We now turn to the philosophical consequences of the pages devoted to the Hebrew theocracy in the TTP. In these pages, Spinoza develops the following:

First, he elaborates the idea of an individuality proper to the collective body in the form of the ‘nation’. If Spinoza generally identifies the nation with the State, under certain conditions the nation can precede and outlast the constitution of State. The same concept (ingenium) is also used to define the particular ‘complexion’ of human individuals and of nations. National complexions are not only the abstract arithmetical sum of individuals but express their singularity through ‘differences of language, laws and accepted customs’.

Second, we learn that a nation's individuality has similar requirements for its effort to persevere in its being to those of human individuals (including the essential requirement of representation-signification, which is needed to attain its own imaginary reality).

Third, he shows that collective individuality affirms itself in and through its power (puissance) to pose problems and identify solutions adequate to its own perseverance.

Fourth, we find that collective individuality is formed according to the same principles as human individuality. The politico-social (laws), cultural (language, customs) and historical nature of the nation, just like human nature, establishes and remains in its own identity according to the laws of Habit, the joy principle, memory and recognitive imagination.

And fifth, this isomorphism suggests a strategy for the collective body as such, a strategy of the multitudinis potentia (as per Spinoza's expression in the Political Treatise). Spinoza proposes, correlatively, that we understand any strategy of the conatus on the political model of posing and resolving problems.

1 From Habit (the Productive Activity of the Nation's Actual Existence) to the Self-Organisation of the multitudinis ingenium as the Practical Political Subject

In Chapter XVII – along with many other passages of the TTP – Spinoza attributes the main ‘strength’ of the Hebrew people to the power of habituation (habit), whose value depends on ‘opinion’ alone. Opinions, however, are formed by ‘acquired habit’. It is by virtue of these habits and opinions that the Hebrews were led to their first covenant with God.