Routledge History of Philosophy Volume IV

302 RENAISSANCE AND SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY RATIONALISM
full rationality might mean for man. But man is mostly driven by passions, and
thereby dependent on things outside. We shall explore this interdependence in
the next section on Spinoza’s political theory.
MORAL PHILOSOPHY AND POLITICS
In the same way that man is not his own creator, social institutions are not the
result of human creation. Adam Ferguson was to express this towards the end of
the eighteenth century by saying that men stumble ‘upon establishments, which
are indeed the result of human action, but not the execution of any human
design’. How radical was Spinoza in this respect? Some commentators have
recognized two different answers to this question. They judge that Spinoza
provided a contractarian answer in his first book on politics, but an evolutionary
one in the second. This has disconcerted others, since the problem of ‘design’
versus ‘action’ seems to them to be solved, as far as individual man is
concerned, in favour of ‘action’. A divergent position in the political realm
would smack of inconsistency, a type of judgement on Spinoza most are reluctant
to uphold. More specifically, this argument is triggered by statements by Spinoza
that indeed do seem to be inconsistent. In the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus the
founding of the state is described as a decision of a multitude of men to unite and
to live guided as it were by one mind. The state seems to be created in a
constitutional act. In the Tractatus Politicus, however, these contractarian
notions are completely absent, and evolutionary explanations are proffered. Here
we are instructed to regard the formation of political institutions as the outcome
of socio-psychological mechanisms. In presenting Spinoza’s political philosophy
in this section, we shall deal with this central problem in a somewhat roundabout
way. We shall see that, by presenting the complexity of both books, the problem
will solve itself. Spinoza is indeed as radical in his political philosophy as he is
in his ethics. But political theory has special problems of its own, among them
being predominant the question of the audience it is addressed to.
So what was the reason for writing the Tractatus TheologicoPoliticus? In fact
there was more than one. Working at the Ethics, Spinoza must have deepened the
theoretical foundation of his criticism of Bible scholarship that had provoked the
scorn and indignation of the Jewish authorities, leading to his expulsion from the
Jewish community in 1656. Indeed, more than half of the text is about Bible
interpretation. Furthermore, the kind of problems he had met with in Jewish
circles were far from being restricted to these alone. However tolerant the Dutch
Republic may have been in comparison with surrounding nations, a continuing
debate was going on about its real nature and limits, possibly even because of
this relatively large degree of tolerance. De la Court pointed to the ambition of
the ministers of the church who, not satisfied with their duty of spiritual care,
were keen to profit from any opportunity to meddle with political affairs that
came their way. So quite a few ministers tried to give support to the Orangist
faction by giving William III pride of place in their weekly prayer for God’s help