The Political Philosophy of Spinoza (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 215 possibilities outside the normal Judeo-Christian world view. Atheism, in its modem sense, a denial of a supernatural force involved in the world, does not fully emerge, I believe, until the mid-seventeenth century in Amsterdam. But the eruption of gnostic, magical and cabalistic views into the sixteenth century allowed for the serious entertaining of non-Christian and non-Judeo-Christian possibilities. We have begun to comprehend how men like Reuchlin, Agrippa, Pico, and Ficino could have been taken in and overwhelmed by esoteric ideas newly introduced into the European scene. Lefranc's interpretation of Ralegh indicated how an active, hard-hearted politician may have digested these currents, and appeared to his contemporaries as an atheist, while actually being a believer in one of the new philosophical religions. In comprehending how the modern world emerged, we will have to take more seriously its non-"rational" seeds in the mystic, esoteric explosion in the Renaissance, and the transformation of these into elements of the rational-scientific patterns of the next centuries. RICHARD H. POPKIN University of California, San Diego The Political Philosophy of Spinoza. By Robert J. McShea. (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1968. Pp. vii+214. $7.50) This is a very good book, with a clear point of view, taut and exact prose, and sophisticated scholarship. It goes a long way to establish Spinoza as a major political philosopher. Perhaps, as a result, surveys and textbooks in political philosophy will give Spinoza adequate space. Recent texts, describing Spinoza as a mere follower of Hobbes, give him about as much space as they do Pufendorf. Robert J. McShea's Spinoza derives from Machiavelli as well as Hobbes, and reaches out to Rousseau and the English and French Revolutions. He is even more hard-headed and clinical than Hobbes, and he is more systematic, carrying some Hobbist arguments to their logical conclusions, even where Hobbes himself doesn't. Hobbes, for example, relies greatly on promises 3o ensure that the subject obeys the sovereign, and thinks a broken promise is like a logical contradiction. Spinoza sees no reason to keep a promise; it is made to secure some benefit or avoid some evil; if it ceases to do either of those it has no warrant. Hobbes believes men have the right to preserve their lives, both in nature and civil society, and to decide for themselves what is needed for their own preservation, yet he finds no fight to revolt, even though men think the government threatens their lives. Spinoza says in his correspondence : "The individual's right of nature doe.s not cease in the political order," and in the Tractatus Politicus he adds that man "has as much right as he has power and strength." So if he can revolt, he may. Spinoza's radical determinism includes a concept of human freedom that is not in itself political, but has political implications. Everything that happens So a man is either a necessary consequence of his nature or of the conditions under which he exists. Thus there are two types of determinism, active, in accordance with one's own nature, and passive, the result of circumstances. Man's nature is to seek understanding, so to act in his own interest on the basis of understanding is free action. But that action is truly free only when one is correct about what are his real interests, which are in general the same for all men, since all men have the same nature. Action determined by circumstance, ignorance, confusion, or passion is action in bondage. Only the best of men can be free, but as for them "a man can be free in any kind of state." 216 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Reason shows how little we can do of what we want without mutual help, society, and political liberty. Rational self-interest demands that others, too, must have political liberty so that we can all help and support each other. Of course, only some ot us are bright enough to be free, or live under circumstances beneficial enough to live as we like. Neither choice nor merit determines those, and even free men are only more or less free. But...