BENEDICT DE SPINOZA: Theological-Political Treatise

Theological-Political Treatise
they gave to their subjects. This pledge is their highest obligation, and
sovereigns normally swear the most solemn oaths to uphold it.
[17] An enemy is someone who lives outside a state in the sense that he
does not recognize the authority of the state either as its ally or as its subject.
For it is not hatred but right that de¢nes an enemy of a state’s
authority, and a state’s right against someone who does not recognize its
authority by any agreement is the same as its right against someone who
actively damages it. It has the right to compel him either to surrender or to
enter into an alliance by whatever means it can.
[18] Finally, the crime of treason occurs only among subjects or citizens
who by a tacit or express agreement have transferred all their power to a
state. A subject is said to have committed such a crime if he has attempted
to seize the right of supreme power in some way or to transfer it to someone
else. I say ‘has attempted’, for if itwere the case that such persons could
only be condemned after the deed was done, a state would generally be
seeking to do this too late, after its right had been seized or transferred to
someone else. I am speaking of anyone, I emphasize again, who by whatever
means attempts to seize the right of supreme power. I do not accept
that it makes any di¡erence whether the state as a whole would lose or gain
even in the most obvious way from it. For whatever reason anyone makes
this attempt, he has done injury to the majesty 10 of the state and it is right
to condemn him, just as everyone admits it is perfectly right to do in warfare.
Any soldier who does not stay where he is posted, but attacks the
enemy without his commander’s knowledge, even if his tactics are good
and he succeeds in driving the enemy o¡ while yet still doing so as a personal
venture of his own, is rightly condemned to death, since he has violated
his oath and the right of his commander. Not everyone sees with
equal clarity that all citizens, without exception, are equally always bound
by this right, but the reasoning remains absolutely the same. For the state
must be protected and directed by the counsel of the sovereign power only
and all have agreed without reservation that this right belongs to him
alone. Should anyone, therefore, by his own decision and without the
knowledge of the sovereign power, seek to carry out a public negotiation,
10 ‘majestatem laesit’ picks up the phrase ‘crimen laesae majestatis’, translated ‘crime of treason’
above.
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