Routledge History of Philosophy Volume IV

MORAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA 309
detrimental to his country without violating his pledge to his subjects, a pledge
by which he is most firmly bound, and whose fulfilment usually involves the
most solemn promises’! In other words, disrespect among his subjects is more
detrimental to a ruler than the possible consequences of breaking a treaty. The
well-being of the country is guaranteed by the ruler’s care for his own interest,
and not by contracts in themselves. We easily recognize de la Court’s principle
of public interest, cared for by the rulers because it is connected to their own
interest. This connection is furthered by conceiving it as a contractual bond,
since that threatens disrespect to anyone who would break it. Spinoza’s
naturalistic theory of the state thus explains the state as an effect of the laws of
nature, as well as showing the utility of an ideological conception of the state in
terms of contract.
In this respect we can understand why Spinoza believes that a state would be
unnecessary if everybody lived according to the dictates of reason. Here Spinoza
is more like Proudhon or Kropotkin than like Hobbes. But men being what they
are, Spinoza is far from being an anarchist. Men who do not live according to
reason are not ‘sui iuris’, and therefore are by definition subject to other powers.
A stable system of powers is a state, and such a stable pattern is expressed by civil
laws. Imagination plays the role that reason cannot perform. This imagination is
the more effective the more men believe, or imagine, that they have instituted it
by free will, that is, have contracted to abide by the civil laws. As a consequence,
Spinoza is anxious to demonstrate that this set of imaginations is a consistent
one. Formulating his position on a topic that appears in Hobbes and Locke as
well, he says:
We therefore recognize a great difference between a slave, a son, and a
subject, who accordingly may be defined as follows. A slave is one who
has to obey his master’s commands which look only to the interest of him
who commands; a son is one who by his father’s commands does what is
to his own good; a subject is one who, by command of the sovereign
power, acts for the common good, and therefore for his own good also.
Imagination is a consistent and effective mechanism that provides men with
what we may call a provisional political morality (cf. E II P49S). Its consistency
is explained in the language of imagination itself, since this is of concern to those
who live according to the imagination. Its effectiveness can only be explained in
terms of the laws of nature. In reading the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, these
two different languages should be distinguished carefully, especially where they
are implied in one and the same argument. We can illustrate this best in relation
to Spinoza’s often distorted contention that right is might.
‘By the right and established order of Nature I mean simply the rules
governing the nature of every individual thing, according to which we conceive
it as naturally determined to exist and to act in a definitive way’, that is, right
equals potentia: ‘the right of the individual is coextensive with its determinate