Baruch Spinoza, political rebel

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) belongs to those inescapable bastions of Western, indeed of world, thought. Whatever the question at hand, his work calls out as a possible illumination of many present-day matters. Religion, metaphysics, anthropology, psychology, social philosophy, political philosophy — his analyses penetrate everywhere, precisely because of their universal dimension. They thus invite us not only to think but to live the political affairs of their time and of ours. And this for two reasons: the philosopher’s Marrano origins and the political situation of the Holland where he lived and which he would always refuse to leave.

Spinoza’s forebears had known, in Portugal, the harsh laws of Torquemada’s Inquisition. They were compelled to take on the conduct of Marranos¹. This impossibility of expressing their authentic feelings was lived by them as a painful oppression of every instant and every situation. If not in his very being, then at least in his outward conduct, it is, for the Marrano, a submission to a power whose norms he does not recognize. One understands, then, that in him the quest for liberty is more than a concern; it is a vital requirement. If the whole of Spinoza’s work is a permanent and passionate aspiration to personal liberty, his origins, historical and social, are one of its factors.

This passion for liberty was, in him, exacerbated by the socio-political context of the Holland in which he lived. This country had first been a possession of Spain. It was thus drawn into all the wars in which Spain was embroiled, in particular against France. In 1679 it would be granted to a descendant of Louis XIV, then, owing to the opposition of the English and of the Dutch themselves, to Austria. For the Dutch did not remain inactive in the face of the enslavement and quartering of their country. In particular, the brothers Cornelis and Johan de Witt led a political action that resulted in the establishment of an autonomous republic which, however, was to be short-lived: it would come to an end with their assassination. Spinoza would militate, on the plane of thought as on the plane of action, alongside the de Witt brothers, scourges of foreign oppression in their country.

It is probably both these origins and this life-context of Spinoza’s that illuminate the content of one of his most important works, the Traité de l’Autorité Politique (Political Treatise), published posthumously in 1677, the year of his death. There can be no question, here, of presenting in its entirety the analysis that Spinoza makes of political matters. We wish simply to draw out a few features that, in our view, remain at once essential and timely. We borrow these features from chapters VI, VII, and VIII of the work.

Politics, to what end?

In the first place, a much-debated question in Spinoza’s day. Politics is a reflection on the organization of human society. What is the origin of this society? For him, individuals grouped themselves into society because, in isolation, they prove incapable of resolving the difficulties they encounter with regard to their needs and their security. The best political structure is the one that most effectively ensures the survival of the members of its social body. As all men fear solitude, none being, in isolation, strong enough to defend himself or to procure what is necessary to life — men naturally aspire to the state of society…². This idea is constant in Spinoza: men cannot avoid living together. His thought holds that individual and group form, of necessity, one and the same being. The philosopher isolated in Diogenes’ barrel is not his model.

Against the government of one alone

Society has as its objective to make possible the cohabitation of men, which in turn requires the establishment, among them, of a state of peace and concord. How is this peace to be established? And Spinoza makes a first observation that does not lack realism: men are not drawn spontaneously toward peace but toward the conflicts into which their passions and their interests draw them. Can one, in our third millennium, doubt this observation at the spectacle of the disorders of the Middle East, of Russia, of South America, of the Balkans, or of Algeria? From this observation, Spinoza arrives at a conclusion. Peace being a sine qua non condition of men’s survival, it must, if need be, be imposed³. All must, by force and necessity if not spontaneously, be constrained to live according to the discipline of reason⁴. Now, reason being a faculty common to all men, it can only be the factor of peace par excellence.

Consequently, says Spinoza, the organization of society — namely, political decisions — must not be entrusted to a single individual. Why? Because in each of us there always persists the conflict opposing his reason, which incites him to respect the good of all, and his egocentric drives, which incite him to make his own interests prevail. For the most vigilant man is nonetheless subject to sleep… the strongest and most unshakeable is liable to weaken or to let himself be overcome…⁵. A Spinozist illumination of a burning topicality, riddled with corruption, indictments, embezzlement of corporate assets, and so on!

In light of these requirements, Spinoza (we are in the seventeenth century) is a partisan of a certain type of monarchical regime, and he explains himself. The multitude, he writes⁶, can continue to enjoy, under the reign of a king, a fairly extensive liberty, on the following condition: the power to be granted to the king will be determined exclusively by the power of this multitude itself… Spinoza here lays the foundations of what we would call, in our day, a constitutional monarchy, an illustration of which might be furnished by the present Spanish regime. Better still, this model of society, for Spinoza, is democratic in essence. For the law is not the emanation of the king’s power alone but also of the people, which expresses itself by suffrage. The king… will always support the opinion that has gathered the greatest number of votes. That is to say, the one enjoyed by the majority of citizens⁷.

In economics, property the source of discord

The Bible, as we know, affirms that ownership of the land is collective. A connection has often been drawn between this assertion and the condemnation of private property by Rousseau in eighteenth-century France. This too much forgets that Spinoza, a century earlier, takes up the biblical orientation he received during his formation, to write⁸: The fields, the totality of the soil and, if possible, the houses must form part of the whole of public property — that is, belong to the holder of the right of the entire State. And this refusal of private property always has the same objective: peace. With a view to ensuring peace and concord, it is very important that no citizen possess real property…⁹.

Spinoza a socialist? A somewhat hasty conclusion, no doubt. But the first theorists of that ideology must not have been unaware of him.

Welcoming foreigners

Certain passages of Spinoza are of such a stamp that they could, without difficulty, figure in present-day debates on the reception of foreigners. Our philosopher takes, on this point, an attitude in which one discerns both his biblical culture¹⁰ and his passion for liberty pushed to its universal dimension. Let us read him¹¹: If the daughter of a citizen marries a foreigner, the children will be considered citizens and inscribed on the list of the grouping to which the mother belongs. The analysis Spinoza makes of the situation of foreigners in a host country is, likewise, of striking topicality. Foreigners… declare themselves entirely satisfied provided they are given full facilities to conduct their affairs in complete security… In the end, nothing any longer distinguishes the foreigners from the oldest inhabitants…¹². Is Spinoza looking at his own reflection in writing these lines — he whose forebears were foreigners in Holland, as Marranos?

The separation of Church and State

Another face of the modernity of Spinozist thought is that of laïcité understood as the political separation of Church and State. His point is all the clearer in that it accords perfectly with the global orientation of his thought. The State, as the expression of human Reason, is universal in essence. The various churches — of whatever cult — are therefore only temporal and temporary manifestations of this universality. They belong to a reality other than that of the State. Consequently, no church must, in any case, he writes¹³, be erected at the expense of urban communities. And no legislation must ever be enacted concerning a belief, unless that belief is seditious and undermines the foundations on which the nation rests. The faithful who are authorized to practice their cult publicly will build, if they wish, their churches at their own expense. Did Spinoza foresee the existence of sects and other gurus of Scientology?

The preceding lines are only a very brief glimpse of the breadth of a thought which, by its very universality, proves to be one of the most modern of our era. We believe that its fecundity finds its origin, beyond the author’s own genius, in three factors: his Jewishness, his Marrano origins, and the socio-political context of his life. It only remains for present-day researchers to ripen the fruits of the seeds he thus sowed.

Notes