[MUSIC PLAYING] JONATHAN ISRAEL:
Now, Spinoza was expelled from the Jewish
community in Amsterdam, from the Sephardic
synagogue, in 1656. And only a small
amount of documentation has survived about this. So all that really tells us
is that the rabbis convinced the [INAUDIBLE],, the elders
of the Sephardic community in Amsterdam, that this was
a really subversive figure whose-- we're told that his
opinions were terrible, but they don't explain exactly
what that meant, and some of his actions, as well. We don't know what
the actions were-- [obras],, in the
Portuguese-- but this probably means not so much
offenses against observance, but probably persuading
other young people to take a defiant attitude
to certain aspects of rabbinic authority. So the first thing
we know about Spinoza is that he is a rebel
against Jewish tradition and rabbinic authority. And that, of course,
has made him, obviously, a notorious figure
within the Jewish world. And he became a
notorious figure, certainly, in the
wider Western world. d But he's mostly remembered--
and there are still debates about this, even
now, in Amsterdam. A year or two ago, there
was a revived debate about whether it was possible
to lift the rabbinic ban. I was there myself. There were two rabbis
present and each took a different opinion. So it remains inconclusive
and unresolved still to now, still
down to today, how far the rabbinic ban
still applies to Spinoza. But what is very
certain is that he was remembered in
the Jewish world and in the non-Jewish
world from 1656 down to now as the very embodiment
of irreligion, rejection of
religious authority, and skepticism about
the divine character. According to Spinoza,
it's not divine, but was written by actual
people who also happened to make a number of
slips and even mistakes and to get the
science all wrong. He mentions Joshua's
belief that the sun goes around the Earth as a
very clear piece of evidence that the people
that wrote scripture didn't understand the
basic laws of science. And for the non-Jewish
world equally, this is almost the
classic embodiment of irreligion in modern times. He was born in
Amsterdam, of course, and was the son of a prominent
Sephardic merchant who had-- Michael de Spinoza,
Spinoza's father, actually was brought
up in Nantes, which seems to be very
significant for his biography. I'll say more about this
a little bit further on. There was a very small community
of Portuguese New Christians. That's to say descendants
of Portuguese Jews who had been forcibly
baptized and made to observe, coerced into observing,
Christianity, whether they liked it or not, by
the Portuguese crown at the end of the 15th century. And among the descendants
of these Portuguese New Christians, it's
important to divide them-- and we have reports
about Nantes at the time that Spinoza's father was
being brought up in Nantes and the same would be true of
the Portuguese New Christian groups in Bordeaux and in
other places in France, because this is how the French
kingdom was in the late 16th and in the 17th century. They were still living
outwardly as Christians. But they were divided
into two groups, those who realized they had been
coerced into Christianity but were not really
concerned to resist and were content to go along
with that because this is what government and
church insisted on, that they went along with it-- one group among the
Portuguese New Christians. But there was another
group who were subversive crypto-Judaizers
who were keeping alive Jewish tradition
and Jewish religion secretly among
the Portuguese New Christians in these French
towns in the late 16th century and early 17th century. And we know for certain-- we have very clear
evidence about that-- that Spinoza's grandfather,
his granduncle, and his father, who were
all in Nantes in the 1590s and in the years
around 1600, were not amongst the quiescent
people who were, as it were, going along with
the forced Christianization of the former Portuguese
Jews, but were active crypto-Judaizers. That's not speculation. We know absolutely certain,
100%, no question about that, that Spinoza's father's family--
the mother's family, too, but that's another issue. But the father's family
who were in Nantes were active crypto-Judaizers
for certain. I know there's conjecture
and speculation about other individuals. Was he really a
crypto-Judaizers? But that doesn't
apply in this case. There's absolutely no question. [? Active ?] crypto-Judaizers,
no question about it. Now, it may be that
Jewish tradition actually has less difficulty
with the feature which from a religious
point of view is most revolutionary about
Spinoza than Christianity does. Because in the non-Jewish world,
what Spinoza was most notorious for in the late 17th and
18th century was denying-- he claimed he wasn't an atheist,
although he was very frequently accused of being an atheist. He denied that there is a
knowing, benevolent god who is separate from
nature and the world and who created the world,
nor is the course of events and what happens in the world
governed by a knowing divinity. So there's no such thing as
divine providence for Spinoza. He denied the possibility
of divine providence. And that means that there's
no such thing as divine reward and punishment for the way
you behave in this world. So what your behavior is-- you
might be rewarded or punished in terms of living a good life
and being happy about yourself or being a wretched individual
who's not happy about oneself, but that largely depends on you. And the reward and
punishment is not something that's dealt
out by a divinity. But actually, in some strains
of Judaism, particularly-- it's well known
that certain strands of the cabalistic tradition
of Jewish orthodoxy in Eastern Europe do go rather far towards
a pantheistic conception, which is arguably not so very
different from the kind of conception of God
that Spinoza had. So you could argue that
though Spinoza's god and Spinoza's redefining
of what religion is-- because there is no God to pray
to for Spinoza because there is no divine providence and no
divine governance of the world, acknowledging the reality
of God and awareness of God, for Spinoza, means
having a philosophical-- that, for him, means realistic. Philosophical for him means
realistic-- understanding of the world, of the
universe, and of reality. And the essence of religion,
as he redefines it, then becomes leading
a moral life. And the most important
strands of an ethical life, a moral life, for Spinoza
are justice and charity. So justice and charity
in Spinoza's philosophy, in The Ethics, also in
the political writings, receive a very
particular emphasis. So if you redefine religion
in that way, what you've done is to carry out a
kind of revolution. So I don't think
there can really be a question that, if
you look at it in terms of the moral order,
the way humans conceive of the moral order
that underpins the legal system and
politics and conceive of religion-- if you redefine
religion in this way, to that extent, Spinoza is
clearly a revolutionary. But I want to take this
analysis much further and look at other ways that this
extends and to show, I hope-- I'll try to show-- that Spinoza was indeed
a revolutionary thinker. Now, you should know
something about the fate of his publications
in his own lifetime because this is very
relevant to this. He wrote these books. He spent a tremendous
amount of time-- in fact, he spent all of his relatively
short life trying to develop his philosophy to the utmost
he could and to perfect his expression of his philosophical
points in The Ethics, his number one masterpiece,
in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, which
I'll call the TTP for short-- the TTP, which is his the
second most important work, and in the unfinished
political treatise. So two of the three
most important books are actually political. But it's very
important to realize-- although philosophers,
I think, in the past have often made this
mistake and said, well, The Ethics, that's
the real philosophical work so we'll forget
about the political stuff and just discuss Spinoza
as a metaphysician, as a moral philosopher,
very important-- we'll analyze Spinoza's
ethics, but we'll forget about the politics. That's often been the attitude. That's completely wrong. You can't separate the
political thinking-- that's a point in which
Michael and I completely agreed, that it is absolutely
integrable to Spinoza's outlook. However, do notice that
the moment his works were published in what was
the freest country for freedom of expression in
the 17th century, at least before the Glorious
Revolution in England-- England was
outclassed by Holland. That was the freest
country, the Dutch Republic. And in the Dutch
Republic, you could-- freedom of expression by
the standards of the time reached quite far. So there's quite a lot
that you could publish. What you couldn't publish
was Spinozistic works. So the TTP used to be
thought-- because there wasn't a general
ban until four years after it was published, 1674. But it's been shown that
there were local bans in place from the beginning, from 1670. So there's no question
that this book was forbidden from the beginning. And after his complete
works, the Opera Posthuma, were published in 1678,
they were immediately banned by general decree
of the states-general. And there was then a
supplementary decree saying everything Spinozistic,
everything by Spinoza, is absolutely banned in every
respect by the Dutch Republic. They did make an exception. He published another book,
his first book in 1663, expounding Descartes philosophy. That wasn't banned,
but the rest was. And that was regarded
as Cartesian philosophy, although there are bits in it
which are not really Cartesian, but they didn't notice that
or didn't object to that. But they objected to everything
else that came subsequently. And the opinions expressed
in Spinoza's books are not allowed to be
replicated or repeated or echoed in other books. Booksellers who infringed this,
printers who infringed this, would receive very
severe punishments. And we know that they did. People were imprisoned or
very heavily fined for this. And you're not allowed
to possess copies. You have to hand them
in to the authorities so that they can be burnt. So more effort was put into
suppressing Spinozistic books than any other book
in the Dutch Republic. If you had Islamic
books or Catholic books or collegiate books or Sicilian
books, some of these things were not looked on
with great approval. Sicilian books were actually
supposed to be banned, but nobody put much effort
into suppressing them. Spinozistic books
were a bit different. Real effort was put
into suppressing these. And we have a number of
cases of booksellers who were sent to prison for years. The punishment could
be very severe. You do not publish Spinoza. That is absolutely banned by
the freest republic in Europe. Well, that's really something. You need to have gone
pretty far to achieve that. And when you read these
decrees of banning the books, the Dutch decrees,
you can see it's two things. The preachers have been
complaining about him a lot. So the number one
issue was the-- it's not just the apparent
denial of a providential god, although that's
certainly part of it, but the complete rejection of
religious authority as such. According to Spinoza,
there's no such thing as religious authority. There isn't any
religious authority. There can't be an
institutionalized or legalized or politicized basis for a
religious opinion playing a guiding role in society. There's no, ever,
any justification for religious
authority as something separate from the state. Well, that was one
of the reasons why everything Spinozistic was
completely banned in a way that other things
that were disapproved of by the Dutch government were
not banned to the same extent. The other thing was the
criticism of the rather-- Spinoza was certainly
a republican, but he wasn't the same
kind of republican as the sort of
republicanism which was official and
which was established, which was based on a
rather narrow oligarchy. So we could call it a form of
aristocratic republicanism. And Spinoza contained some
fairly fierce criticisms of this kind of republicanism. So that probably
played a part in it as well, although rejection
of religious authority was certainly the
number one reason. Now, this is the
first of his books to be banned, the
one that was banned in the early 1670s,
the TTP, as I call it. And this caused a
tremendous sensation and had a big impact
all over Europe because it contained all the
elements I just mentioned just now. It wasn't just the
statement of those points as philosophical
propositions, but this book is actually a landmark in the
history of biblical criticism. No one had ever
before analytically examined the use of
phrases and words and the actual characteristics
of the text with such care and systematically
shown, as he claimed to do here, that they
were inconsistencies, contradictions,
differences of meaning using the same
phrases and so on, relating to different
historical periods, which showed that scripture, the
Hebrew Bible-- he's very, very discreet about his comments
on the New Testament. He prefers not to commit
himself too strongly to that. But he uses his expertise in
Hebrew, which was considerable, to introduce a level
of analysis, of Bible criticism, which had
a sensational effect all over Europe. And the book was so
disorientating and so upsetting to many people that one
can easily understand why it was banned with such vigor. Notice that they don't put
his name on the title page. Somebody has put--
what have they put? Benedict de Spinoza. It's worth saying that-- just about the name, in
parentheses-- that of course we most frequently
today still call him Baruch Spinoza not
just in the Jewish world, but many non-Jewish writers
refer to him as Baruch Spinoza. That was his synagogue name. And when he was expelled
from the synagogue in 1656, the elders of the
synagogue say they're expelling Baruch Spinoza. But he's named, actually,
after his mother's father. His mother's family was
very interesting as well, by the way, but I
haven't got time to say anything about
Hana Debora this evening. That will be for
another occasion. So his mother's
father, her father, was called Baruch [? Osorio. ?]
So Spinoza was named after his mother's father. But Spinoza himself
in all the letters-- we've got about 80
letters of Spinoza. They all date from quite a
while after his expulsion. That's a problem for
biographers of Spinoza, that we don't have
any of his letters earlier than 1661, which is
five years after that expulsion. If only we had some
letters from a bit earlier, that would be a wonderful
source for biographers. But you see, certainly
from 1661, all the letters and in all other-- in the title pages,
in the Descartes-- he doesn't put his
name on this one. On the notorious Opera
Posthuma of 1678, his editors-- he was dead by that time. It was published in 1678. You just get the
three initials, which became absolutely notorious. It was a kind of-- became a sort of
symbol and a code in the early 18th century, BDS. Everyone knew what that meant. BDS was something
that sent a chill down the back of a lot of
people in the 18th century. So that was published under BDS. This one, there's
no name at all. And by the way,
the rest is false because it wasn't published
in Hamburg, but in Amsterdam. And this printer didn't exist. The date's right, but
the rest is false. But that's typical of
what historians sometimes call the clandestine
enlightenment of the late 17th and the early 18th
century, which I'll say a bit more about
further on and a lot more about in the second
lecture, which-- there'll be quite a bit about
this clandestine enlightenment. Well, it's very important to
understand-- this book is not just about Bible
criticism and an attack on religious authority. There's a lot of
politics in it as well. And the politics is clearly
democratic republicanism. In the key passages
of his writing, Spinoza makes clear that
his principal aim was not to spread irreligious
attitudes, but rather to promote freedom in the sense
of individual freedom, but also collective freedom,
which makes him a really rather important innovator. And his aim is to fight tyranny,
which-- and tyranny, for him, means political tyranny in
the sense of unjust coercion and unjust distribution of
opportunity and resources in society. But it usually means coercion-- a form of tyranny usually
means political coercion supported and supplemented
by religious authority. And of course that reflects
the world in which he lived. If you think of the
tyrants of his time-- in his own time, Holland was
most threatened by Louis XIV. And Louis XIV is
famous, of course, for his intolerance for his
espousing of the Catholic Church and the way Louis
XIV meshed together royal absolutism
and Catholicism. They march together and
they squash everything else. That's the world I want,
said Louis the 14th. I want to hear nothing except
the kings and the power of kings and the Catholic
religion imposed on everybody. But actually,
Spinoza doesn't talk about Louis XIV, who
was the main threat to the Dutch
Republic in his time. In this book and in his
other political treaties and in his letters, where there
are a number of references, you can see it's not so much
Louis XIV but rather Philip II, the most powerful of the
Spanish kings and the one who had been the greatest
supporter of the Inquisition, the greatest enemy,
you could say, of the crypto-Jews because
he'd pushed hardest to try to destroy Judaism
as far as he could, also secured the expulsion of
the Jews from parts of Italy like Milan, which Spain
dominated at that time, the time of Philip II. And Philip II, in a sense,
was a kind of predecessor to Louis XIV in the
sense that he said, we want to get rid of
constraints on royal power. What politics and
administration is is the king ruling and
overruling everybody else. It is royal power imposing
itself without restraint, royal absolutism. And you cannot impose royal
power with the force that I need, said Philip II. You can't do it powerfully. You cannot coerce to the extent
that I need to coerce without the force of religion
because it's-- the people's belief, the belief
that only Catholicism is right and the rest must be eliminated
and must be thoroughly, thoroughly suppressed,
it is that belief which enables me to impose
myself on society as forcefully as I do. So it's this conjunction
of royal absolutism with religious intolerance,
this alliance of tyranny with religious authority-- and
whether one is religious or not in today's sense is
irrelevant to this. The fact is in
early modern times, of course, Spinoza's right. There is a close conjunction
between the two things. And you certainly
can't understand Philip II's despotism
or Louis XIV's despotism without realizing that they
were extremely aware that they couldn't do it, they
couldn't achieve what they were trying to
achieve, they could not impose themselves on society in
the way they were trying to do, without the force of religion. That was the thing
that enabled them to achieve royal absolutism
in the way that they did. So to that extent,
you have to, I think, accept that Spinoza's analysis
was certainly accurate. So you have to rebel
against tyranny and you have to rebel
against absolutist kings. But it's no use just
doing it any old way. And Spinoza was certainly not
a revolutionary in the sense that he wanted to just stir up
anybody who was dissatisfied with the state of things
and was willing to organize a rebellion against kings. He thought that's a
complete waste of time because the multitude-- And his definition of multitude
is not a Marxist definition. He doesn't mean
the lower classes. When he speaks
about the multitude, he means the people who think
in a conventional way, who don't understand philosophy,
the kind of philosophy that he taught. So the multitude includes
the clergy and aristocrats and kings. Actually, everybody's
the multitude except the ones who understand
the reality of things. But the people who understand
the reality of things can come from any class. And of course, one of
his chief supporters, [? Yerik Yelles, ?]
was a grocer. But you could be
anything if you could-- you needed to be able
to read, I'd guess. But if you were willing to enter
into the spirit of the kind of ideas that he
was teaching, that meant that you were not
part of the multitude. It had nothing to do with
your economic circumstances. He gave the English
Revolution as a good example of how revolutions
could go wrong. When he was young, in
the 1640s, of course there's this great
revolution in England. But if the people
undertake a revolution without much grasp
of what's going on, that isn't going to
lead to anything useful. According to Spinoza,
all you do is to get a king
under another name. So he's very caustic in his
remarks about Oliver Cromwell. And he uses Cromwell
as an example of-- Spinoza is saying
that most of society is living in an oppressed and
tyrannized over and rather unhappy condition. Doesn't have to be that way. It could be changed. The majority of
people are oppressed because of this alliance
between a form of government which is against
their interests, monarchy in alliance
with religious authority. To overthrow it implies
a revolutionary change. But having a
revolutionary change doesn't mean you just start
a general insurrection because that is not going to get
you anywhere if it's motivated by the wrong kind of thinking. And Cromwell, to him, perfectly
illustrates this rule. Now, for Spinoza,
there are basically two kinds of government. This is characteristic of the
radical Enlightenment which really starts in this period. I'm not trying to say that
Spinoza is the inventor or originator of the radical
Enlightenment because there were a whole group of
people around him-- historians sometimes call them
the [? Circla Spinozist. ?] He's not the first to express
these kind of political ideas, which you find in the 1660s in
several other Dutch writers, in particular, Johan de la
Court, Pieter de la Court, and Franciscus van den Enden. But what they all
have in common, and this is enormously
important because you don't find this in
England or America at all until the late
18th century bursts on the scene with the
American Revolution, this kind of thinking,
with Tom Paine and a whole group of others-- Benjamin Franklin is one of
those that-- and Jefferson is one of those that picks it up. But they're picking it up on
the continent, mostly in France Or course, both Franklin and
Jefferson spent a lot of time in France. And I don't think it's
English in origin. But this attack on--
this understanding that kings are no good. We have to do away with that. But aristocracy's
no good either. It's no use replacing
monarchy with aristocratic republicanism. Most of the republics in Europe,
remember in Spinoza's time-- you had Venice. You had Genoa. But these are
aristocratic republics. And so they're
attacked very much also by these Dutch writers. And what you have
to have is something they call democratic
republicanism. And they are really
the first to introduce democratic republicanism in
opposition to aristocratic republicanism,
which was destined to become a great theme in
the American Revolution, but that's another story. Anyway, you see in the TTP--
in chapter 18, for example, Spinoza writes that, "It is
very difficult and dangerous to get rid of a monarch even if
it is clear by every criterion that he's a tyrant. A people accustomed
to royal authority and held in check only by it
will despise any less authority and hold it in contempt." And then he says that the
English people provided a great illustration of this. But if you're going to
improve conditions in society and reduce ecclesiastical
sway, you have to-- and you can see this
in Spinoza's account of the Dutch
rebellion where he's a bit more inclined to mince
words than he usually is. He's very direct,
Spinoza, and he's-- despite the
revolutionary character, as I see it, of a lot
of what he's saying, he doesn't very
often disguise what he's saying under
phrases or evasive ways of expressing things. He does a bit, I think, in his
account of the Dutch Revolt. But he obviously
thinks the Dutch Revolt is a very good thing. And in fact, all revolts
against Philip II-- who, as I say, was
his great enemy-- are a very good thing. He discusses two examples
in detail in the TTP and in the Tractatus Politicus,
his other political work, which was left
unfinished when he died. And those are the Dutch
Revolt against Philip II-- that, of course, really
got going in 1572 but had to contend-- a long war set in
in the low countries and they had to contend with the
brutality of the Duke of Alva. And then he discusses the
Revolt of Aragon in 1590. I'll say a bit more
about that further on. Let me just say a little bit
about the Portuguese aspect, which is very
interesting, first. This is Dom Antonio, the
prior of Crato, Pretender to the Portuguese Throne. Now, of the three revolts
against Philip II that would have been relevant
to Spinoza and his family, he has some detailed things
to say about the Dutch Revolt, as I said just now, and
some detailed things to say about the
Revolt of Aragon, which he's very interested in. He doesn't say anything at all
about the revolt of Portugal, which started in 1580. And yet his own family
were connected with that. And I think this is a
very good example of how biography and family background
can help you understand the implications-- also,
where a certain orientation is a great thinker's
thinking comes from, but how it could be perhaps
refined and reworked and more broadly organized
to become what it became in Spinoza's philosophy. So you need to know that until
1580, Portugal was completely independent from Spain. The young Portuguese
king at that time, in 1578, actually,
two years before, got himself killed in Morocco-- so now there was a tussle. Well, who was going to be his
successor as king of Portugal? Well, Philip II said he had
the best claim and a large part of the Portuguese aristocracy
and the Inquisition immediately agreed with that. But there was another claimant-- He his problem was that
he was illegitimate, but he was a grandson of an
earlier Portuguese king-- Dom Antonio, Prior
of Crato, who's quite a colorful character. And his mother was
a New Christian, Portuguese New Christian woman. And he himself had a
number of love affairs with Portuguese Christian women. I don't think that's
the reason why Portuguese Christians
supported him in his revolt against Philip II. I think there's different
reasons for that. But they did. And a large part
of the population supported the revolt in 1580. Philip II had to
send the Spanish army in under the Duke of Alva, who
suppressed this revolt, too, fairly brutally. But awkwardly for Philip II,
Dom Antonio escaped to France. And interestingly, he set
up his base near Nantes, although he had to keep
moving around because France was in civil war. Philip II was the great ally
of the French Catholic League. Large parts of France
were under the control of the French Catholic League. They were determined to
prevent Henry IV-- who was a Protestant, remember,
until he converted later to Catholicism, but
only on the surface in order to make it easier
for the French to accept him. But one of the Protestant
areas was Nantes. And he was able, with the
help of some Portuguese New Christian merchants in Nantes,
to organize a fleet which conquered the Azores in 1583. So Dom Antonio had the privilege
of being proclaimed king of Portugal twice. And he rule in the Azores
for a couple of years. And Philip II had to send
another-- well, this time an Armada, of course, to
conquer the Azores, which he did in 1583, 1584. Only Dom Antonio escaped
again and got back to France. So he really was a
tremendous nuisance from Philip II's point of view. And we know that Spinoza's
grandfather and granduncle, they were not in Nantes yet. They seem to have settled
there in the 1590s. But it's clear that
they were not only leaders of the crypto-Judaizers,
but they were certainly participating in the help that
the Portuguese New Christian merchants in Nantes were
giving to Dom Antonio. And we have some documents
from the 1590s which show quite clearly
that this is happening and that his granduncle
Abraham Spinoza was certainly involved in the anti-Spanish
political activity in Nantes in the 1590s. So that's rather important
to know especially in the light of letters
from Philip II's ambassadors in different parts of Europe. They say that Dom Antonio
keeps escaping every attempt to capture him. He's a really big problem. He's got some kind of
agreement with the Jews, with the Portuguese
New Christians. He's going to greatly
curtail the Inquisition if he were ever able to
become king of Portugal. The Spanish ambassador in
Venice wrote back to Madrid to say in Venice, both the
formal Jews in the ghetto and the Portuguese
New Christians living outside the
ghetto, both of them are very active supporters
of this Dom Antonio. It's a big problem because-- here you see what's very
interesting in that report, that of course the Jews are
encouraging crypto-Judaism in the peninsula. So there's a
religious subversion that they're directly
participating in. They send prayer books. They send encouragement. They have different ways
of keeping it alive, crypto-Judaism in
the republic, in-- sorry, in Spain and in Portugal. So you see the
religious subversion. But this ambassador
was pointing out, but it's not just
religious subversion. You see how among this
group, political subversion against the monarchy and
their support for Dom Antonio goes together with
their crypto-Judaism, as indeed it does. So that's a very important
part of the background. Now, in the Tractatus
Politicus-- and you find it even more forcefully,
I have to say, in some of the other writers of
this circle I've talked about. You'd find this point expressed
more forcefully in Johan de la Court, for instance, that
democratic republics are better than
aristocratic republics and that in republics where
there had been a broader tendency of decision-making,
the vested interests always work in such a way as to help
a narrow group take advantage of the majority. So what had happened in
Venice, for example-- this is the Signoria in
Venice, a painting of Guardi in the 18th century, where the
Small Council, the Signoria, is taking over more and
more from the Great Council. And you could see
the same tendency in Genoa, the same
tendency in the Swiss-- the Swiss cantons
also have this thing where each canton, whether
it's Zurich or Bern or Geneva, they did still have remnants
of a great council tradition. But the small
groups of oligarchs, usually the richest
people in town, had managed to draw
power more and more into the hands of
the Small Council and marginalize
the Great Council. And this was the
very opposite of what should be happening
according to these writers and according to Spinoza. So I think that the
most important part of Spinoza's political theory
is the idea that the reason that the democratic republic
is the best form of government because it's the one
that most reflects-- is most natural in the sense
that it most reflects the way that the state and
civil society came into being in the first place. And Spinoza is
very keen to stress that humans have a
natural individual liberty and freedom which they surrender
part of to form civil society or the state for the sake
of security, stability, and protection. No one wants to live
in an absolute jungle where your life is
risked every moment and where you're so unsafe that
you have no enjoyment of life. So life is much better
in a stable society where the individual
is protected. But in order to
form such a society, you give up part
of your freedoms of the state of nature. And everyone does this equally. So the act of forming a
civil society and the state is a sacrifice of individual
liberty which is equal, which is given up by
each person equally to achieve a common good. And that common good
becomes the basis of his theory of
democratic republicanism. And a general good or
general will theory becomes extremely important
to this radical Enlightenment tradition from this
point right the way through the 18th century. Rousseau, who's
usually [? created ?] with general will, introduces
a variant of it later, which is not the
real tradition, which you find more in Diderot
and d'Holbach and Condorcet and [INAUDIBLE], and so on. So it has a big future in France
and in revolutionary thinking in the late 18th century. But what's important about it
in Spinoza, which he usually refers to it as
the general good, is the idea that everyone
has created the civil society equally and everyone
has an equal right to the freedoms
and the advantages that the democratic republic
or the state should provide. Therefore, all governments
can be divided into two kinds. And this is typical of
the radical Enlightenment all the way through. You find this expressed
very clearly in Condorcet during the French Revolution. Theorists can talk
about monarchies and this kind of republic
and that kind of republic and there are different
kinds of state. But in reality, there are
only two kinds of state. There are the ones where the
advantages and power have been gathered into the
hands of a small group whose vested interests then
become the driving force behind the state and
everybody else is deceived, taken advantage
of, and exploited to the advantage of those few. Now, this works most of the
time and most of humanity are oppressed in this way, but
only because of superstitions, Spinoza-- it's only
because people believe that religion is
the way to salvation and because religious
authority supports these vested interests. That's why oppression is the
usual rule amongst humanity. But the more
natural and the more just and the right
way to get to-- if you want to equalize
the advantages of society for everybody and everyone
has an equal right to share in those advantages,
is the democratic republic. So it's not an accident. You see, Spinoza is the-- of course, there were
democracies in ancient times, but they were direct
democracies, not representative democracies. And in any case, the
ancient Greek philosophers, none of them were in
favor of democracy. So Spinoza is the first
democratic philosopher in the history of philosophy and
that is a revolutionary fact. Anyone who knows anything
about early modern Europe knows that to express
democratic views is a revolutionary thing to do. It's extremely subversive. So in other words,
what I'm saying, and that's the brunt
of my lecture, really, is that you cannot separate
the religious subversion, which is an attack on religious
authority rather than an attack on-- individuals should
be free to express their religious feelings in
whatever way is right for them. But no individual's way of doing
it is more right than anyone else's. That's up to the individual. But as far as the law, the
moral order, the institutions, the state, and
education is concerned, there's no such thing
as religious authority. So it's very, very
subversive and revolutionary. And it is absolutely
inseparable from this theory of democratic
republicanism which is so basic to Spinoza, but also
to the group around Spinoza. That's a very important thing. He's not the first to express
the general will concept. I mentioned Franciscus
van den Enden, who several years
before Spinoza, in 1665, published a book called the Vrye
Politijke Stellingen. There, it's called the general
according interest, the [NON-ENGLISH],,
the interest-- is the equal involvement of
every individual in the good of the state. And it's only by representing
the interests of everyone equally in the policies
and the attitude and the workings of the
state and representing those in some way in the
workings of the state that it can be said
to be sustaining the general interest. And normally, this
isn't happening and it's only a vested interest
of a small, powerful group who are benefiting from the
way politics is organized in any given state. But the reason why
it's usually like that is because of
superstition and all the wrong religious
beliefs, which are turning the world
into a miserable place, according to this group
of subversive thinkers. Sorry. I should have shown Philip
perhaps a bit earlier on. So there's the symbol, Spinoza's
symbol, of tyranny, the one that he discusses
most, Philip II. I should say just a little
bit about Hobbes and Locke. Of course, one problem
with understanding-- I think the reason why so many
scholars have strongly objected to my-- I must say that it's extremely
impressive, the rejection of my theory, at
least in one way, and that is the enormous
number of historians who've joined in it. But I have to say,
personally, at least-- I don't think the arguments
are all that good, but that's not the point. But I do think that
one should look at some of the
cultural reasons that might be having this effect. And if you look at all
the standard histories of political thought, you'll
see that the emphasis is always on Hobbes and Locke. And this reflects the
fact that it's also part of the American
political tradition. There is just this assumption
that whatever modernity is and whatever democracy is
and however we got there, there's one thing
we know for certain, and it comes from England
so we can begin with that. And that is terribly, terribly
important in British culture, but also in American culture. But it's completely wrong
because in 17th century England, although there is
the two revolutions, the 1640s and 1688-- but 1688 is the victory of
aristocratic republicanism. And republican theories are
very important in 17th century England. You've got Harrington. You've got Algernon Sydney. But the thing about
Algernon Sydney is that this is a republicanism
which bridges over, which occludes and-- it preaches mixed government
and provides the opportunity for the aristocratic
system to take over, which is of course exactly what
happened in Britain in 1688. And in the American Revolution,
one faction, the John Adamses and the Gouverneur Morrises
and the Hamiltons and so on, they said, well, we might
be fighting the British, but at least they know how
to organize a government. We want to have an
independent government. But it should be based
on the British idea, aristocracy runs society. That's right. We want aristocratic
republicanism. And that's just as
America, believe it or not, as democracy, if you look
at the American Revolution in an objective way. Of course, in the end-- well, that's not
perhaps entirely clear. But let's say we
hope in the end, that the democratic republican
tradition has won the struggle. But it was a real
struggle in the late-- a tremendous struggle
in the late-- which reached an
amazing crescendo of violent ideological politics. I'm not talking about now. I'm talking about the 1790s. [LAUGHTER] And the democratic
republicanism had a hard time. But if you look at the
European background, it is absolutely not in
England, but in Holland that you find this in those
writers I mentioned just now. And I think that is the
objection to what I'm saying. That just doesn't make sense. How can it come from
Golden Age Holland? There are a lot of people
who can't accept that. It must come from England. So there's quite a
cultural battle about this. And that's the
only real reason I can find-- because I must
say the arguments are pretty hopeless. They're so bad that it's not
even worth discussing them. I don't think anyone will
replicate any of them in the discussion here this
evening because you can't. It's impossible. The comparison
between the clarity of the conflict between
democratic republicanism and aristocratic
republicanism in Dutch-- among this group in the second
half of the 17th century in the Dutch Golden
Age and in English republicanism is so
manifest and so obvious that there can't really be a
sensible intellectual argument about that. It's just foolishness
to say, well-- but that's how it is. But there we are. So let me go on,
then, and just-- we've only got 20 minutes
left so I should end very, very soon, I think, if we're
going to have any discussion. But I just wanted to say a
little bit about the Aragonese revolt because there's one
aspect of Spinoza's biography I've said nothing about
so far, which I think is needed to
complete the picture. I think anyone that reads
Spinoza's political works is going to be a little bit
mystified by one thing that seems very odd. Spinoza is level-headed,
sensible, and persuasive most of the time. But there's one feature
which seems completely out of line with that. And that is his
extraordinary boast, probably quite a few people here
have encountered this passage, where he says that all
political theorists up to now have produced these totally
unrealistic, imaginary systems which in some poetic golden age
might be a nice thing to have, but which aren't going to have
any relevance because they are completely unrealistic. What we need is a political
theory which is useful and which is going
to release mankind from the kind of
tyranny and oppression and the frequency of wars. That's the point he
frequently makes. The reason we've
got so many wars is because of kings and
aristocratic republics. If you have
democratic republics, defined in the way he does,
we won't have all these wars. And that will be one
of the important ways in which everything is
going to be much better. And this seems very odd. Not the argumentation in itself,
about democratic republicanism. That's not odd. But what seems odd is how
come this Jewish thinker, who seems to be a bit reclusive
and is living on his own most of the time with
very delicate health-- why does he think he's got some
kind of special understanding of politics that even Hobbes
and Machiavelli don't have? Because in this boast
that I mentioned just now, he seems to be saying he's
got a more realistic-- that most political thinkers,
totally unrealistic. He mentions both Machiavelli
and Hobbes a couple of time. They're two political
thinkers who have got some realistic ideas,
but not really that realistic when you look at
it more carefully, and that he somehow has a more
realistic grasp of politics. Where does that come from? So I think that that
also has something to do with this family
background and this involvement in all these revolts that I
mentioned and particularly in the Portuguese revolt
in the 1580s and '90s. But I should say
he's very keen-- his account of the
revolt of Aragon is very rarely
discussed by historians of political thought. And it's interesting because
in his own personal library, we have a list of a small number
of books he still had with him when he died. One of them are the-- in Spanish, the
Relaciones, the account of the Revolt of Aragon by
this man, Antonio Perez. And he mentions Perez
a couple of times. And he says, where we do
know about the realities of politics, they tend not to
come from political theorists, but from those that
experience politics. And Antonio Perez is as colorful
a character as the other Dom Antonio I showed before,
who had an amazing career. As time is pressing, I
won't get into the details. But he is somebody who had been
a political secretary of Philip II, who broke with Philip II,
escaped from Madrid after being in prison for a
while, who was one of the focal points of the
Revolt of Aragon in 1590-- which Philip had to send another
army to suppress this revolt and to change some of
the laws which restricted royal authority in Aragon. But Perez escaped as well. Actually, this Dom
Antonio and the other one met up in Windsor as
guests of Queen Elizabeth at a later stage and
exchanged stories about how they'd got
away from Philip II and how they were plotting
with just about anybody who was willing to join in opposing
the tyranny of Philip II. But it's interesting that
Spinoza puts him forward as, now, there's a
man who understands the realities of
politics, and paraphrases several of his maxims and his
rules about how politics work. So I see that as being
actually very significant. OK. Let me wrap up very
fast because we've got to leave a bit of
time for discussion. We'll just see what's
left of the slides. Well, there's
Antonio Perez's book. That's actually a different
edition from the one-- it's a later one-- in Spinoza's library. This is an earlier edition. So in that period, for
the late 16th century, it was one of the most
politically subversive books around and clearly a
favorite of Spinoza's. And so there, we see
the collected works that came out in-- it's got the date 1677 on
it, although in fact, it seems to have come out in
1678, although that's not entirely clear. But you see now it's-- we still haven't got
Spinoza's name on it, but we have got this BDS
that I mentioned before. And his portrait was included. And Spinoza's
portrait also became a symbol of this radical
Enlightenment tendency in the 18th century. And John de Witt is the
one who, of course, led the oligarchic republicanism
that the group around Spinoza were criticizing
and critical of. And I just wanted
to show at the end, as I'm going on on Tuesday
in the second lecture, going to talk about Jewish
traditions or traditions and Jewish thought where the
revolutionary role, the idea that Spinoza was a general
emancipator of mankind and of the Jews as
well, who of course were more oppressed and more
ghettoized and more subject to marginalization
and disabilities than any other group
in European society-- and Heine was one
of those that really cast Spinoza in that role. And Moses Hess was another one. And I'll just conclude
the lecture with that. Thank you very, very
much for listening to me, ladies and gentlemen. [APPLAUSE] [MUSIC PLAYING]
