CAMBRIDGE TEXTS IN THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

BENEDICT DE SPINOZA
Theological-Political Treatise

CAMBRIDGE TEXTS IN THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

Series editors

KARL AMERIKS
Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame

DESMOND M. CLARKE
Professor of Philosophy at University College Cork

The main objective of Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy is to expand the range, variety and quality of texts in the history of philosophy which are available in English. The series includes texts by familiar names (such as Descartes and Kant) and also by less well-known authors. Wherever possible, texts are published in complete and unabridged form, and translations are specially commissioned for the series. Each volume contains a critical introduction together with a guide to further reading and any necessary glossaries and textual apparatus. The volumes are designed for student use at undergraduate and postgraduate level and will be of interest not only to students of philosophy, but also to wider audience of readers in the history of science, the history of theology and the history of ideas.

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BENEDICT DE SPINOZA

Theological-Political Treatise

EDITED BY
JONATHAN ISRAEL
Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton

TRANSLATED BY
MICHAEL SILVERTHORNE
AND
JONATHAN ISRAEL

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

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© Cambridge University Press 2007

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First published 2007

Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Spinoza, Benedictus de, 1632-1677.
[Tractatus theologico-politicus. English]
Theological-political treatise / Bendedict de Spinoza; edited by
Jonathan Israel; translated by Michael Silverthorne and Jonathan Israel.
p. cm. – (Cambridge texts in the history of philosophy)
Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13: 978-0-521-82411-8 (hardback : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-521-82411-7 (hardback : alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-0-521-53097-2 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-521-53097-0 (pdk. : alk. paper)

1. Philosophy and religion – Early works to 1800.
2. Free thought – Early works to 1800.
3. Political science–Early works to 1800.
I. Israel, Jonathan, 1946- II. Title. III. Series.
B3985. E5S55 2007
199′ .492–dc22
2006036798

ISBN-13 978-0-521-82411-8 hardback

ISBN-13 978-0-521-53097-2 paperback

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accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to
in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such
websites, is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Contents

Introduction

Spinoza’s aims

The Theological-Political Treatise (1670) of Spinoza is not a work of philosophy in the usual sense of the term. Rather it is a rare and interesting example of what we might call applied or ‘practical’ philosophy. That is, it is a work based throughout on a philosophical system which, however, mostly avoids employing philosophical arguments and which has a practical social and political more than strictly philosophical purpose, though it was also intended in part as a device for subtly defending and promoting Spinoza’s own theories. Relatively neglected in recent times, and banned and actively suppressed in its own time, it is also one of the most profoundly influential philosophical texts in the history of western thought, having exerted an immense impact on thinkers and writers from the late seventeenth century throughout the age of the Enlightenment down to the late nineteenth century.

Spinoza’s most immediate aim in writing this text was to strengthen individual freedom and widen liberty of thought in Dutch society, in particular by weakening ecclesiastical authority and lowering the status of theology. In his opinion, it was these forces which were chiefly responsible for fomenting religious tensions and hatred, inciting political sedition among the common people, and enforcing damaging intellectual censorship on unconventional thinkers like himself. He tried to lessen ecclesiastical power and the prestige of theology as he himself encountered these in the Dutch Republic – or, as it was then more commonly known, the United Provinces – partly as a way of opening a path for himself and those who sympathized with his ideas, or thought in similar ways, to propagate their views among contemporaries freely both verbally and in writing. But still more he did so in the hope, and even expectation, of helping by this means to build a freer and more stable society.

His strategy for establishing and reinforcing toleration and freedom of thought, as he himself explains in his preface, relies in the first place on exposing what he judges to be the basic causes of theological prejudice, confessional rivalry, intolerance, and intellectual censorship as they plagued the Europe (and America) of his time. He sought to show that conventional – and officially approved – religious teaching and dogmas are based mostly on mistaken notions, indeed profound misconceptions about the character of Scripture itself. In this way, he attempted to expose what he saw as a near universal and dangerous ignorance about such matters as prophecy, miracles, piety and the true nature of divine commandments and revelation. Especially useful for undermining the power of theology and lessening respect for theologically based structures of authority and tradition, he thought, was his method of demonstrating that ‘prophecy’ is not divine inspiration in the way that most people then believed, and is not the work of divine wisdom in action, but is rather a consequence of certain individuals being endowed with a particularly powerful ‘imagination’.

The Theological-Political Treatise offers a comprehensive theory of what religion is and how ecclesiastical authority and theological concepts exercise their power over men while, at the same time, providing a new method of Bible exegesis. But Spinoza’s challenge in this anonymously published book was not only to contemporary views about Scripture, faith, piety, priestly authority and text criticism. In the second place, but no less importantly, he also strove to reinforce individual liberty and freedom of expression by introducing, or rather further systematizing, a new type of political theory (albeit one strongly influenced by Machiavelli and Hobbes). This was a distinctively urban, egalitarian and commercial type of republicanism which Spinoza mobilized as a vehicle for challenging then accepted ideas about the nature of society and what the state is for.

To Spinoza, a thinker who grew up in the closing stages of the Thirty Years War – a ruthless and vastly destructive struggle between the European states only ostensibly about religion – changing prevailing ideas about politics and statecraft seemed no less essential than combating religious prejudice, intolerance and authoritarianism. What he regarded as fundamentally false notions about government, public policy, education and morality appeared to him to threaten and damage not only the lives of individuals but the also fabric of society more generally. It is owing to these defective but strongly prevailing ideas about politics as well as religion, he argues, that ‘superstition’ is built up (often by ambitious clergy), into a force sufficiently potent to overshadow if not direct all aspects of men’s lives, including intellectual debate and the administration of ordinary justice. Religious dogma comes to be enforced on everyone by force of law because the common people are persuaded by religious teachers that they should insist on doctrinal uniformity in the interests of their own and everyone else’s salvation and relationship to God. Religion is concocted into a powerful force in human affairs, he argues, chiefly by means of dogmatic appeals to Scripture, though also ‘with pomp and ceremony, so that everyone would find it more impressive than anything else and observe it zealously with the highest degree of fidelity’.1 A correct understanding of the mechanics by which all this happens, based on a realistic analysis of human drives and needs, he contends, will not just help ground a solid toleration and reduce inter-confessional strife but also diminish internal ideological threats to legitimate government and generally render the individual happier and society more peaceful and stable.

Spinoza’s method

Although a particular system of philosophy inspired and underpins the whole of the Theological-Political Treatise, it does so in most of the chapters unobtrusively and frequently in a hidden fashion. While his revolutionary metaphysics, epistemology and moral philosophy subtly infuse every part and aspect of his argumentation, the tools which Spinoza more conspicuously brings to his task are exegetical, philological and historical. In fact, it is the latter features rather than the underlying philosophy to which scholars chiefly call attention when discussing this particular text. Spinoza’s hermeneutical methodology constitutes a historically rather decisive step forward in the evolution not just of Bible criticism as such but of hermeneutics more generally, for he contends that reconstructing the historical context and especially the belief system of a given era is always the essential first and most important step to a correct understanding of any text. In this respect his approach was starkly different from that of traditional exegetes of Scripture and from Renaissance text criticism as a whole (as well as from that of our contemporary postmodernist criticism).