.
Levinas construes this worth by interpreting Spinoza to be drawing a distinction
between understanding the truth of Scripture and understanding its significance.
“To prove the truth of a text,” Levinas argues, “one must make it accord with real-
ity; to understand its significance, it suffices to have it accord with itself.”44 Spinoza
both made this significance perceptible and safeguarded it from philosophy.
Whereas Strauss reads Spinoza as attempting to make philosophy safe from
theology, Levinas detects within Spinoza an attempt to safeguard the Scripture
from being dominated by philosophy. Spinoza’s insistence that Scripture be inter-
preted only in “accord with itself ” necessitates that Scripture has a significance,
and that the exact significance of that significance is immune from philosophical
comprehension or critique.
By right, certainly, everything human is explained by Nature—that is, through causes.

But before explicating ideas, one can understand them as significations: “Spinoza’s
great discovery consists in showing that, in order to understand the exact meaning
of the ideas contained in the sacred texts, we can use a method that is as rigorous as
the method of learned men, without seeking to explicate things in terms of causes.”45
This is not to imply that truth and significance are opposed—only that they are
different. As Levinas makes clear, Spinoza sees the ethical teaching of Scripture as
true, although it cannot be proven to be so.
There is a way of reading the Bible that goes back to listening to the Word of God.
This approach remains irreplaceable in spite of the privileges to be gained by philos-
ophy (that is to say, Spinozism). Through the multiple authors whom the historical
method discovers in sacred texts, the Word of God invites men to obey the teachings
of justice and charity. Through historical criticism of the Bible, Spinoza teaches us its
ethical interiorization.46
By “interiorization,” Levinas means the recognition of how the individual sub-

ject is constituted by something radically different than, and distinct from, itself.
Much like Althusser’s concept of interpellation47 Levinas’s “interiorization” refers
to the process in which a subject is passively constituted through the event of
being addressed by something, though for Levinas this “something” is always
an-other which is infinitely other than itself. For Levinas this is the inherently
traumatic character of subjectivity: despite my own “interest” in doing otherwise,
I am ineluctably called into relationship with something outside of me, and this
asymmetrical relationship becomes the true nature of my subjectivity. In this way
the only thing left present to me as a subject is a lack and a need to respond, over
and over again, to something much different than the realm of my own individual
experience—something to which I am thoroughly passive, such that I cannot offer
the slightest account of it. It is in this respect that Levinas calls the experience
of subjectivity a “passivity more passive than any passivity,” because he wants to
emphasize the complete impasse a subject is confronted with when it is forced to
be responsible to an other.
A passive subject might seem something constructed and abstract. The receptivity of
finite knowledge is an assembling of a dispersed given in the simultaneity of presence,
in immanence. The passivity “more passive still than any passivity” consisted in under-
going—or more exactly in having undergone, in a nonrepresentable past which was
never present—a trauma that could not be assumed; it consisted in being struck by the
“in” of infinity which devastates presence and awakens subjectivity to the proximity
of the other (autrui).48
Obviously we can see here some of the strongest differences between Spinoza and
Levinas, not simply in the opposition between transcendence and immanence, but
in the manner of just how well a subject can accord itself to the “external” order
which constitutes it. As we’ve seen, Spinoza holds that an individual’s relationship
with the divine order of which it is a part is unequivocally understandable, while
Levinas thinks that such knowledge necessarily undoes the ethical relationship it
is supposed to assist.
Yet despite this difference, and others, we shouldn’t ignore the more basic fact
that both of these thinkers (like Strauss) affirm the power of some moral authority
external to the individual to define what the individual is—to move, in a sense, the
issue of the individual’s identity outside of the individual once and for all. This is
the heteronomous character that both Spinoza and Levinas attribute to the ethi-
cal, wherein (ideally) the law comes from without to determine what lies within.
Both Spinoza and Levinas, further, see this “movement” as the principle ethical
achievement of Scripture.
It is in this way that Levinas can argue, with Spinoza, that the “Bible is not
aimed at the true knowledge of God but only at the teaching of a practical rule of
living, inspired by the disinterested love of God.”49 The Bible is not interested in
philosophical truth—the truth of the Greeks, as Levinas often describes it. Pace
Strauss, the purpose of Spinoza’s idea of religion is not to ultimately give way to
morality and a liberal political ethic, but to illustrate how any ethic worth its salt
is grounded in the kind of love and commitment to others the Bible emphasizes.
Thus, Levinas and Spinoza both look to the Prophet Jeremiah for the nature of
“true” religion:
Thus said the Lord: Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom; / Let not the strong
man / glory in his strength; / Let not the rich man glory in his riches. / But only in
this should one glory: / In his earnest devotion to Me, / For I the Lord act with kind-
ness, / Justice, and equity in the world, / For in these I delight—declares the Lord.
( Jeremiah 22–23)
For both Levinas and Spinoza, it is when we practice justice and charity that we
come to know that order which defines us. Ironically then, Levinas argues, it is due
to Spinoza that we can say that “Scripture teaches the true religion” without falling
into Spinozism—that is, Spinoza’s philosophy of being.50
Spinoza thus carves out a space—what Levinas calls an “espace vital”51—in
which Scripture can speak with us, as a revelation. Paradoxically, Levinas main-
tains that it is the reading of revelation that demonstrates its revelatory character.
Far from simply disseminating a revelatory form of content or information, Scrip-
ture engages its reader, calling her into relationship with the text—into a relation-
ship in which that reader is responsible to the text:
The reader is, in his own fashion, a scribe. This provides a first indication of what we
may call the ‘status’ of the Revelation: its word comes from elsewhere, from outside,
and, at the same time, lives within the person receiving it. The only ‘terrain’ where
exteriority can appear is in the human being, who does far more than listen.52
Levinas then, like Spinoza, sees the particular importance of revelation in the
way it, ineluctably calls its reader into a relation fundamentally larger than, and
in this way antagonistically opposed to, the self-referentiality of the reader as an
individual subject or ego. Further, both thinkers identify this relationship as the
heart of the ethical relationship.
Yet, for Spinoza, this relationship actually increases the power, the conatus, of
the individual, to such an extent that the individual is not properly an individual
at all anymore but a part of a collective. In contrast, while Levinas understands
this ethical relationship to be what calls the individual into question, he maintains
that, since it emphasizes the division between the individual and the other (which
calls it into question) it ironically reaffirms the reality of the individual—of the
experience of the individual, in so far as it is called into question.
The only terrain is the human being, who does far more than listen. Which means,
surely, that the person, the uniqueness of the ‘self ’, is the necessary condition of the
breach and the manifestation which enter from outside? Surely it is the human, frac-
turing the identity of substance, which can, ‘by itself ’, enable a message to come from
the outside? Not in order to collide with a reason which is ‘free’, but to assume instead
a unique shape, which cannot be reduced to a contingent ‘subjective impression.’53
Thus, though not a “subjective impression,” the “unique shape” which revela-
tion takes—a shape dependent upon the interaction of both text and subject, and
thus firmly outside the subject—confirms the reality of the subject, though only in
so far as that subject finds itself in relationship with revelation, with something
outside of and alien to itself.54 This subject is, as Levinas writes, a substance in the
Cartesian sense—an individual entity who is. Yet, far from a simple re-affirmation
of the subject’s being, the ethical relationship figures the subject anew, causing its
fundamental identity to take shape in relation to something else. While Spinoza
theorizes this encounter with Scripture as an increase in the subject’s power, and
Levinas theorizes it as the realization of both the subject’s dependence upon and
responsibility to an other, they both argue that Scripture produces, ineluctably,
a new commitment within the individual reader, wherein the individual reader
becomes aware of a relationship that constitutes her as a thing which exists in a
fundamental relationship with something else. For Spinoza, this something else
is still present to that reader, and is knowable, while Levinas maintains that this
other is fundamentally removed and unknowable. These differences are important,
to be sure, but in terms of the actual role Scripture plays in the life of its adherent
both Spinoza and Levinas come to remarkably similar conclusions in terms of the
unique ethical relationship disclosed through Scripture.
But what, really, is this kind of relationship? As noted above, both Spi-
noza and Levinas see the relationship between revelation and those who read
it as fundamentally heteronomous, and thus both understand the experience of
revelation to be, properly, an experience of obedience. However, Levinas and
Spinoza conceive of obedience in dramatically different ways: perhaps the most

important distinction between the two thinkers lies in their opposing senses of
obedience.
Levinas, of course, argues that we are immediately confronted by a problem if
we attempt to think of the ethical relationship revealed to us through Scripture as
one we can understand, enact, or satisfy. The revelation of Scripture is from the out-
side, and thus the relationship it enacts cannot be assimilated into any idea or even
any “sense” we may have. What is constitutive of revelation is its intrinsic ability
to be forever unsatisfactorily described or accounted for. Thus, given the “fracture
… produced by a movement form outside” individual subjects experience a loss of
“rational self-sufficiency.”55 Unable successfully to understand or appreciate our
new ethical relationship, Levinas argues that we must “consider the possibility
of a command a ‘you must’, which takes no account of what ‘you can.’”56 We can
understand the force—the disturbance—of this “you must” only if we appreciate
its unknowable, insatiable, character. For Levinas, the very authority of this com-
mand is found in its alterity—in its strangeness. This is a force that is definite and,
of course, infinitely demanding.
Obedience, not knowledge, is the attitude called for by the Word of God, which
cannot separate men as theories do. The Word of God is ethical. It is openly so. As
objects of faith, precepts are commanded and must be obeyed, but the motives for
obedience are not of a rational order.57
Noting the aporetic character of responsibility is important for it allows us to

see exactly why Levinas rejects what he calls “servitude.” For Levinas, obedience
is distinct from servitude in that it never obeys the particular, distinct inter-
est of someone else. For the same reasons Levinas rejects the freedom of the
ego to offer itself arbitrarily to one commitment and not another, to choose
between this relationship and that, so too does Levinas see “ego-ology” at the
heart of servitude—the idea that obedience can find full meaning in a particular
determination.
To be a “self ” is to be responsible before having done anything. It is in this sense to

substitute oneself for others. In no way does this represent servitude, for the distinc-
tion between master and slave already assumes a pre-established ego.58
True obedience can never be flattened into a particular interest of a particular ego,
especially not a purportedly sovereign or authoritative ego. Obedience is always
simultaneously marked by the demand for just action and the impossible standard
of that justice. Our obedience can never be known, can never be identified, without
succumbing to determination and thus, to servitude. Yet as vexing as this problem

may be, it is only from respect for this epistemic quandary, Levinas argues, that the
possibility of real peace can emerge.
It is necessary to ask oneself if peace, instead of being the result of an absorpition or

disappearance of alterity, would not on the contrary be the fraternal mode of a prox-
imity to the other (autrui), which would not simply be the failure to coincide with the
other but would signify precisely the surplus of sociality over ever solitude—the surplus
of sociality and love.59
For Levinas peace is always independent “of any belonging to a system,” it is

always “irreducible to a totality and refractory to synthesis.”60 Thus, “Levinasian
peace” is quite self-consciously modeled in opposition to typical political concep-
tions of peace. Levinasian peace is an ethical peace wherein the relation is not with
a state or enemy who can be known, but always “with the inassimilable other, the
irreducible other, the other, unique.”61 It is only upon the (impossible) observance
of this alterity that true peace is possible.
Scripture, Servitude, and Sovereignty
If we consider this conception of peace, and the ethic of responsibility from which
it arises, I think we can get a strong sense of why Simon Critchley suggests that—
at least without proper explication—politics is the “Achilles’ heel” of Levinas’s eth-
ical theory.62 Drawing on the work of Jacques Derrida, Critchley asks whether “the
formal ethical imperative of Levinas’s work” can “lead of a determinable political
or legal content?”63 That is, to what extent can we move from the abstract, unend-
ing demands of Levinas’s ethical framework to a politically authoritative position
where from which we can determine specific social goods or rights?
Like the great majority of liberal thinkers, such as Hobbes, Locke, and Kant,
Levinas’s conception of politics (in Critchley’s interpretation) has to be self-con-
sciously adopted as an artifice, and that it has to be an artifice that responds to
foundational ethical demands. Moreover, these other liberal thinkers before him,
Levinas maintains that the nature of this response is inevitably inadequate, as the
temporal execution of ethical principles can never entirely embody these princi-
ples (as principles, or natural laws). Thus, politics always stands fundamentally
accused by the ethic to which it responds. This is particularly the case in Levinas,
where what must be resisted at all times is even the slightest sense that the state
can accomplish or realize the responsibility to which it must answer in the world.
Indeed, in his description of this ethical danger, Critchley consistently appeals to
distinctions between the universal and the particular, the finite and the transcen-
dent, the incarnate and the disincarnate.
To my mind, the question of Levinas and politics turns on the issue of the incarnation
of ethics in politics, namely, whether ethics becomes somehow incarnated in the form
of the state, whether France, Israel, or elsewhere, or whether it is, as I would contend,
a moment of disincarnation that challenges the borders and legitimacy of the state.64
In this respect, the principle advantage of a Levinasian approach to politics is not

that it changes the relationship between politics and ethics, but only that it holds
politics to an impossible ethical standard. Like so many other liberal political the-
ories, the Levinasian approach to politics argues that the first rule of politics is that
it not take itself too seriously, that it always recognize that there is some moral
order antecedent to it and of which it is always a corruption.
Considering many of the horrors of the twentieth century (and even those
prior to it) such a conception of politics seems to make a good deal of sense, and
it is clear why so many, have found its first principle—restrain the state—to be
of grave importance. Yet it is also clear that such a conception of politics by its
own design undoes the political good it attempts to do. Indeed, the principle goal
of a Levinasian political ethic—at least in Critchley’s interpretation—is to over-
come the determinations that it puts forward, to effectively de-legitimate its own
undertakings.
For example, like many liberal political theorists, Critchley maintains that “the
essence of politics … consists in the manifestation of the multiplicity that is the
people, of the demos.”65 That said, in a manner far more exaggerated than many lib-
eral political theorists, Critchley insists that “the people” can never even be iden-
tified. “Rather the people is that empty space, that supplement that exceeds any
social quantification or accounting.”66 The people can never be defined, especially
by a state, but must always be a “manifestation of dissensus” against what the state
is doing, or what the state takes them to be.67
Levinas clearly sees a highly antagonistic relationship between politics and
ethics. In considering this tension, it is helpful to note that a common theme
emerges here between Levinas and Strauss. For both thinkers, there is a sharp
distinction between politics and philosophy (or for Levinas, ethics as first philoso-
phy). Strauss conceives of political philosophy as a means of presenting philosophy
before the polis for inspection and judgment. In this respect, political philosophy
is the discipline that subjects philosophy to political criteria. While it is true that
“‘political philosophy’ culminates in praise of the philosophic life” it does so only
because of what philosophy can bring to the concrete concerns of life (rather than
vice versa). Inevitably abstract, philosophy is incapable of demonstrating, on its
own, its worth for living in the real world. For Strauss, “it is ultimately because he
means to justify philosophy before the tribunal of the political community … that
the philosopher has to understand the political things exactly as they are under-
stood in political life.”68 Consequently, philosophy has to be judged in light of
political goods and needs. For Levinas, of course, this relationship is reversed—the
political relationship is a necessary, unavoidable distortion of the reality of our
ethical obligations (illuminated through philosophical-phenomenological analy-
sis) that must always be held to the high standards of those obligations. In both
thinkers, we see an antagonistic relationship between politics and something else,
be it philosophy or ethics.
The virtues of Spinoza’s thought present themselves at this point. What we
see in Spinoza is not an asymmetrical balance between ethics and politics, but their
thorough integration—to the extent that ethics becomes interwoven into political
structures. Indeed, a chief objective of Spinoza’s political theory is to demonstrate
the equivalence between ethical and scriptural ideals—love, charity, friendship—
and the political structures of the ideal state.
Take the city of Amsterdam, which enjoys the fruits of this freedom, to its own con-
siderable prosperity and the admiration of the world. In this flourishing state, a city of
the highest renown, men of every race and sect live in compete harmony, and before
entrusting their property to some person they will want to know no more than this,
whether he is rich of poor and whether he has been honest or dishonest in his deal-
ings. (TTP 571)
Regardless of whether or not Spinoza actually concluded Amsterdam to be such

a city, this passage—placed at the very end of the TTP—certainly demonstrates
the priority of ethics in Spinoza’s ideal commonwealth. Lacking here is any strong
emphasis on personal right or individual liberty, for though these are important
to Spinoza they are obvious merely means to the ends of harmony and kindness.
Spinoza’s ideal citizens care about their property, but they mainly care that their
property will be entrusted to those who live in “complete harmony” with their
fellow neighbors. While many see democracy’s benefit to lie in its protection of
individual and minority rights, Spinoza argues that those rights can only be really
protected if they are integrated into the whole of the social body. It is in this very
integration, Spinoza argues, that justice and peace consist. For Spinoza a state is
not worthy of its name if it exists in opposition to its citizens, and this is particu-
larly so if it inevitably opposes the values those very citizens hold dear.
But is not this really just some form of rosy totalitarianism? This is clearly the
perspective of Levinas. What is Spinoza’s response? I suggest that there are two
important and related points to appreciate here, and the first of these takes direct
issue with Levinas’s formulation of the problem. As we have seen, Levinas does
not dispute that human beings are possessed of their own individual conatus or
desire. For Levinas, this is a desire distinctly for the self or the ego, prompting that
self to ignore or obscure the primacy of the other in (false) hopes of contentedly
residing in inclinations and fancies of their own creating. In this way, although the
hope of complete self-sufficiency is delusional, the desire to be completely self-suf-
ficient is not.
If we may extrapolate a bit from Spinoza’s text, the principle question Spinoza
has for Levinas is: What sense does it make to present a theory of something
approaching the human being (however conceived phenomenologically) and only
focus on the single solitary subject? Why measure out the reality of human expe-
rience in individual increments, when one is presenting an account of what life is
really like? Whatever we take human beings to be, Spinoza argues, “human beings
can scarcely be conceived except where men have their rights in common” (PT
687). By “rights” Spinoza means those elements of the human being—specifically
its conatus, or its desire or power—that make it what it is. That is, Levinas’s ethical
theory only makes sense as an ethical theory—as a theory about how human beings
do and should behave towards one another—if it recognizes the scope of its own
claims. “As long as human natural right is determined by the power of each single
individual and is possessed by each alone, it is of no account and is notional rather
than factual” (PT 687). We must then be cognizant that there is an identity being
asserted before the alterity can even be considered—an ontological identity upon
which the principle alterity of the ethic is dependent. Derrida makes this same
point when he writes:
In its most elevated nonviolent urgency denouncing the passage through Being and
the moment of the concept, Levinas’s thought would not only propose an ethics with-
out law … but also a language without phrase. … there is no phrase which is inde-
terminate, that is, which does not pass through the violence of the concept. Violence
appears with articulation. And the latter is opened only by (the first preconceptual)
circulation of Being.69
In other words, ethics is only conceivable, even in the most minimal sense, in
regard to some kind of ontological field. To the extent that Levinas attempts to
forego ontology, to forego a positive account of what the human being is, his phi-
losophy is guilty of bad faith, for it is built upon an ontology it purports to reject.
Now, this point clearly applies more to the Levinas of Totality and Infinity
than the Levinas of Otherwise than Being. In his latter work, Levinas consciously
presents his ethics as an attempt to disrupt ontological language (to have the
“saying” disturb the “said”). I take this later revision (one prompted by Derrida’s
“Violence and Metaphysics”) to be a step towards addressing Spinoza’s argument

but it seems to me that this step does not go far enough. The problem with this
approach, as I see it, is that the ontology that it claims to disturb is only the ontol-
ogy of the subject. Though Levinas wants to insist that such a subject is always
unique and concrete, such a theory of the subject (again as a theory) only makes
sense to the extent that it refers to more than the unique and the concrete—to
the human being beyond just its individual instances. Levinas maintains that the
other is always inevitably betrayed by such forms of identity, and this is no doubt
the case, but this acknowledgement of inexorability of ontology and identity does
not lead to an ontology of the individual. Rather, as Spinoza argues, if we are to
take seriously the idea that we cannot elect ourselves out of ontological language,
we should be sure that we account for the scope of that language as best we can,
and this means recognizing that the human being is never determined in indi-
vidual allotments, but always principally as a part of a larger whole. That is, there
exists no theory of an individual alone and unique, but only of individuals as por-
tions of human existence. In this way, while Levinas seeks to greatly complicate
Descartes’s conception of substance, his sense of ontology is myopically limited
to it.
But does this mean, again, that our only political option is totalitarianism? It
is at this point that we need to return to Spinoza’s key distinction between sub-
jects, slaves, and children. While many consider a slave to be “one who acts under
orders,” Spinoza argues that “this is not completely true, for the real slave is one
who lives under pleasure’s sway and can neither see nor do what is for his own
good” (TTP 531). What determines one’s slavery is less the location from which
one’s action is formulated than whether or not it is rational. In a similar fashion,
the mark of a child’s immaturity is not simply that he is told what to do but that
the scope of his action only concerns himself, and thus is too particular to be truly
rational. In contrast, a subject is one “who, by command of the sovereign power,
acts for the common good, and therefore for his own good also” (TTP 530).
What is key in the distinction between subjects, slaves, and sons is that it is
a distinction between types of obedience—some good, some bad, but all forms
of obedience that we may well find ourselves serving. Spinoza’s argument here is
that we—as subjects—will always serve some power, the issue is whether it will be
rational or not, beneficial or not. If human beings live “under the rule of Nature
alone,” without virtue or reason or government, they will live “under the sole con-
trol of appetite” (TTP 527). That is, as appetite has “sole” control over them, they
will live entirely under its rule. Just because this rule is not an explicitly political
form of totalitarianism does not mean that it is not a form of totalitarianism, or
what Spinoza calls tyranny. Indeed, what truly constitutes, totalitarianism—in its
tyrannical form—is that it is irrational and serves the particular interest of another
alone.
In this way, Spinoza’s political theory, as Levene argues, prompts us “not to
become less obedient, but to transform our obedience into something that is also
freedom; to transform servitus into libertas.”70 We cannot constitute our own “king-
dom within a kingdom,” be that particular kingdom political or natural or some
combination of the two. Spinoza realizes that freedom and servitude necessitate
one another. There can be no sense of freedom apart from a sense of what it is that
is free, and any theory of freedom that denies this fact does not take the scope of
its own theory seriously enough (and thereby, ironically, underestimates the reach
of its own philosophical categories). Spinoza makes this point quite clear when he
describes the ultimate purpose of the state:
It follows quite clearly from my earlier explanation of the basis of the state that its
ultimate purpose is not to exercise dominion nor to restrain men by fear and deprive
them of their independence, but on the contrary to free every man from fear so that
he may live in security as far as is possible, that is, so that he may preserve his own
natural right to exist and to act, without harm to himself and to others. It is not, I
repeat, the purpose of the state to transform men from rational beings into beasts or puppets,
but rather to make them develop their mental and physical faculties in safety, to use their
reason without restraint and to refrain from the strife and the vicious mutual abuse that
are prompted by hatred, anger or deceit. Thus the purpose of the state is, in reality, freedom.
(TTP 567; emphasis mine)
As the above paragraph makes clear, Spinoza does not, at the end of his polit-
ical philosophy, insist upon some Hobbesian-inspired conception of sovereignty,
such as can be found in Strauss (or Carl Schmitt). There is no cold moment of
decision that must emerge when reason has run its course. Neither, for that matter,
is there in Spinoza any sense of political sovereignty over and apart from ecclesias-
tical authority—as in Schmitt. Rather, Spinoza argues that sovereignty converges
with religion and reason as all work together in the service of the common good.
Indeed, as Levene points out, while the prevailing conception of servitude carries
with it a “reference to human inadequacy” Spinoza’s use of the term “appears in
the portion of the Ethics in which Spinoza begins to move from the perfectibility
of human beings, culminating in the achievement of virtue, or the love of God, in
Part V.”71
In this respect, servitude is the reward, the payoff, of Spinoza’s work—realized
in the harmonious, simultaneous submission to sovereign power, reason, and
God. As Levene goes on to show, the congruity of these aspects of human life
finds expression in Spinoza’s famous dictum that “Man is God to man.” This
phrase appears in the Scholium for Proposition 35 in Part IV of the Ethics; it is a
proposition that emphasizes the men agree with one another when they “live under
the guidance of reason” (E 337).
When “man acts absolutely according to the laws of his own nature,” Spinoza
argues, “he lives under the guidance of reason (Def. 2, III), and only to that extent
is he always necessarily in agreement with the nature of another man” (E 338). The
nature of this rational “guidance,” however, is not that of philosophers alone, but is
“confirmed by daily experience with so many convincing examples as to give rise to
the common saying: ‘Man is a God to man’” (E 338). Though one may wonder just
how common such a saying was during Spinoza’s day, it cannot be doubted that
Spinoza maintained it could be confirmed in countless examples from everyday
life. It is in the common realization that our lives are bound up with one another
that we best accord ourselves with and respond to the divine order of the world.
We can see then that Strauss, Levinas, and Spinoza are all involved in cri-
tiquing the traditional idea of the subject—specifically, the idea of the subject who
chooses or wills of his own accord, the subject who is an agent. For all three think-
ers, the individual human being is constituted by a foundational and ineluctable
relationship with others. It is this relation that determines who that subject is. For
Levinas, politics is always limited because it is the ethical that is always sovereign.
For Strauss, philosophy is always suspect in its concrete, normative effect. Spino-
za’s philosophy is an attractive alternative to these two as it is able to recognize the
ethical order which calls individuals into question and is also able to conceive how
this order can be expressed as a legitimate political authority. It does so, further-
more, by insisting on the confluence of reason, religion, and politics.
Spinoza takes seriously the notions that the world is one and that the world
is ordered. There are distinctions within that order, of course, but these distinc-
tions never undo the fact that we all have this world in common, and that we are
all subjects to its order. While Spinoza is clearly open to a good deal of criticism
from both Straussian and Levinasian perspectives, his own emphasis on a sense of
order that permeates and unites philosophical, political, and religious aspects is an
important contribution to the debate surrounding these topics.
In her 1958 essay, “What is Authority?” Hannah Arendt bemoans the loss of
authority in the modern world.72 True authority, Arendt argued, is distinct from
both tyranny and totalitarianism. Tyranny is constituted by a “ruler who rules one
against all, and the ‘all’ he oppresses are all equally powerless”—that is, from a
Spinozist point of view, not much of an “all” at all.73 In a tyranny, the interests
of the sovereign and the social body are completely distinct from one another.
Under totalitarian rule, the sovereign is more integrated with the social body, yet
it is closed off from reality. The integration of the sovereign into the “whole,”
Arendt argues, is just another form of tyranny, only now its tyrannical character
is obscured by the fact that it rules not according to its own, particular interests
but for the sake of the whole. Yet, to rule in this fashion, the totalitarian sover-
eign effectively tries to control its state by closing it off to all reality, and thus all
reason—“so that they need never be aware of the abyss which separates their own
world from that which surrounds it.”74 In contrast, authority is “the groundwork
of the world,” a foundational experience that we can assume we have in common
with one another. This means that true authority is the exact opposite of particular
interests, be they of the particular person or the particular state, but is rather what
gives human beings their experience of an agreed upon reality.
For to live in a political realm with neither authority nor the concomitant awareness
that the source of authority transcends power and those who are in power, means to
be confronted anew, without the religious trust in a sacred beginning and without
the protection of traditional and therefore self-evident standards of behavior, by the
elementary problems of living together.75
Spinoza does not confront us with this problem; for him, the importance of
authority is too self-evident to be a problem. Yet, if we follow Arendt’s argument,
we live in an age where authority is not merely absent but is unthinkable. Spinoza’s
merit for us lies in response to this problem—he helps us think about authority
again, and he does this precisely through both his portrait of divine order and his
prescription for how we should respond to it and take part in it together. Any real
philosophy should want to re-orient us to this fundamental common project, this
fundamental commonality—even if it cannot be philosophically demonstrated.
Of course Spinoza thinks it can. I myself am not so optimistic. Indeed, it
seems to me that it is Spinoza’s optimism about what philosophy can do that has
ultimately distracted from this other, equally important point of emphasis in his
work. But we should not let Spinoza’s epistemological optimism—nor, for that
matter, any of his other flaws, such as his misogyny—allow us to hinder our appre-
ciation for his attempt to expose the common, and illustrate the exact sense in
which it is so. Spinoza shows us is what it is to take such authority seriously—to
consider how it works and the purpose it serves for us.
Notes
Introduction
1. Steven Nadler speculates that Spinoza Latinized his name when he started to audit classes
at the University of Leiden in 1659. See Steven Nadler, Spinoza: A Life (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2001), 163.
2. Liberalism is of course a large generalization that can take all sorts of basic forms. For
the purpose of this book I offer that liberalism is, minimally, a political philosophy that
holds that societies should be structured around a distinction between two spheres: the
public and the private. Such a society is one that has a framework of rights and liberties
within which people may pursue their separate ends, either on their own as individuals or
in voluntary association with one another. The framework of such rights is conceived and
realized through the work of a public reason to bring about what Rawls calls an “overlap-
ping consensus” about what laws should govern the society. What is important here is that
some basic, moral agreement be secured so that individuals (again, either by themselves
or as members of composite groups) can realize the modus vivendi of their choosing. It is
critical, from Rawls’s perspective, that we must always distinguish such a political society
from “a community.” A conflation of political society with some conception of community
writ large “leads to the systematic denial of basic liberties and may allow the oppressive use
of the government’s monopoly of (legal) force. “Of course,” Rawls continues, in a political
society “citizens share a common aim, and one that has a high priority: namely, the aiming
of insuring that political and social institutions are just, and of giving justice to persons
generally, as what citizens need for themselves and want for one another. It is not true,
then, that in a liberal view citizens have no fundamental common aims (V:7). Nor is it true
that the aim of political justice is not an important part of their noninstitutional, or moral,
identity … But this common aim of political justice must not be mistaken for (what I have
called) “a conception of the good.” John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1996), 146 n. 13.
3. Rebecca Goldstein, Betraying Spinoza (New York: Schocken, 2006), 65.
4. Ibid., 65.
5. Ibid., 65.
6. Ibid., 65.
7. Ibid., 69.
8. Menachem Lorberbaum, “Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Problem” in Hebraic Political
Studies Vol. 1 Num. 2 (Winter 2006), pp 203–223.
9. Steven B. Smith, Spinoza’s Book of Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), xviii.
10. Ibid., xviii.
11. Steven B. Smith, Spinoza, Liberalism, and the Question of Jewish Identity. (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1997); Lewis Samuel Feur, Spinoza and the Rise of Liberalism. (Boston:
Beacon Hill, 1958); Gilles Deleuze, Spinoza: Practical Philosophy. Translated by Robert
Hurley (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1988); Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza.
Translated by M. Joughin (New York: Zone Books, 1990); Etienne Balibar, Spinoza and
Poltics. Translated by Peter Snowdon (London: Verso Books, 1998); Antonio Negri, The
Savage Anomaly: The Power of Spinoza’s Metaphysics and Politcs. Translated by Michael
Hardt (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003); Michael Hardt and Antonio
Negri, Empire. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000).
12. Leo Strauss, Spinoza’s Critique of Religion (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
1996).
13. Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1993),
207.
14. Edwin Curley, Behind the Geometric Method (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1988).
15. Aaron Garett, The Meaning in Spinoza’s Method (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2003).
16. Following the work of Deleuze I often use the word “express” to describe the ways in which
God reveals God’s self though attributes and modes. Spinoza often uses the term explicatio
to describe this “revelation,” which can also have to connotation of “explaining,” “unfold-
ing,” or as Shirley sometimes translates it, “explicating.” Deleuze uses “express” to empha-
size the identity that persists between God and its attributes and modes, and I follow him
on this point for reasons that are clarified in chapters one and two.
17. Michael Della Rocca, The Mind/Body Problem in Spinoza (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1996).
18. Moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed Translated by Schlomo Pines (Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press, 1974), 188.
19. Robert Pippen, The Persistence of Subjectivity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2005), 1.
20. Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind. (London: Harcourt, Inc., 1978), 3–218.
n ot e s | 179
21. Romans 7.18–19. The New Oxford Annotated Bible, Third ed. (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2001), 253.
22. Augustine, On the Trinity. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 55.
23. Augustine, The City of God against the Pagans. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1998), 604–5.
24. Ibid., 638.
25. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles. In St. Thomas Aquinas on Politics and Ethics.
Translated by Paul Sigmund. (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1988), 5.
26. Ibid., 5–6.
27. Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will. In The Complete Works of Martin Luther Volume 33.
(Louisville: Eerdmans, 2002), 187–8.
28. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion translated by Ford Lewis Battles (Philadel-
phia: Westminster Press, 1960), 258.
29. Ibid., 258.
30. Ibid., 259.
31. Ibid., 265.
32. Ibid., 266.
33. Ibid., 287.
34. Ibid., 294.
35. Ibid., 294.
36. Ibid., 294.
37. Ibid., 294.
38. Ibid., 295.
39. Ibid., 297.
40. Ibid., 297.
41. In his attempt to understand how the Dutch Republic of the seventeenth century was as
strong and as rich as it was despite its lack of a particularly string central government, the
sociologist Philip S. Gorski identifies what he calls the “disciplinary revolution” effected
by Calvinism within the larger population as the principle cause behind the successes
of the Dutch. What characterized Dutch society during this period, Gorski argues, was
not a centralized government or an effective bureaucratic structure but was the ethical
discipline asserted on local levels. Central to the institution of this discipline was the
Calvinist conception of justification. While, after Max Weber, the idea of predestination
has been seen as the principle regulative ideal over Calvinists Gorski argues that the
idea of justification was just as important. “Calvin understood justification as the process
through which “by [God’s] Spirit, we are regenerated into a new spiritual nature” and
become capable of living in perfect obedience to God’s will. Spiritual growth, Calvin
believed, was manifested in the attainment of a “voluntary” and “inward” obedience, a
natural harmony between morality and desire. Hence, one might say that Calvinism con-
tained not only a work ethic, but an ethic of self-discipline. For the individual believer,
discipline was not just a theological problem but a practical one as well, and Calvinists
invented a variety of techniques for achieving it: regular Bible reading, daily journals,
moral log books, and rigid control over time. Thus Calvinism propagated new ethics and
practices of self-discipline.” Philip S. Gorski, The Disciplinary Revolution: Calvinism and
the Rise of the State in Early Modern Europe (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
2003), 20.
1. “The Face of the Whole Universe”

1. Aristotle, Metaphysics. In Complete Works. Translated by Jonathan Barnes. (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1971), 1639.
2. Ibid., 16.
3. Ibid., 18.
4. Ibid., 36.
5. The idea that Spinoza understands modes to be “expressions” of substance (and that sub-
stance therefore has an expressive nature) is, as I detail below, taken from the work of Gilles
Deleuze. Deleuze points to passages such as 1d6 (“By God I mean an absolutely infinite
being, that is, substance consisting of infinite attributes, each of which expresses eternal
and infinite essence” [Per deum intelligo ens absolute infinitum, hoc est, substantium constan-
tem infinitis attributes, quorum unumquodque aeternam et infinitam essentium exprimit]) and
1p36p (“Whatever exists expresses God’s nature or essence in a definite or determinate
way (Cor. Pr. 25); that is (Proposition 34), whatever exists expresses God’s power, which
is the cause of all things, in a definite and determinate way, and so (Proposition. 16) some
effect must come from it.” [Quicquid existit, Dei Naturam, sive essentium certo et determinato
modo exprimit, (per Coroll. Prop. 25) hoc est, (per Prop. 34.) quicuid existit, Dei potentiam, quae
omnium rerum causa est, certo et determinato modo exprimit, adeoque (per Prop. 16.) ex eo aliquis
effectus sequi debet.]).
6. While not identified explicitly, it seems likely that Spinoza may have the work of Johannes
Scotus Eriugena here, particularly his De naturae divisione.
7. A. Th. Van Deursen, Plain Lives in a Golden Age. Translated by Maarten Ultee (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1991), 235–249.
8. Georges Dicker, Descartes: An Analytical and Historical Introduction (Oxford: Oxfrord Uni-
versity Press, 1993), 231.
9. Rene Descartes, Principles of Philosophy. In The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, Volume I
Translated by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugland Murdoch. (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2005), 210.
10. Descartes, Vol. 2, 38–9.
11. Spinoza is here treating the idea of God in thought like any other thing, and while this
might strike us as counterintuitive or perhaps even a little duplicitous we must remember
that Spinoza’s conception of God is marked by a strong sense of equality—there is nothing,
for Spinoza, that is more or less divine, nothing that is distinctly sacred or distinctly pro-
fane. The idea of God in Thought is a mode like any other mode, like a garden rake or the
idea of democracy: all are affectations realized in and through specific attributes (extension
and thought).
12. Edwin Curley, Spinoza’s Metaphysics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970),
37.
13. Jonathan Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1984), 98.
n ot e s | 181
14. Like so many other historians of philosophy Bennett’s interpretation of Spinoza is in many
ways more concerned with defending Spinoza’s ideas than responding to Spinoza’s work.
In this respect, Bennett’s own interpretation of Spinoza is concerned strictly with extended
modes. As to how Spinoza himself see modes as intellectual as well extended Bennett can
only “suppose that he started with a sound doctrine about the modal nature of extended
particulars and then stretched it over mental ones as well on the strength of a general thesis
that the extended world is mirrored in detail by the mental world” (94).
15. This natural law of persistence, “conatus,” is treated explicitly in chapters 2 and 3.
16. Edwin Curley, Behind the Geometrical Method (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1988), 33.
17. Indeed, like Bennett, Curley’s conclusion here seems to be rooted in what he thinks of as
reasonable than as anything Spinoza might have held.
18. Aaron Garrett, Meaning in Spinoza’s Method (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2003), 29.
19. Ibid., 29.
20. Ibid., 51.
21. Ibid., 51.
22. Ibid., 7–8.
23. This position is also shared by Hary Austryn. Wolfson, The Philosophy of Spinoza. Volume
One. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1934), 75.
24. Deleuze argues that “it is easy to honor Spinoza with the place of honor in the Cartesian
succession; except that he bulges out of that place in all directions, there is no living corpse
who raises the lid of his coffin so powerfully, crying so loudly ‘I am not of yours.’ It was on
Spinoza that I worked the most seriously according to the norms of the history of philos-
ophy—but he more than any other gave me the feeling of a gust of air from behind each
time you read him, of a witch’s broom which he makes you want to mount. We have not
yet begun to understand Spinoza, and I myself no more than others.” Dialogues. Second
Edition. Translated by Claire Parnet. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 15.
25. Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition Translated by Paul Patton (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1994), 35.
26. Ibid., 36.
27. Ibid., 36.
28. Ibid., 38.
29. Duns Scotus, “Concerning Metaphysics” in Philosophical Writings (Indianapolis: Hackett
Publishing, 1987), 4.
30. Ibid., 7.
31. Ibid., 8.
32. Ibid., 4.
33. Ibid., 7.
34. Peter King, “Scotus on Metaphysics” in The Cambridge Companion to Duns Scotus (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 22.
35. Soctus, 22.
36. Soctus, 25.
37. Ibid., 4.
38. Deleuze, 1993, 4; emphasis mine.

39. Ibid., 39.
40. Ibid., 39. Deleuze gives the example of whiteness and its varying shades or degrees. The
nature of whiteness has a formal property that constitutes its essence and unifies all other
tones of whiteness by that formal property. Whiteness is not one, certain, singular shade—
its nature is not restricted and exclusive but diverse and varying. In this respect, we have the
formal sense of whiteness along with the modal reality (realities) in which it is expressed,
and we thus see that being is that manifold reality which unites all these aspects. Subse-
quently: “univocal being therefore does not only implicate distinct attributes or qualitative
forms which are themselves univocal, it also relates these and itself to intensive factors or
individuating degrees which vary the mode of these attributes or forms without modifying
their essence in so far as this is being. If it is true that distinction in general relates being
to difference, formal distinction and modal distinction are two types under which univocal
being is related, by itself, to difference itself ” (DR, 39–40). Yet it is crucial that while we see
how these differences are united we maintain, simultaneously, their distinction. Indeed, as
we shall explore later on in this chapter, Spinoza argues that most human errors result from
confusing these different ways of being.
41. Ibid., 40.
42. It is clear then that Scotus’s ontology was a radical break from more traditional under-
standings of being. Yet though Scotus’s insight into the nature of being was profound in
Deleuze’s eyes, the implications of his insight were neglected and the more traditional
dichotomies in his thought went unchallenged. For all his talk of the being or reality of
univocity, the idea itself was only ever conceived within the context of human finitude and
the problem of original sin. When Scotus directly theorizes the nature of God, the idea of
univocity seems to fade into the background. In this sense, Deleuze argues, Scotus clings to
the transcendence of Christianity rather than make the transition to a full-fledged form of
pantheism.
43. Richard Mason, The God of Spinoza: A Philosophical Study (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 2001), 53.
44. John Cottingham, “Preface to Ojections and Replies” in The Philosophical Writings of Des-
cartes, Vol. II.
45. Ibid., 72.
46. Ibid., 72–3.
47. Ibid., 85.
48. Ibid., 86.
49. Ibid. 86.
50. Ibid., 213; emphasis mine.
51. Descartes defines a modal distinction in two ways: as either “a distinction between a mode,
properly so called, and the substance of which it is a mode; and secondly, as a distinction
between two modes of the same substance” (213–4) {modal distinctions are the ways modes
distinguish themselves from their substance or from one another}. Along similar lines, a
conceptual distinction is either “a distinction between a substance and some attribute of
that substance without which the substance is unintelligible” or “a distinction between two
such attributes of a single substance” (214).
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52. Ibid., 213.

53. Ibid., 210.
54. One of the reasons Curley objects the attribution of pantheism or monism to Spinoza
is because he associates this position with Descartes, and understands there to be a big
difference between the two on the character of substance. That there is such a difference
is undoubtedly true; but (as I go on to argue) that difference lies in the inconsistency of
Descartes’s monism (as Spinoza sees it) rather than its scope.
55. Ibid., 215.
56. Ibid., 210.
2. “A Kingdom Within a Kingdom”

1. Michael Della Rocca, Representation and the Mind/Body Problem in Spinoza (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1996), 18; emphasis mine.
2. Ibid., 18.
3. Ibid., 118.
4. Ibid., 129.
5. Curley, Behind the Geometric Method, 153n13.
6. Henry Allison, Benedict de Spinoza: An Introduction (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1987).
7. Bennett, 142.
8. Ibid., 142.
9. Della Rocca, 132.
11. Ibid., 138.
12. Ibid., 132,
13. Interestingly, Spinoza argues that this was point grasped by the ancient Israelites (an
important point we shall return to later): “This truth seems to have been glimpsed by some
of the Hebrews, who hold that God, God’s intellect, and the things understood by God are
one and the same” (267).
14. Della Rocca argues that the term modis could be translated either way, as mode or thing,
and that it simply makes more sense in the context of Spinoza’s philosophy to understand
him to be using the term “non-technically” (121).
15. Ibid., 121.
16. Ibid., 121.
17. Deleuze, 1990, 106.
18. Ibid., 108.
19. Ibid., 108.
20. Ibid., 108.
21. This equality of modes does not entail or even imply a equality between substance, attri-
butes, and modes.
22. Ibid., 109.
24. Ibid., 110.

25. Harry Austryn Wolfson, The Philosophy of Spinoza (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer-
sity Press, 1962). Wolfson points to Cicero, Augustine, Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Hobbes,
and even Morteira as other theorists of conatus. Yet while these thinkers saw the term as
applying exclusively to animate things Spinoza argues that any extended thing possesses a
form of conatus. (See Wolfson, pgs. 195–201) A consideration of Spinoza’s relationship to
natural law thinkers begins the following chapter.
26. Ibid., 204.
27. For Leibniz, “there is one monad which is dominant with respect to the aggregate of
monads which ground the body of the organism; the dominant monad is of course the
soul which endows the corporeal substance its unity.” Nicholas Jolley, Leibniz (New York:
Routledge, 2005), 82.
28. The term “involve” or “involvit” implies a logical “rolling into” or “enveloping.”
29. It is worth noting here that when Spinoza brings up the relation of mind and body and
the formation of the individual in the process, he yet again contextualizes the whole
discussion around the ontological priority of substance. See 2p11s: “From the above we
understand not only that the human Mind is united to the body but also what is to be
understood by the union of Mind and Body. But nobody can understand this union ade-
quately or distinctly unless he first gains adequate knowledge of the nature of our body.
For what we have so far said is of quite general application, and applies to me no more
than to other individuals, which are all animate, albeit in different degrees. For there is
necessarily in God an idea of each thing whatever, of which God is the cause in the same
way as he is the cause of the idea of the human body. And so whatever we have asserted
of the idea of the human body must necessarily be asserted of the idea of each thing”
(E 251).
30. Margaret D. Wilson, “Spinoza’s Theory of Knowledge” In Cambridge Companion to Spi-
noza Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 111.
31. Of course both of these points are more complicated than they first appear and will be
explored in more detail in chapter 4. Suffice it to say for now that Spinoza’s critique of
Maimonides stems directly from this point: “For since the supreme authority or the inter-
pretation of Scripture is vested in each individual, the rule that governs interpretation must
be nothing other than the natural light that is common to all, and not to any supernatural
light, not any eternal authority. Nor must this be so difficult as not to be available to any
but skilled philosophers; it must be suited to the natural and universal ability and capacity
of mankind” (TTP 471).
32. Indeed, one can reasonably infer that Spinoza would have agreed with Alasdair Mac-
Intyre’s view that moral relativism is a self-defeating argument. For MacIntyre, the rel-
ativist’s assertion that it is wrong to argue for binding normative realities in fact asserts a
specific and purportedly real vision of both normativity and reality. How can one say that
an idea contends nothing when the very idea behind such a sentiment is itself a conten-
tion? Spinoza is making a very similar claim here: willing cannot take place apart from that
which it purports to will, for the idea asserted necessarily asserts something by its own right.
See Three Rivals Versions of Moral Inquiry (South Bend: The University of Notre Dame
Press, 1991).
n ot e s | 185
33. Our attempts at willing are not, of course, the same as realizing or accomplishing. More-
over, the infinite character of the will is for most Christian theologians its principle prob-
lem, as it can (and inevitably does) will too much, too indiscriminately. Indeed, Augustine
(for example) saw the willful essence of human beings as the essence of original sin. “The
twisted human will, not marriage, not even the sexual drive, was what was new in the
human condition after Adam’s fall. The fallen will subjected the original, God-given bonds
of human society—friendship, marriage, and paternal command—to sickening shocks of
willfulness, that caused these to sway, to fissure, and to change their nature.” Peter Brown,
The Body and Society (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 404.
3. “Nothing More Useful than Man…”

1. Given that Spinoza thinks (as we shall explore below) that all creatures have a “right” to act
out of the power of their nature, and that such rights are simply just realities of what Nature
has caused or decreed, there is no difference between “natural laws” and “natural rights” in
his work.
2. Wolfson, 195–208.
3. Augustine, City of God Against the Pagans Translated by R.W. Dyson (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1998), 485–6.
4. Thomas Hobbes, “De Corpore,” in Human Nature and De Corpore Politico (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1999), 210. Further, in the Leviathan, Hobbes argues that conatus “when
it is towards something that causes it is called Appetite or Desire” (L I.6.1).
5. Descartes, Vol. I, 240.
6. Ibid., 240.
7. Though he argues that these two laws are similar in terms of how they act or behave, Spi-
noza nonetheless cannot help but note here that they are different in how they regard the
thing moved or preserved—specifically its identity… “For if I say that in this body A there
is nothing else than a certain quantity of motion, from this it clearly follows that, as long
as I am attending to the body A, I must always say that the body is moving. For if I were
to say that it is losing its force of motion, I am necessarily ascribing to it something else
beyond what we supposed in the hypothesis, something that is causing it to lose its nature.
Now if this reasoning seems rather obscure, then let us grant that this conatus to motion is
something other than the very laws and nature of motion” (PCP, 188).
8. Augustine, 485.
9. Augustine, 486.
10. Augustine, 486.
11. Timothy C. Potts, Conscience in Medieval Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2002), 10.
12. Anthony Celano, “The End of Practical Wisdom: Ethics as Science in the Thirteenth
Century.” In Journal of the History of Philosophy, 33 (1995), 240.
13. Ibid., 239.
14. Thomas Aquinas. Quoted in David Gallagher, “Thomas Aquinas on the Will as Rational
Appetite” In Journal of the History of Philosophy (1991), 562 (pgs 559–584).
15. Robert A. Greene, “Instinct of Nature: Natural Law, Synderesis, and the Moral Sense” 58.2
(1997), 173 (pgs. 173–198).
16. Potts, 10.
17. Ibid., 10.
18. The Rabbinical doctrine of two competing impulses, yetzer ha-ra and yetzer ha-tob, is worth
considering here, for while it doesn’t specifically regard the idea of conscience the notion
that human beings are clearly, fundamentally disposed to seek out their own good is cer-
tainly at work.
19. Greene, 186.
20. Ibid., 173.
21. Potts, 11.
22. There’s a sense in which Hobbes tries to bring both of these senses of conatus together as
well. While Hobbes clearly defines conatus as the implicit movement of a thing, he also
puts a tremendous amount of weight on the idea of choice or decision-making, and his
emphasis is especially evident in his political theory. It is these different two senses of will,
internal to Hobbes’s own theory, that make his larger social contract theory inconsistent.
See Patrick Riley, Will and Political Legitimacy (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press,
1999), 22–60.
23. Curley, “Kissinger, Spinoza, and Genghis Kahn,” In The Cambridge Compnaion to Spinoza
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 335.
24. Ibid., 335.
25. Ibid., 334.
26. This is not to imply that Hobbes thinks there is no moral criteria outside of convention—
only that there are no political right to it [morality] in nature. Rather, for Hobbes, nature
prompts us to behavior squarely opposed to the laws it holds us to: “the laws of nature (as
justice, equity, modesty, and (in sum) doing to others, as we would be done to,) of themselves
without the terror of some power, to cause them to be observed, are contrary to our natural
passions, that carry us to partiality, pride, revenge, and the like.” (Hobbes, 111).
27. Of course for Hobbes this authority is limited to the realm of this world and to matters
concerning the “external forum.”
28. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 114.
29. Riley, 51.
30. Steven B. Smith, Spinoza, Liberalism, and the Jewish Question (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1997), 134.
31. Smith, Spinoza, Liberalism, and the Jewish Question, 134.
32. Etiene Balibar, “Jus-Pactum-Lex: On the Constitution of the Subject in the Theologico-Political
Treatise” In The New Spinoza Translated by Ted Stolze (Minneapolis: University of Minne-
sota Press, 1997), 171.
33. Ibid., 171.
34. Ibid., 171.
35. Ibid., 171.
36. Ibid., 171.
37. Ibid., 172.
38. Ibid., 172.
n ot e s | 187
39. Ibid., 172.

40. Indeed Hobbes argues that this applies to even natural laws, since they “bind in foro interno”
and therefore “may be broken … in case a man think it contrary.” Thomas Hobbes, Levia-
than (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 105.
41. Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality Vol. I: An Introduction (New York: Vintage, 1990),
143.
42. Ibid., 139. Foucault makes it quite clear that biopower is a form of sovereignty distinct to
the modern era: “One knows how many times the question has been raised concerning the
role of an ascetic morality in the first formation of capitalism; but what occurred in the
eighteenth century in some Western countries, an even bound up with the development
of capitalism, was a different phenomenon having perhaps a wider impact than the new
morality; this was nothing less than the entry of life into history, that is, the entry of phe-
nomena peculiar to the life of the human species into the order of knowledge and power,
into the sphere of political techniques” (141–142).
43. Balibar, “Jus-Pactum-Lex,” 185.
44. Ibid., 185.
45. Etienne Balibar “Spinoza, the Anti-Orwell,” in Masses, Classes, and Ideas translated by
James Swenson (New York: Routledge, 1994), 10.
46. Ibid., 15.
47. Balibar, “Jus-Pactum-Lex,” 183.
48. Ibid., 183.
49. Antonio Negri, “Reliqua Deiderantur: A Conjecture for a Definition of the Concept of
Democracy in the Final Spinoza” In The New Spinoza Translated by Ted Stolze (Minneap-
olis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 231.
50. Ibid., 230.
51. Ibid., 233.
52. Ibid., 233.
53. Ibid., 238.
54. Ibid., 262.
55. Ibid., 238.
56. Ibid., 238.
57. Ibid., 239.
58. Ibid., 234.
59. Balibar, “Spinoza, the Anti-Orwell,” 51.
60. Ibid., 49.
61. Ibid., 51.
62. Ibid., 51.
63. Negri, 246.
64. Ibid., 246.
65. Ibid., 241. It seems odd, at first, to see Negri quoting from 5p18 here—“Nobody can hate
God.” Not only has Negri rejected the possibility of attributing any religious sensibility
to Spinoza but he has rejected the very idea of learning from Part 5 of the Ethics. It is
important to see, however, that Negri’s argument tries to walk back the religious character
of Spinoza shortly after dismissing it. Spinoza’s thought is a “theology without theology”
where we see an “extremely profound materialist pietas of the Book of Job” (241.2). This
characterization, of course, is just a continuation of Negri’s inclination to read Spinoza in
ahistorical, extra-legal terms. The religious sensibility we can attribute to Spinoza is one
that is peculiar—not only unique to Spinoza but squarely opposed to “religion” commonly
understood. Such a religion is inherently open and creative; driven by a love of an imma-
nent, productive ontology rather than a desire to obey Scriptural or institutional authori-
ties—much less a God beyond this world. This issue is further addressed in the following
section and, principally, the following chapter.
66. Jonathan Israel, Radical Enlightenment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 265.
67. Ibid., 265.
68. Ibid., 265.
69. Ibid., 265.
70. Stuart Hampshire, Spinoza and Spinozism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 138.
71. Smith, 25.
72. Ibid., 25.
73. Ibid., 25.
74. It is telling that Spinoza uses the example of Moses, whom Spinoza elsewhere calls “divinely
inspired” and “the greatest of all prophets,” when making this point (TTP 501). Moses,
Spinoza argues in chapter 20, “gained the strongest of holds on the minds of his people
not by deception but by his divine virtue, for he was thought to be a man of God whose
every word and action was divinely inspired” (TTP 566). However, even Moses’ divinely
inspired authority over the minds of the Israelites was not enough to prevent “murmurings
and criticisms” (TTP 566) in the hearts and words of his people. Yet when Spinoza consid-
ers these murmurings he does not pause and reflect on the entitlement that the Israelites
naturally had in response to Moses (as the representative of the Lord), but asserts that even
in this circumstance individuals could not but help exercise their own minds—apart from
and in unruly response to the voice of God. In this case, we see that even on such austere
occasions, free thought is irrepressible. Spinoza concludes from this that “if such exemp-
tion from criticism [from free thinking] were conceivable, it would surely be in the case of
[such] a monarchy, [and] not a democracy, where the sovereignty is corporately held by all
the people” (TTP 566).
75. Nancy Levene, Spinoza’s Revelation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 186.
76. Ibid., 186.
4. “The Supreme Reward of the Divine Law”

1. Louis Althusser, “The Only Materialist Tradition,” in The New Spinoza, 2–18.
2. That the Pharisees were concerned “only” with the public good is an important qualifica-
tion to Spinoza’s argument and one that will be explored more below.
3. Adam Sutcliffe, Judaism and Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2005), 17.
4. Ibid., 17 This is not to imply that many of these thinkers didn’t think that Spinoza took
reason much too far and that his philosophy led, ultimately, to atheism. Rather, Sutcliffe’s
n ot e s | 189
point here is that, whatever his ultimate conclusions, the very phenomenon of a Jew liber-
ating himself from the legalistic preoccupations of his nation was a great testimony to the
power of reason and enlightened thinking.
5. Jonathan Hess, Germans, Jews, and the Claims of Modernity (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2002), 6 While the larger context of Hess’s analysis concerns the role of Jews and
Judaism in German intellectual life, the above quotation is his characterization of the larger
Enlightenment.
6. David Novak, Natural Law and Judaism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 5.
7. Ibid., 27.
8. It is tempting to infer a critique of Hobbes here. In the Leviathan Hobbes describes true
worship as an inherently private affair. For Hobbes, “because there is nothing to be
compared with God in power; we honour him not but dishonour him by any less than
infinite. And this honour is properly of its own nature, secret, ad internal in the heart”
(430–1). Indeed, it is telling that—in stark contrast to Spinoza—Hobbes maintains that
even the laws of nature “oblige in foro interno; that is to say, they bind to a desire they
should take place; but in foro externo; that is, to the putting them in act, not always”
(105).
9. Smith, 151.
10. In regard to salvation [“salus”] Spinoza seems to argue, in one instance that it occurs
through the seemingly private operations of the intellect as it perceives the truth. In the
TTP Spinoza argues that “true salvation and blessedness consist in true contentment of
mind” (TTP 467). Yet, as Spinoza makes plain in 5p36s of the Ethics, the “contentment” of
salvation has a distinct communal aspect: “our salvation or blessedness of freedom consists,
namely, in the constant and eternal love toward God, that is in God’s love toward men”
(E 378).
11. If the love human beings have, or should have, is in fact infinite doesn’t that mean that
human beings are in themselves infinite? For Spinoza the answer to this question is clearly
no, but only because the question demands that we consider human beings as they are in
themselves. As we have seen, if we consider human beings—modes—in terms of their strict
particularity they are obviously infinite. The problem with this for Spinoza is that modes
should not be understood from this perspective; indeed, modes are always misunderstood
when they are considered strictly in this limited sense, for Spinoza a mode can only be
understood if we understand its cause. The problem with the question above is thus that
it not only makes no attempt to understand the cause of human beings, but it implies
that human beings are their own cause. It thus focuses on the duration of a specific mode
or modes, rather than the eternal cause which brings them about and by which they are.
“If,” Spinoza argues “we turn our attention to the common belief entertained by men, we
shall see that they are indeed conscious of the eternity of the mind, but they confuse it
with duration and assign it to imagination or to memory, which they believe to continue
after death” (E 378). Thus human beings come to imagine eternity as a matter perpetual
personal duration when in reality it is a matter of participating in something much, much
larger than one mere form or expression of human life.
12. Mishneh Torah: H. Teshuba 10.6 In Herbert A Davidson, Moses Maimonides: The Man and
His Work (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 246.
13. Moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed Vol. 2 Translated by Shlomo Pines (The
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 492.
14. Ibid., 492–3.
15. Ibid., 493.
16. Ibid., 625.
17. Ibid., 625.
18. That Maimonides argues that this first commandment is followed by the obligation to
believe in God’s unity is, of course, a thematic parallel with Spinoza that speaks for itself—
if only suggestively.
19. Moses Maimonides, Book of Commandments. In Davidson, 179.
20. Ibid., 235.
21. Moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed Vol. I Translated by Shlomo Pines (Chi-
cago: The University of Chicago Press, 1963), 188.
22. Davidson, 541–2.
23. This is not to imply that Spinoza is a teleological thinker, at least not in the classic sense
of the term. The end of human life, for Spinoza, is an epistemological realization—not an
ontological one.
24. While the commandments clearly prompt human beings to live together in a peaceful
and mutually beneficial fashion, Maimonidies is clear that the ideal way of loving God
is solitary. The love of God, Maimonides writes, “succeeds mostly in a state of solitude
and seclusion; which is why every man of virtue secludes himself as much as possible
and keeps company with others only when this is unavoidable” (Maimonides Vol. I
188).
25. It is particularly interesting that Hebrew was a preoccupation of two of the most distin-
guished jurists of the seventeenth century: Hugo Grotius and John Selden. See Richard
Tuck, Natural Rights Theories and Jason P. Rosenblatt, Renaissance England’s Chief Rabbi:
John Selden.
26. This is not to imply, again, that there was not substantial opposition to the study of
Hebrew; it seems many across Europe were quite concerned about the “judaizing” effects
this practice could have. The point, rather, is that Spinoza’s Compendium is an attempt
at Hebrew instruction that arises in conjunction with a number of other such attempts,
such as J. Buxtorf ’s famous Thesaurus Grammaticus Lingue Sanctae Hebraeae (1620), or
those of Rabbi Saul Morteira and Rabbi Mennaseh ben Israel. See Frank E. Manuel, The
Broken Staff: Judaism through Christian Eyes (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1992).
27. “Nearly all the words for fruits, birds, fishes have perished with the passage of time, together
with numerous other words” (TTP 463).
28. Spinoza offers an interesting example of the sort of confusion and even conflict such ambi-
guities tend to cultivate. In his Letter to the Hebrews, Paul offers an interpretation of Gen-
esis 47:31 that is “very different from that of the pointed Hebrew text” (TTP 464). If one
employs the commentary of points in their reading of Genesis 47:31 read the passage as
“Israel bent over the head of the bed” while Paul takes the text to read “Israel bent over the
head of his staff ” (TTP 464). While the former changes ayin to alef the latter sees mate as
the correct understanding of mita. While the line itself speaks only to the approximate age
n ot e s | 191
that Jacob was prior to his illness, the conclusions drawn are obviously divergent. … “In my
opinion it is the latter who should be regarded as at fault” (TTP 464). That it is Paul—who
Spinoza argues possessed and wrote in the Hebrew idiom—should be so confused only
testifies to the lawlessness of the Hebrew language.
29. “For instance, el, which means “to,” is often used for ‘al, which means “above”, and vice-
versa. As a result, any parts of a text may often be rendered ambiguous or appear to be
meaningless” (TTP 463). Or, the letters ‘bet” and “vet”—or “pay” and “faye” (peh and feh)
look the same, but requite pointing to determine their pronouncement.
30. “Although our method,” Spinoza writes, “requires us to accept as uncorrupted a certain
tradition of the Jews—namely, the meaning of the words of the Hebrew language, which
we have accepted from them—we can be quite sure of the one while doubting the other.
For while it may occasionally have been in someone’s interest to alter the meaning of some
passage, it could never have been to anyone’s interest to change the meaning of a word”
(TTP 462).
31. Spinoza urges his reader to see Maimonides’s treatment of the idea of creation in his Guide
(TTP 468).
32. What Maimonides was convinced of, it seems, was that the Torah was true, and that there
was little to no philosophical certainty to be found on this issue. This rational ambiguity
becomes especially clear when we see, as Kenneth Seeskin points out, that Maimonides’s
position on creation is much different in the Mishnah Torah than it is in the Guide. “In the
Mishneh Torah,” Seeskin writes, “there is no suggestion that the Law rests on a less than
certain footing. The difference can be explained by saying that Maimonides recognized
that some of the things he had taken for granted earlier may not be true and that the read-
ers of the Guide granted earlier may not be true and that the readers of the Guide could live
with the fact that human knowledge is limited. This is why he refuses to say that Aristotle’s
position on creation is absurd even though many of those same readers would have wanted
to hear it. This, then, is another case in which the duty to tell the truth takes precedence
over the need to conceal it. Having defended this position to the best of his ability, he
admits that the speculative nature of the subject prevents him from doing more.” Kenneth
Seeskin, Maimonides on the Origin of the World (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2005),
195.
33. Consider the following distinction Spinoza draws between Reason and Faith: “faith allows
to every man the utmost freedom to philosophize … It condemns as heretics and schismat-
ics only those who teach such beliefs as promote obstinacy, hatred, strife and anger, while it
regards as the faithful those who promote justice and charity to the best of their intellectual
powers and capacity” (TTP 519).
34. A thorough discussion of Meyer’s Philosophia sacrae scripturae interpres. Exercitatio paradoxa
can be found in Samuel Preus, Spinoza and the Irrelevance of Biblical Authority (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2001), 34–67.
35. Richard H Popkin, “Spinoza and Bible Scholarship” In The Cambridge Companion to Spi-
noza (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 403.
36. Steven Nadler, Spinoza’s Ethcs: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2006), 18.
37. Ibid., 19.
38. For instance: “The sayings of Moses, ‘God is fire,’ and ‘God is jealous,’ are perfectly clear
as long as we attend only to the meanings of the words; and so, in spite of their obscurity
from the perspective of truth and reason, I classify these sayings as clear. … the question
as to whether Moses did or did not believe that God is fire must in no wise be decided
by the rationality or irrationality of belief, but solely from the other pronouncements of
Moses” (458–9). If we interpret Moses’ description of God as fire, Spinoza argues, within
the context of his other writings one must conclude that Moses meant that God is jealous
and angry (his anger ‘burns hot’) and not that God is, fundamentally, of fire. However,
such a conclusion from Spinoza’s perspective is still far, far away from the knowledge we
gain from reason. God—by definition - does not have human characteristics. Nonetheless,
“it is not permissible for us to manipulate Scripture’s meaning to accord with our reason’s
dictates and our perceived opinions; all knowledge of the Bible is to be sought from the
Bible alone.” (TTP 459).
39. Preus, 174–5.
40. “Therefore the certainty acquired by the prophets from signs was not mathematical cer-
tainty—that is, the certainty that necessarily derives from apprehension of what is appre-
hended of seen—but only of a moral kind, and the signs were vouchsafed only to convince
the prophet. It therefore follows that the signs vouchsafed were suited to the beliefs and
capacity of the prophet” (TTP 406).
Conclusion
1. Leo Strauss, Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, translated by E.M. Sinclair (Chicago: The Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1997). That he agrees with Cohen’s indictment of Spinoza does
not mean that he agrees with how Cohen arrived at that indictment. Strauss clearly objects
to Cohen’s ahistorical analysis of the role of reason in Spinoza’s thought. See, “Cohen’s
Bible Analysis,” in The Early Writings, translated by Michael Zank (Albany: State Univer-
sity of New York Press, 2002), 140–172.
2. Hermann Cohen, The Religion of Reason: Out of the Sources of Judaism (Atlanta: Scholars
Press, 1995), 331.
3. Ibid., 331.
4. Herman Cohen, “Spinoza über Staat und Religion, Judentum und Christendom.” In
Steven B. Smith, Reading Leo Strauss (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2006),
32.
5. That he agrees with the nature of Spinoza’s betrayal of Judaism does not entail, however,
that he entirely dismisses Spinoza’s larger philosophy. As Smith points out, Strauss seems
to temper Cohen’s dismissal of Spinoza. Strauss writes: “it is not in accordance with Spi-
noza’s wishes that he be inducted into the pantheon of the Jewish nation. Under these
circumstances it seems to us an elementary imperative of Jewish self-respect that we Jews
should at last again relinquish our claim on Spinoza. By doing so, no means surrender him
to our enemies. Rather, we leave him to that distant and strange community of ‘neutrals’
whom one can call, with considerable justice, the community of good Europeans.’” Smith,
Reading Leo Strauss, 65–6.
n ot e s | 193
6. Strauss, Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, 19.

7. Ibid., 19.
8. Ibid., 19.
9. Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
1988).
10. Ibid., 167.
11. Ibid., 168.
12. Strauss puts this point powerfully when he writes: “If it is of the essence of the wise man
that he is able to live under every form of government, i.e., even in societies in which free-
dom of speech is strictly denied, it is of whose expression happens to be forbidden. The
philosopher who knows the truth must be prepared to refrain from expressing it, not so
much for reasons of convenience as for reasons of duty.” (180).
14. “The Biblical God forms light and creates darkness, makes peace and creates evil; Spinoza’s
God is simply beyond good and evil. God’s might is His right, and therefore the power
of every being is as such its right; Spinoza lifts Machiavelianism to theological heights.
Good and evil differ only from a merely human point of view; theologically the distinction
is meaningless. The evil passions are evil only with a view to human utility; in themselves
they show forth the might and right of God no less than other things which we admire by
the contemplation of which we are delighted.” Ibid., 77.
16. Ibid., 260.
17. Ibid., 260.
18. Ibid., 262.
19. Leo Strauss, “Progress or Return?” in Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity (Albany:
State University of New York Press, 1997), 99.
20. Ibid., 99.
21. Ibid., 100.
22. Ibid., 101.
23. Ibid., 101.
24. Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: The Univeristy of Chicago Press, 1999),
31–2.
25. Ibid., 158.
26. Ibid., 158.
27. Leo Strauss, “What is Political Philosophy?” in What is Political Philosophy? (Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press, 1959), 22. Strauss amplifies this point in his, “On Classical
Political Philosophy,” (also in What is Political Philosophy, 93): “Since human life is living
together or, more exactly, is political life, the question ‘Why philosophy?’ means ‘Why does
political life need philosophy?’ This question calls philosophy before the tribunal of the
political community: it makes philosophy politically responsible.”
28. Smith, Reading Leo Strauss, 159.
29. Strauss, Natural Right and History, 32.
30. Ibid., 32.
31. Ibid., 79.
32. Emmanuel Levinas, “The Spinoza Case,” in Difficult Freedom: Essays on Judiasm translated
by Sean Hand (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1997), 108.
33. Ibid., 108.
34. Ibid., 106.
35. Ibid., 109.
36. Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. Translated by Alphonso
Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2001), 233.
37. Emmanuel Levinas, Otherwise than Being (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2002),
79. Levinas comes close to commenting on the problem he sees in Spinoza’s actual pan-
theism when he writes: “The divinity of being or nature consists in the pure positivity of
esse, in the very strength of its being, which expresses itself in the deductive engendering of
Natura naturata. This is an unsurpassable force or rationality, for there is nothing beyond
that positivity and that conatus, no value in the sense of surpassing of being by the good;
it is a totality without beyond, affirmed perhaps more deeply than in Nietzsche himself—a
totality that is but another name for the non-clandestine of being, or for its intelligibility,
in which inner and outside coincide.” PN … ?
38. Given his antipathy to the ego as a kind of substance, it is tempting to interpret Levinas
as fundamentally a critic of Descartes. While this is undoubtedly true to some extent, it is
important to see, as Dennis Kenaan King has shown, that Levinas’s critique of the Carte-
sian subject takes its principle lead from the Meditations—specifically from the idea of a
transcendent God discussed in the third meditation. See Dennis King Keenan, Death and
Responsibility: The “Work” of Levinas (Albany: State Univeristy of New York Press, 1999).
It is in the Meditations, Levinas argues, that “Descartes, better than an idealist or a realist,
discovers a relation with a total alterity irreducible to interiority, which nevertheless does
not do violence to interiority—a receptivity without passivity, a relation between freedoms”
(Totality and Infinity, 211).
39. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 113.
40. Ibid., 187.
41. Ibid., 134.
42. Levinas, “The Spinoza Case,” 107.
43. Ibid, 107.
44. Emmanuel Levinas, “Have You Reread Baruch?” in Difficult Freedom, 112.
45. Ibid., 112.
46. Ibid., 117.
47. Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses” in Lenin and Philosophy
translated by Ben Brewster (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2001), 117–120.
48. Emmanuel Levinas, “God and Philosophy” in Basic Philosophica Writings. Translated by
Simon Critchley and Robert Bernasconi. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996),
142.
49. Levinas, “Have You Re-read Baruch?” 114.
50. Ibid., 114 Levinas adds, that “the ethical significance of the Scriptures, whose irreducibility
was perceived by Spinoza’s genius and which he highlighted in an age in which axioms, still
n ot e s | 195
superb, had nothing to fear from axiomatics, has survived the dogmatism of fitting ideas”
(118).
51. Emmanuel Levinas, “Revelation in the Jewish Tradition,” in The Levinas Reader. Trans-
lated by Sarah Richmond (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1989), 194.
52. Ibid., 194.
53. Ibid., 194.
54. A key to note here is that it is, for Levinas, the great variety of subjects who come into
encounter with Scripture that helps lend it its power. That is, it is the diversity of inter-
pretations, by its very diversity, testifies to Scripture’s power. The principle characteristic
of Revelation for Levinas is that it has no one interpretation, no one meaning. “The fact
that God’s living word can be heard in a variety of was does not mean that the Revelation
adopts the measure of the people listening to it; rather, that measure becomes, itself, the
measure of Revelation. The multiplicity of people each one of them indispensable, is nec-
essary to produce all the dimensions of meaning; the multiplicity of meaning is due to the
multiplicity of people. We can now appreciate in its full weight the reference made by the
Revelation to exegesis, to the freedom attaching to this exegesis and the participation of
the person listening to the Word, which makes itself heard now, but can also pass down the
ages to announce the same truth in different times.” (Ibid., 195)
55. Ibid., 205.
56. Ibid., 205.
57. Levinas, “Have You Reread Baruch?” 114.
58. Emmanuel Levinas, “Substitution,” in Basic Philosophical Writings, 94.
59. Emmanuel Levinas, “Peace and Proximity,” in Basic Philosophical Writings, 165.
60. Ibid., 165.
61. Ibid., 166.
62. Simon Critchley, “Five Problems in Levinas’s View of Politics and the Sketch of a Solution
to Them,” Political Theory, Vol. 32, No. 2 (April, 2004), p. 173.
63. Ibid., 178.
64. Ibid., 182.
65. Ibid., 183.
66. Ibid., 183.
67. Ibid., 183.
68. Strauss, “On Classical Political Philosophy,” 94.
69. Jacques Derrida, “Violence and Metaphysics,” in Writing and Difference. Translated by
Allan Bass (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1978), 147–8.
70. Levene, 187.
71. Levene, 72.
72. Hananh Arendt, “What is Authority?” in Between Past and Future (New York: Penguin,
1988).
73. Ibid., 99.
74. Ibid,, 100.
75. Ibid., 141.
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A M E R I C A N U N I V E R S I T Y S T U D I E S

This book is a volume in a Peter Lang monograph series.

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek.

© 2015 Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York

All rights reserved.

Notations and Abbreviations vii

Chapter Three: “Nothing More Useful than Man…”: Spinoza on Politics 83

TI—Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect

he wishes to discount particular religious and political commitments. Indeed, it is

intertwined. Indeed, if we properly appreciate the importance and scope of sover-

—Spinoza’s theory of order is an important alternative to how we can re-think

The Problem of Agency

A philosophy that explains how it is possible (whether it is possible) that individual

Pippen’s work is thus an attempt to defend this conception of the subject,

This conception of the will as a distinct volitional faculty that attempts to

philosophers” is that reason “abides in human understanding” as a “sufficient guide

theological discourse were not themselves challenged so much as opposed. That

“The Face of the Whole

Spinoza’s Idea of God

Introduction: God’s Self-Causal Nature

idea of God—Spinoza’s pantheism—entails a comprehensive re-thinking of the

Spinoza begins to demonstrate the singularity—and thus unity—of substance

Natura Naturans—Natura Naturata

in Nature (Cor. 1 Proposition 14) there is but one substance—God—and no other

What is Spinoza trying to say here? If we consider the intellect of an individual,

derivative of Nature as its natures, though there is a principle identity—Nature—

The Conditions of Pantheism

As I reflect on these matters more attentively, it occurs to me first of all that it is no

The Problem of “Finite Modes”

In the Ethics Spinoza derived a sequence of numbered propositions from definitions

to understand ourselves better and therefore to act in a more fulfilling manner.

Garrett reads Spinoza as emphasizing agreement and accommodation when dis-

By “remote cause” Spinoza means “a cause which is in no way conjoined with

In his interpretation of Spinoza, Gilles Deleuze argues that all modifications of

By contrast, I have a complete understanding of what a body is when I think that it

Descartes reaffirms this theory of distinctions in his Principles of Philosophy (1644).

From Spinoza’s perspective such a position is odd, especially given Descartes’s

Indeed, it is much easier for us to have an understanding of extended substance or

Here Descartes clearly understands substances to be discernable by their distinct

In this sense Descartes’s conception of substance is a complete contradiction from

confronts most conceptions of God. Spinoza’s God is expressive precisely because

Spinoza on the Individual and the

Introduction: The Problem of the Individual

Spinoza’s general philosophical and religious orientation is thus distinguished not

Mind and Body

Spinoza’s theological monism clearly prompts us to wonder what he takes the

being if we have to maintain a firm difference (a real difference) between thought

That a mode of thought or extension may be caused or may be affected (by

Della Rocca understands Spinoza to be asserting that regardless of attribute, the

We should recall to mind what I have demonstrated above—that whatever can be

The Order of Desire

It is in 3p57 that Spinoza comes closest to addressing the relationship between

To call conatus primarily a form of desire is simply to emphasize that it springs

Therefore, pleasure and pain is desire or appetite, insofar as it is increased or dimin-

As the mind is always already aware of a body—and it is through this awareness

All of this is on a basic level clearly a response to Descartes. We are thinking

This is not to imply that scriptural interpretation is purely an unambiguous affair.

It is well known that Spinoza was a pioneer in conceiving of a form of biblical

The “Idea” of the Will

Let us therefore conceive a particular volition, namely, a mode of thinking whereby

“Nothing More Useful

clearly a proponent of liberal democracy, his conception of it is highly qualified

The moral discoveries of synderesis came to be spoken of as not only non-discursive