Spinoza, Before and After theRampjaar

Bibliographic Data

ID4958879
AuthorsBartholomew Begley (0000-0002-1486-2352, Department of Philosophy, Theology and Music, Dublin City University, All Hallows College, Dublin 9, Ireland, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume27
Issue6
Pages563-582
Publication date2022-08-18
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe European Legacy (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1084-8770 • E-ISSN: 1470-1316
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/10848770.2022.2083912
OpenAlexW4285796987
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited15

Up to 1670, when the Theological-Political Treatise was published, Spinoza supported Johan De Witt’s government, against the House of Orange and the orthodox Calvinists. By 1676, while writing the Political Treatise, that fight had been lost, and Spinoza was now positively opposed to the sovereign of his country. Scholars argue that the violence that marked the intervening “year of disaster” of 1672 saw security prioritised in the Political Treatise, where the Theological-Political Treatise had focused on freedom. This essay contests this view. Analysing the Political Treatise’s response to contemporary events, and comparing the two books, it sees the Political Treatise as less concerned than the earlier text with the stability of the sovereign, and more concerned with the subjects’ freedom from oppression by the sovereign: more than a dispassionate treatise on the organization of the state, it is a plea for the role of the ordinary citizen, written in response to authoritarian times

Authoritarianism · Democracy · Oppression · Plea · Political freedom · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Sovereignty · Law · Marxism and Critical Theory · Philosophy · Political Theology and Sovereignty · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought

Tools

Open DOI