Interrogating the Spinoza–Machiavelli relation first requires an analysis of some empirical facts which make up the basis of this problem in the last century. On the one hand, we have those texts of Machiavelli that were present in Spinoza's library, and on the other, the passages of the TP in which Spinoza cites Machiavelli and comments on him. To this we must add an investigation of works in Spinoza's library that discuss or repeat Machiavellian thought in both open and disguised ways, as well as a study of the role of citation in Spinoza's work. The former will allow us to emphasise the material traces of interpretations of Machiavelli through which Spinoza presumably elaborated his own interpretation, while the latter will enable us to stress the strategic significance of the occurrence of Machiavelli's name in Spinoza's lexicon.

Machiavelli's Texts in Spinoza's Library

We will first focus on the texts by Machiavelli that were present in Spinoza's library. In this regard, I think it is important to remember, as a preliminary methodological observation, that the presence of a text in the inventory of Spinoza's library does not ipso facto mean that it was read or studied by him. This inventory thus cannot retrace Spinoza's cultural horizon. The latter clearly extends over a much wider range and includes, beyond books that did not end up in the inventory, also those that he read without owning, and the entire atmosphere of knowledge that derives from oral communication in different social practices.

With this clarification, we come to the analysis of what Kant would define as a historical fact, since it is ratified by a local authority. In the inventory of objects left by Spinoza and sold at the public auction after his death, which is conserved in the notary archives of The Hague, there are two by Machiavelli:

The first of these corresponds to the edition of Machiavelli's works without an indication of the place of publication and dated 1550, known as the ‘Testina’ edition because of the type used by the press (‘testino’ characters). Thanks to the work of Bartolomeo Gamba, we know that this edition was reprinted five different times.