Routledge History of Philosophy Volume IV

MORAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 291
the Dutch were keen on new developments in philosophy and reacted to thinkers
like Thomas Hobbes and René Descartes. But their main motivation came from
what we might call by hindsight their bourgeois understanding of their own
society. We shall turn first to some of its elements as a background relevant to
Spinoza’s moral and political philosophy.
ASPECTS OF MORAL AND POLITICAL CONCERN IN
THE DUTCH REPUBLIC
To provide some context to Spinoza’s moral and political philosophy we shall
present three distinct contributions. In the first place the Stoic-Aristotelian
approach of Justus Lipsius (1547–1606) and Franco Burgersdijk (1590–1635)
will be discussed. Here we find not only the basic arguments of Orangist
political theory, but also the beginnings of naturalistic tendencies. In the second
place, we will deal with the innovative contribution of Lambertus van
Velthuysen (1622–85). Velthuysen attempted, on the basis of a rather general
Cartesian methodology, to define the implications of the new individualism of
Grotian-Hobbesian natural law in his peculiarly Aristotelian teleological scheme.
In the third place, we must pay attention to the intense, rhetorical intervention in
mid-seventeenth-century political debate of Johan and Pieter de la Court.
Stoic-Aristotelian dimensions
When Justus Lipsius published his Six Books on Politics in 1589, the Dutch
Revolt was raging. Although the Low Countries had proved to be a difficult
target for the far superior Spanish forces, there was no expectation of a
conclusion of the war being at hand. Lipsius, for whom philosophy was most of
all ethics and politics, tried to cope with the turbulence of his times. Taking
politics to be the ‘order of governing and obeying’, he set out to give a highly
practical answer, shunning the abstract categories of scholasticism, harking back
to Tacitus, Machiavelli, Seneca and Cicero. This Neostoic practical philosophy
provided him with a realistic morality: we have to live according to Nature,
accepting what is inevitable, but working hard upon what is within our power.
Morality of rulers and ruled alike consists in practical morality, of which the
central instruments and targets are virtue and prudence. Lipsius preferred to see
his philosophical task as different from theology. He did not abstain from using
metaphysical concepts of the theological repertoire, especially that of primary
and secondary causes, but put them to use in his analysis of human nature as a
secular concept. The stability of the state, as far as that can be realized, was the
central point of reference for him. The subjects have to accept their hardship if it
must be, the rulers have to care for unity and concord. The conservatio sui, selfpreservation,
is an important principle. The influence of Cicero is evident, as
when it is stated that nothing preserves a republic better than fides, (good) faith.
As for religion, Lipsius believed that the power of the state depends on religious