Spinoza's Modernity: Mendelssohn, Lessing, and Heine

CHAPTER 5 A Noncontractual Theory of the Political Order

the radical nature of the challenge Spinoza presents emerges most clearly in the way he theorizes power, state, and government. But Spinoza does not actually mount a frontal attack on traditional forms of political legitimation. Rather, his analysis of political institutions proposes a different approach to theorizing the concept of power itself. His choice of the term imperium for the state—in contrast to res publica, his term for the state’s concerns—marks a distinction crucial to the exercise of power in the civil state, a distinction that informs whatever political structure might ground the exercise of power in a given polity.1 Critical of the analyses of Machiavelli and Hobbes, Spinoza proposes a new understanding of the nature and function of the political.2 His innovative move consists not so much in introducing an alternative view but rather in pressing for a reconceptualization of the political that follows the reconWguration of metaphysics carried out in the Ethics. Based on the radical ontology of the Ethics, this means the reconstitution of political theory from the bottom up. The methodological reXection underlying this move plays an important role. The distinctive character of Spinoza’s political theory consists in his attempt to ground it in a philosophical framework capable of answering the critical concerns of his metaphysical reXections. Although Spinoza’s political thought may raise more questions than it can answer, it exposes the teleological implications of the normative content of the presuppositions underpinning classic political theory. 66 c h a p t e r 5
a noncontr actual theory of the political order Whereas Machiavelli and Hobbes operate under the ultimately teleological assumption that state power—given the powers that be—requires a legitimation that can pacify and dominate the naturally anarchic state of things in a more or less effective form, Spinoza is preoccupied by an altogether different concern. Following the lead provided by his ontology , he argues that as long as political theory relies on problematic constructs such as contract, power transfer, representation (in the Baroque sense), government, and the state, such reasoning lends itself to the dictate of a teleological reason that only reinforces, if not legitimates, the status quo. For Spinoza, however, the fait accompli of the status quo in no way justiWes philosophy’s underwriting the rules of the game that allow the imperium’s power calculus to function. Spinoza is in this regard more wary than Hobbes, who in the end seems more preoccupied with dismantling the regnant theory of patriarchy and setting up possessive individualism in its place than with charting the full complexity and complicity that the process of legitimating authority involves.3 Spinoza’s point, however, lies in his theory’s built-in resistance to instrumentalization . The pointedly non-instrumental character of his argumentation militates against any exploitation of theory for political gain. His examination of the theoretical commitments of key concepts of political thought leads to a revolutionary shift toward a reorientation and redeWnition of political philosophy as a critical project. The opening word of the Political Treatise—“affects”—names the grounds on which Spinoza’s political theory is based.4 Rather than power, force, state, law, rights, or government, the crux of political life consists for Spinoza in what undergirds all these concepts and what determines human behavior: the affects. To the degree that they not only represent manifestations of inner life but function as the motor for human motivations , the affects drive behavior, attitudes, and actions. The concept of the affects thus informs and shapes Spinoza’s political theory in two crucial ways. Pointing forward to Spinoza’s reconception of political theory, the introduction of the affects at the beginning of the Political Treatise marks his theory of politics as one built on his Ethics’ theory of the affects. Acknowledging the fundamental import of affects allows Spinoza to theorize the link between the ethical and the political without having to subscribe to tacit norms or implications that might impose unforeseen consequences that could jeopardize if not undo the project of a theory of politics based on autonomy and self-determination. A Noncontractual Theory of the Political Order 67 The reasons and natural foundations for government (“imperii causae et fundamenta naturalia”) can be found in the common nature that is the condition, or constitution, of human beings (“ex hominum communi natura seu conditione” [TP I§7]). The operative term here is communi. Starting with Plato, human nature...