Spinoza's Political Treatise Edited by Yitzhak Y

Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-17058-2 — Spinoza's Political Treatise Edited by Yitzhak Y. Melamed , Hasana Sharp Frontmatter More Information

Spinoza’s Political Treatise

Spinoza’s Political Treatise constitutes the very last stage in the develop- ment of his thought, as he left the manuscript incomplete at the time of his death in 1677. On several crucial issues – for example, the new conception of the “free multitude”–the work goes well beyond his Theological- Political Treatise (1670), and arguably presents ideas that were not fully developed even in his Ethics. This volume of newly commissioned essays on the Political Treatise is the ﬁrst collection in English to be dedicated speciﬁcally to the work, ranging over topics including political explanation, national religion, the civil state, vengeance, aristocratic government, and political luck. It will be a major resource for scholars who are interested in this important but still neglected work, and in Spinoza’s political philosophy more generally.

yitzhak y. melamed is the Charlotte Bloomberg Professor of Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University. He is the coeditor of Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise: A Critical Guide (Cambridge, 2010) and Spinoza and German Idealism (Cambridge, 2012), the editor of Spinoza’s Ethics: A Critical Guide (Cambridge, 2017), and the author of Spinoza’s Metaphysics: Substance and Thought (2013). hasana sharp is Associate Professor of Philosophy at McGill University. She is author of Spinoza and the Politics of Renaturalization (2011), and coeditor of Between Spinoza and Hegel (2012) and Feminist Philosophies of Life (2016).

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cambridge critical guides

Recent titles in this series Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientiﬁc Postscript edited by rick anthony furtak Plato’s Republic edited by mark l. mcpherran Plato’s Laws edited by christopher bobonich Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise edited by yitzhak y. melamed and michael a. rosenthal Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics edited by jon miller Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals edited by lara denis Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality edited by simon may Kant’s Observations and Remarks edited by richard velkley and susan shell Augustine’s City of God edited by james wetzel Descartes’ Meditations edited by karen detlefsen Kant’s Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason edited by gordon michalson Kant’s Lectures on Anthropology edited by alix cohen Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling edited by daniel conway Kant’s Lectures on Ethics edited by lara denis and oliver sensen Aristotle’s Physics edited by mariska leunissen Aristotle’s Politics edited by thornton lockwood and thanassis samaras Aquinas’s Disputed Questions on Evil edited by m. v. dougherty Plato’s Symposium edited by pierre destre´ e and zina giannopoulou Spinoza’s Ethics edited by yitzhak y. melamed Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason edited by james r. o’shea Aristotle’s Generation of Animals edited by andrea falcon and david lefebvre Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae edited by jeffrey hause Spinoza’s Political Treatise edited by yitzhak y. melamed and hasana sharp

SPINOZA’ S Political Treatise A Critical Guide

edited by yitzhak y. melamed Johns Hopkins University hasana sharp McGill University

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Contents

List of Contributors page ix Acknowledgments xii List of Abbreviations xiii

Introduction 1 yitzhak y. melamed and hasana sharp 1 What Is Real about “Ideal Constitutions”? Spinoza on Political Explanation 12 michael a. rosenthal 2 Statesmen versus Philosophers: Experience and Method in Spinoza’s Political Treatise 29 julie e. cooper 3 The Condition of Human Nature: Spinoza’s Account of the Ground of Human Action in the Tractatus Politicus 47 moira gatens 4 Politically Mediated Affects: Envy in Spinoza’s Tractatus Politicus 61 susan james 5 Longing (desiderium) for Vengeance as the Foundation of the Commonwealth 78 chantal jaquet 6 Family Quarrels and Mental Harmony: Spinoza’s Oikos–Polis Analogy 93 hasana sharp 7 Spinoza on National Religion 111 mogens lærke

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viii Contents 8 Religion and the Civil State in the Tractatus Politicus 128 daniel garber 9 Spinoza on Aristocratic and Democratic Government 145 theo verbeek 10 When Having Too Much Power Is Harmful: Spinoza on Political Luck 161 yitzhak y. melamed 11 Spinoza and Political Absolutism 175 justin steinberg 12 The Revolutionary Foundation of Political Modernity: Machiavelli, Spinoza, and Constituent Power 190 lippo del lucchese

Bibliography 204 Index 213

Contributors

julie e. cooper is Senior Lecturer in the Political Science Department at Tel Aviv University. She is the author of Secular Powers: Humility in Modern Political Thought. Her work has appeared in journals including Review of Politics, The Historical Journal, Political Theory, Annual Review of Political Science, and the Journal of Politics. filippo del lucchese is Senior Lecturer in History of Political Thought at Brunel University, London, Senior Research Associate, University of Johannesburg, and chair at the Collège International de Philosophie in Paris. He is the author of Conﬂict, Power and Multitude in Machiavelli and Spinoza (2009) and The Political Philosophy of Niccolò Machiavelli (2015). daniel garber is the A. Watson Armour III University Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University. He is the author of Descartes’ Metaphysical Physics (1992) and Descartes Embodied (2001), and is coeditor with Michael Ayers of the Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy (1998). Most recently, he published Leibniz: Body, Substance, Monad (2009). moira gatens is the Challis Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sydney. She is coauthor of Collective Imaginings: Spinoza Past and Present (1999), editor of Feminist Interpretations of Benedict Spinoza (2009), and author of Spinoza’s Hard Path to Freedom (2011). susan james is Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College London. Among her books are Passion and Action: The Emotions in Early Modern Philosophy (1997), Margaret Cavendish: Political Writings (Cambridge 2003), and Spinoza on Philosophy, Religion and Politics: The Theologico- Political Treatise (2012).

x List of Contributors chantal jaquet is Professor at Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University. She is the author of twenty-two books, including Spinoza ou la Prudence (2004), Sub specie aeternitatis, étude des concepts de temps, durée et éternité chez Spinoza (1997/2015), L’unité du corps et de l’esprit. Affects, actions passions chez Spinoza (2004/2015), Les expressions de la puissance d’agir chez Spinoza (2005), Philosophie de l’odorat (2010), Bacon et la promotion des savoirs (2010), Les tranclasses ou la non reproduction (2014), and Spinoza à l’œuvre (2017). mogens lærke is Research Director at the CNRS, and a member of the Institut d’histoire des représentations et des idées dans les modernités at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon. He is the author of Leibniz lecteur de Spinoza: La genèse d’une opposition complexe (2008)andLes Lumières de Leibniz: Controverses avec Huet, Bayle, Regis et More (2015). He is also editor or coeditor of The Use of Censorship in the Enlightenment (2009), The Philosophy of the Young Leibniz (Franz Steiner, 2009), Philosophy and Its History: Aims and Methods in the Study of the History of Early Modern Philosophy (2013), Spinoza/Leibniz: Rencontres, controverses, réceptions (2014), Leibniz: Lectures et commentaires (2017), and Steno and the Philosophers (2018). yitzhak y. melamed is the Charlotte Bloomberg Professor of Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University. He is the coeditor of Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise: A Critical Guide (Cambridge, 2010) and Spinoza and German Idealism (Cambridge, 2012), the editor of Spinoza’s Ethics: A Critical Guide (Cambridge, 2017), and the author of Spinoza’s Metaphysics: Substance and Thought (2013). michael a. rosenthal is Professor of Philosophy and currently holds the Samuel and Althea Stroum Chair in Jewish Studies at the University of Washington, in Seattle. He is the coeditor of Spinoza’s Theological- Political Treatise: A Critical Guide (Cambridge, 2010) and the author of numerous articles on modern philosophy. hasana sharp is Associate Professor of Philosophy at McGill University. She is author of Spinoza and the Politics of Renaturalization (2011), and coeditor of Between Spinoza and Hegel (2012)andFeminist Philosophies of Life (2016). justin steinberg is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center. He is the author of Spinoza’s

List of Contributors xi Political Psychology: The Taming of Fortune and Fear (Cambridge, forthcoming). theo verbeek is Emeritus Professor in the History of Modern Philosophy at Utrecht University. He is coeditor, with Erik-Jan Bos and Roger Ariew, of a critical edition of Descartes’ correspondence (forthcoming).

Acknowledgments

We wish to thank Hilary Gaskin from Cambridge University Press for her encouragement, patience, and help. Thomas Colbourne and Avreimi Rot provided most valuable assistance in proofreading and editing the book. Thanks to Agatha Slupek, as well, for her support in organizing a con- ference associated with the volume. We are grateful to Heidi Herr and the Peabody Library at Johns Hopkins University for permission to use an image from the library’s copy of Spinoza’s Opera Posthuma on the cover of this volume. We would also like to thank Kevin Hughes for his work in copy-editing the volume. Finally, we are delighted to acknowledge the support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

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Abbreviations

descartes’s works AT Oeuvres de Descartes. Edited by Adam and Tannery. CSM The Philosophical Writings of Descartes. Edited and translated by Cottingham, Stoothoff, and Murdoch (third volume also edited by A. Kenny).

spinoza’s works CM Cogitata Metaphysica (an appendix to Spinoza’s DPP) DPP Renati des Cartes Principiorum Philosophiae Pars I & II (Descartes’s Principles of Philosophy) Ep. Epistolae|Letters KV Korte Verhandeling van God de Mensch en deszelfs Welstand (Short Treatise on God, Man, and His Well-Being) TIE Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione TP Tractatus Politicus TTP Tractatus Theologico-Politicus

References to Spinoza’s original Latin and Dutch texts rely on Spinoza Opera, edited by Carl Gebhardt. 4 volumes (1925), and follow this format: volume number/page number/line number. Hence “II/200/12” stands for volume 2, page 200, line 12. Passages in Spinoza’s Ethics are referred to by means of the following abbreviations: a-(xiom), c-(orollary), e-(xplanation), l-(emma), p-(roposition), pref-(ace), s-(cholium), and app-(endix); “d” stands for either “definition” (when it appears immediately to the right of the part of the book) or “demonstration” (in all other cases). The five parts of the Ethics are cited by Arabic numerals. Thus “E1d3” stands for the third definition of part 1 and

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xiv List of Abbreviations “E1p16d” for the demonstration of proposition 16 of part 1. Passages from DPP are cited using the same system of abbreviations used for the Ethics. Passages from Oeuvres de Descartes, edited by Adam and Tannery, are cited by volume and page number. Thus “AT VII 23” stands for page 23 of volume 7 of this edition.