In that â??Liberalism 101â?? text I referred to in â??Man of Straw, Woman of Flaxâ?? â?? an Open University Press book titled simply Liberalism by John Gray â?? Gray describes Benedict de Spinoza as a precursor of liberalism, but nonetheless no liberal. At then end of a page or two of comparisons and contrasts between Spinoza and Thomas Hobbes, Gray writes:
Spinoza is closer to liberalism than Hobbes in seeing the freedom of the individual as an intrinsic value â?? as, indeed, a necessary ingredient in the best life and a necessary ingredient of any good life. For all this, Spinoza is not a liberal. Neither he nor Hobbes endorsed the meliorist outlook of liberalism â?? the belief that human affairs are subject to definite improvement into an open future.
Gray has made an error here and a most egregious one, thanks to two things: rigid adherence to a four-point definition of liberalism outlined in his introduction, all of which are applied as necessary conditions for genuine liberalism. What the other three necessary conditions for genuine liberalism are neednâ??t concern us. The other contributor to Grayâ??s error is that he has got Spinoza completely wrong; this becomes clear when we look at what Spinoza actually wrote, rather than what Gray thinks he wrote.
Hereâ??s why Gray thinks Spinoza fails to endorse meliorism:
â?¦ for Spinoza the free man would always be a rarity; most human individuals and most societies would always be ruled by passion and illusion rather than reason. For both of them, ignorance and slavery are manâ??s natural condition and enlightenment and freedom are exceptions in the life of the species.
By pure happenstance, Iâ??ve owned a single volume book of Spinozaâ??s political works for a few years now. I decided to check it out, because Grayâ??s account of the ideas of Hobbes and Spinoza identifies several points of disagreement between them which have them arriving at radically different conclusions on how society should be governed. The works in that single volume are Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (in translation â??A Theologico-Political Treatiseâ?? â?? referred to as TTP hereon) and A Political Treatise (PT). The books were written in that order. The latter is unfinished.
The political part of TTP begins at Chapter XVI: â??Of the Foundations of a State; of the Natural and Civil Rights of Individuals; and of the Rights of the Sovereign Powerâ??. It begins with natural law and natural rights, which Spinoza specifies with great clarity:
By the right and ordinance of nature, I merely mean those natural laws wherewith we conceive every individual to be conditioned by nature, so as to live and act in a given way â?¦ Now it is the sovereign law and right of nature that each individual [animal or human] should endeavour to preserve itself as it is, without regard to anything but itself â?¦ Whatsoever an individual does by the laws of its nature it has a sovereign right to do, inasmuch as it acts as it was conditioned by nature, and cannot act otherwiseâ?¦
That is, as the wise man has sovereign right to do all that reason dictates, or to live according to the laws of reason, so also the ignorant and foolish man has sovereign right to do all that desire dictates, or to live according to the laws of desire…
It follows from what we have said that the right and ordinance of nature, under which all men are born, and under which they mostly live, only prohibits such things as no one desires and no one can attain: it does not forbid strife, nor hatred, nor anger, nor deceit, nor, indeed, any of the means suggested by desire.
(my emphasis)
The emphasised clause â??under which they mostly liveâ?? is a little ambiguous â?? it might mean that all men live mostly according to natural law most of the time or that most men do so all of the time. Perhaps it is a reading of this chapter, interpreting that clause in the second sense, with the sense â??sicut erat in principio et nunc et semper, et in seculo seculorumâ?? (as it was in the beginning, so it is now and ever shall be) casually tossed in for good measure that moves Gray to exclude Spinoza from the liberal fold. I prefer the former reading â?? but a third is also available: most men live mostly according to natural law most of the time. Spinoza does hold that the more we live according to reason the freer we are, but is not the same as asserting that we are free if, and only if, we live according to reason. If we donâ??t, we still retain our freedoms under natural law, insofar as they are not constrained by sovereign power.
An examination of the titles alone of the last chapters in TTP turns up two ideas we associate with liberalism: â??Chapter XVII â?? It is shown that no one can or need transfer all his Rights to the Sovereign Power â?¦â??; â??Chapter XX â?? That in a Free State every man may Think what he Likes and Say what he Thinksâ?? (thereâ??s a bit of personal history motivating that claim). In the body of chapter XVII, Spinoza declares:
I believe [democracy] to be of all forms of government the most natural, and the most consonant with individual liberty. In it no one transfers his natural right so absolutely that he has no further voice in affairs, he only hands it over to the majority of a society of which he is a unit. Thus all men remain, as they were in the state of nature, equals.
In Chapter XVIII, Spinoza draws on the biblical account of Jewish history to argue against theocracy. In substance, he argues for the separation of church and state, on the basis that theocracy is harmful to both:
We may now see clearly from what I have said:
I. How hurtful to religion and the state is the concession to ministers of religion of any power of issuing decrees or transacting the business of government: how, on the contrary, far greater stability is afforded, if the said ministers are only allowed to give questions duly put to them, and are, as a rule, obliged to preach and practice the accepted doctrinesâ?¦
(Another argument against theocracy, raised in Chapter XX, is that it militates against freedom of thought and expression â?? again motivated by Spinozaâ??s personal history).
Weâ??ve picked up quite a little swag of liberal ideas by now: the concept of inalienable, and universal, natural rights; freedom of thought and expression; democracy as the best form of government and, finally, separation of the secular power from religious authority. Any liberal philosophy worth its salt is going to have the last three at its political core (where it might stand on economic matters is another issue). Thereâ??s a very strong family resemblance between Spinozaâ??s political philosophy, and liberalism.
Enough of a resemblance, I think, to credit Spinoza with producing a liberal theory of politics, rather than a â??proto-liberalâ?? one. And Chapters XVII and XVIII of his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, in particular, are worthwhile remedial reading for anyone who holds that the secular state is necessarily an irreligious one, or inevitably ends up imposing secular values on the religious, when it extends secular freedoms and secular rights to people whose way of living offends their religious beliefs.
Dear Gummo
I am wondering if you would mind clarifying what you mean in the title of your post about Spinoza as “founder of Christian liberalism”. In his work Ethics, Spinoza made it clear that he held to the philosophical position that is sometimes called “subtantival monism” — that there is only one substance that underlies all things, and seperate objects in the phenomenol universe are just transitory forms of this one substance. As a Dutch Jew Spinoza was hardly committed to Christian monotheism but then neither was he committed to orthodox Judaic belief about deity. As a substantival monist Spinoza’s views leaned heavily in the direction of pantheism (a position not espoused in Christianity).
I understand the gist of your post about natural law/natural rights theory, a tradition that extends back to the Stoics, Cicero, the Justinian Code, and Thomas Aquinas, but I am not joining the dots from that to the notion that Spinoza either was a Christian liberal or was perhaps the fountainhead for later Christian liberalism.
Phil,
The question in the title isn’t rhetorical – you could ask, quite legitimately, whether there’s such a thing as a specifically Christian tradition of political liberalism and secondly, if so, did Spinoza start it? Historical examination would probably turn up some rival contenders.
Spinoza started out as a Jew, but the biography in the intro to my TTP alleges that he had a bit of a falling out with his Orthodox community and buggered off to Amsterdam (hence, apparently, his aversion to thought control). A conversion – of some sort – to Christianity – of some sort – followed.
There’s a copy of the Ethics kicking around the house somewhere – I’ll have to dig it up. One thing I’ve noted (reading Hume actually) that there are often gaping holes of missing argument when philosophers move from discussions of what sort of thing a human being is to the topic of social organisation (taking in ethics along the way). Political language doesn’t accomodate the metaphysical concepts very well and vice versa.
That said, it seems to me more useful to deal with Spinoza’s political ideas as political theory – bugger what he says about what a person is and should be, what has he to say on the subject of the political organisation of the state? His argument for the separation of the state and religion – in effect the secular state is best for both – has a lot of merit and, ahem, contemporary relevance.
Spinoza was excommunicated from Judaism (or whatever the Jewish equivalent of excommunication is). He thereupon adopted the name Benedict. I probably wouldn’t go so far as to call him a Christian in his philosophy… “spinozism” was a euphemism for atheism well into the 19th Century. That and he spends most of TTP demolishing the authority of the scripture.
I see too slightly too much being put on Spinoza lately – see that c*nt Negri for example – this is silly. Before Spinoza there was Ramon Llul and after Spinoza there was Tolstoy, Camus, Ghandi ,Tony Benn and a cast of thousands.
One of the best readable works I’ve seen recently on the idea of reason as a guide to philosophy is ‘ The dream of reason’.( sear Amazon reviews)
However as an andidote to the elevation of reason as the God of the state then I commend Max Stirner , PJ Proudhon and M.Bakunin to youse.
True giants of sweet reason in politics.
(1) To many people ignore Machiavelli’s “The Republic” which is very liberal, but a theoretical treatise, as opposed to a such up job of “How a despot can get and keep power, as a job application” (aka the Prince).
(2) If you read Cicero’s works written in exile, particularly “On Duties”, “De Finibus” and “Tusculan Disputations” you find a *lot* on the duties and rights of citizens in a free society that fed straight into renaissance thought, including Spinoza. In “De Finibus” he was big on the duty that all owed to all sapient beings as a “commonwealth” (translated in the Loebs as “duty that all men owe to each other – but that’s an Edwardian worldview doing the translation). Rule of law in a society of equals with secular values of tolerance, compassion and freedom to do what you want unless you harm somebody else? Cicero covered the lot.
It’s worth remembering that Cicero considered “the merchant who swindles a customer” is just as guilty of destroying the state as “the soldier who leaves his post in the middle of battle”.
(3) For a good laugh, consider Aristotle’s “Politics”, where politics is described as the highest art, requiring the most brains and moral character, as it needs a synthesis of ethics, economics, psychology and rhetoric (amongst other things). Yeah, right. Aristotle the optimist!