Routledge History of Philosophy Volume IV

312 RENAISSANCE AND SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY RATIONALISM
Politicus brings the intervention to its final conclusion. Here he shows what the
implications are of the Dutch self-understanding of their republic along Spinozan
lines. These implications have been presented on pp. 333–5. They do not differ
much from run of the mill arguments about the relationship of church and state,
except for one point: tolerance is defended as a virtue of a republic, especially as
far as philosophy is concerned. This intervention was barely successful among
those who were not convinced by the argument in the first place. Even
Remonstrant theologians, who had always defended the same position, were
made rather uncomfortable about this ‘support’ from a philosopher who
presented God as Nature, and in his determinism denied human freedom, and
hence sin and morality. Velthuysen, in his later writings, criticized Spinoza
heavily. The Amsterdam Remonstrant and later friend of Locke, Philip van
Limborch, scorned Spinoza for his fatalism. Spinoza’s influence was in other
quarters. Among autodidacts, like himself, among idiosyncratic intellectuals, like
the author of the Spinozistic novel The Life and Times of Philopater, his appeal
was remarkable. But Spinoza must have been disappointed that the Tractatus
Theologico-Politicus produced so few of the effects he had hoped for. In the
Tractatus Politicus he came forward with a different style, and with different
targets. In that book, he no longer aims at the imagination, but wants to present a
political philosophy that is deduced from the Ethics, and formulated as a
scientific theory.
The theory of the Tractatus Politicus
I have resolved to demonstrate by a certain and undoubted course of
argument, or to deduce from the very condition of human nature, not
what is new and unheard of, but only such things as agree best with
practice. And that I might investigate the subject-matter of this
science with the same freedom of spirit as we generally use in
mathematics, I have laboured carefully, not to mock, lament, or
execrate, but to understand human actions; and to this end I have
looked upon passions such as love, hatred, anger, envy, ambition,
pity, and the other perturbations of the mind, not in the light of vices
of human nature, but as properties, just as pertinent to it, as are heat,
cold, storm, thunder, and the like to the nature of the atmosphere,
which phenomena, though inconvenient, are yet necessary, and have
fixed causes, by means of which we endeavour to understand their
nature, and the mind has just as much pleasure in viewing them aright,
as in knowing such things as flatter the senses.
(TP I, 4)
This scientific, naturalist approach is put forward against the utopianism of the
philosophers. We can learn more from practical politicians for whom experience