Routledge History of Philosophy Volume IV

316 RENAISSANCE AND SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY RATIONALISM
this reading, Spinoza’s statement that states are not to be invented, but do exist,
explains to us that the historical process of growth and decline is central in his
political theory. By being actual existences, they can be explained.
We may point out that Spinoza in the Tractatus Politicus again is intervening
in Dutch political debate. Taking issue with the major ideological positions of
Orangism, republicanism and radicalism, he aims at objectifying the problems at
hand. Orangists used to enforce their position by pointing out the heroic past of
the Princes of Orange, but from Spinoza’s deduction of a feasible monarchy we
learn that not the person of the prince but the quality of the institutions is the
decisive factor: ‘And so, that a monarchical dominion may be stable, it must be
ordered, so that everything be done by the king’s decree only, that is, so that
every law be an explicit will of the king, but not every will of the king a law’ (TP
VII, 1). These decrees have to be prepared by councils that embody a form of
collective rationality. In the same vein, Spinoza reconstructs the republican
argument. Here also passions have to be kept in check by institutional
arrangements, linking the citizens’ private interest to that of the commonwealth.
The radical position of dissenting religious groups is reconstructed in Spinoza’s
analysis of democracy. Although this was unfinished, it is evident that
democracy cannot imply license, but the broadening of the category of citizens to
the whole male, adult, economically self-supporting population. That is, only
those who have an articulated interest can be institutionally integrated into the
pursuit of the common interest. However detached and objective this analysis
may be, it is evident that Spinoza takes republicanism (or aristocracy) to
correspond most closely to the Dutch situation. He may be saying: here are the
feasible possibilities, pick your choice, but the institutional and economic
arrangements of the Dutch Republic are closest to that of his model of federalist
aristocracy. The Orangists, and William III in particular, who stated that he had
rather be a Doge of Venice than a king in the Dutch Republic, would scarcely
feel comfortable in Spinoza’s monarchy. But the events of the eighteenth century
showed that Spinoza had foreseen the weaknesses of the Dutch stadholderate. But
even in that century of Christian enlightenment, an atheist like Spinoza was not
going to be heard. Spinoza’s principled political philosophy was going to inspire
philosophers elsewhere, who like him understood the birthpangs of modernity. In
France Rousseau and in Great Britain Adam Smith continued the project, just as
in our day libertarians, marxists and even postmodern philosophers follow his
lead. This radical naturalist of the seventeenth century is a present-day
companion in our quest for understanding man and society.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Citations in the text are from The Collected Works of Spinoza, ed. and trans. E.
Curley, vol. I, Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1985 (Ethics);
Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, trans. Samuel Shirley with introduction by Brad
S.Gregory, Leiden, Brill, 1989; A Theologico-Political Treatise and A Political