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44. - Democracy

from D

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 January 2025

By
Ericka Tucker
Edited by
Karolina Hübner  and
Justin Steinberg
Karolina Hübner
Affiliation:
Cornell University, New York
Justin Steinberg
Affiliation:
Cornell University, New York
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Summary

In the TTP, Spinoza famously argues that democracy (democratia) is the best and most natural form of government (TTP16[36]). Critiquing Hobbes’s model of the social contract in Chapters 16 and 17, Spinoza argues that while Hobbes tries to subsume the power of the people or multitude in the sovereign, transferring their right and power to this figure or assembly, this kind of transfer is impossible. Individual humans – inside a state or outside of it – retain an amount of their natural power to live and think that can never be completely transferred to the sovereign (TTP17[2]). Since power cannot be fully transferred to any one person or group, it must remain in the individual humans that make up a state. The power that this multitude retains makes them a threat to any sovereign and form of state except a democratic one.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Spinoza Lexicon , pp. 110 - 113
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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References

Recommended Reading

Balibar, E. (1998). Spinoza and Politics. Verso.Google Scholar
Blom, H. W. (1995). Morality and Causality in Politics: The Rise of Naturalism in Dutch Seventeenth-Century Political Thought. CIP Gegevens Koninklijke Bibliotheek.Google Scholar
Feuer, L. (1987). Spinoza and the Rise of Liberalism. New edn. Transaction Books.Google Scholar
Prokhovnik, R. (1997). From democracy to aristocracy: Spinoza, reason and politics. History of European Ideas, 23(2–4), 105–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mugnier-Pollet, L. (1976). La philosophie politique de Spinoza. J. Vrin.Google Scholar
Matheron, A. (1997). The theoretical function of democracy in Spinoza and Hobbes. In Montag, W. and Stolze, T. (eds.), The New Spinoza (pp. 171–207). University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Sacksteder, W. (2001). Communal orders in Spinoza. In Lloyd, G. (ed.), Spinoza: Critical Assessments (pp. 20–38). Routledge.Google Scholar

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