POLITICAL TREATISE
[Tractatus Politicus]
978-1-934978-67-2
Wherein is Demonstrated. How the Society in Which Monarchical Dominion Finds Place, As Also That in Which the Dominion is Aristocratic, Should be Ordered, so as not to Lapse Into a Tyranny, but to Preserve Inviolate the Peace and Freedom of the Citizens.
Including Chapter XX of
THEOLOGICO-POLITICAL TREATISE
[Tractatus Theologico-Politicus]
IN A FREE STATE EVERY MAN MAY THINK WHAT HE LIKES, AND SAY WHAT HE THINKS.
Introduction by R. H. M. ELWES.
Editor’s Note
Born in Amsterdam in 1634, Benedict Spinoza continues to be one of the most admired thinkers. His work, including the Ethics, the Tractatus Theologico Politicus and the Political Treatise (first published in 1677, the year of Spinoza’s death) that we present in this volume are widely read and the subject of philosophical, political, religious and psychological studies, not only by fellow philosophers but also by writers and poets. Among his admirers, Hegel declared that “to be a philosopher one must first be a Spinozist.” Goethe wrote passionately about the influence of Spinoza in his life and work; “I, at last, chanced upon the Ethica of this man. To say exactly how much I gained from that work was due to Spinoza or to my reading of him would be impossible; enough that I found in him a sedative for my passions and that he appeared to me to open up a large and free outlook on the material and moral world.”
Not only writers of the stature of Goethe but also famous poets became admirers and followers of Spinoza, particularly Lessing, Heine, Auerbach, Coleridge, Shelley, George Eliot and many more.
Robert Harvey Monro Elwes, a renowned XIX century English scholar and the English translator of Spinoza’s works, in his Introduction to the Tractatus Theologico Politicus, (included in this book), wrote that these poets and intellectuals “not only admired him but studied him deeply. Shelley not only contemplated but began a translation of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, to be published with a preface by Lord Byron, but the project was cut short by his death.”
Spinoza’s ideas and remarkable talent continue to be the subject of numerous publications, including a recently published historical novel by Irvin D. Yalom, The Spinoza Problem. Explaining his motivation to write the book, Yalom wrote; “Spinoza, like Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, on whose lives and philosophy I have based two earlier novels, wrote much that is highly relevant to my field of psychiatry and psychotherapy—for example, that ideas, thoughts, and feelings are caused by previous experiences, that passions may be studied dispassionately, that understanding leads to transcendence—and I wished to celebrate his contributions through a novel of ideas.”
Baruch Spinoza, a Sephardic of Portuguese or Spanish origin, became Benedict Spinoza after he was excommunicated by the Jewish community at a very early age in the Netherlands for his unorthodox ideas and the criticism of the sacred texts, ideas that became developed in his latter works.
We decided to publish the Political Treatise, Spinoza’s last work written in 1677 which he did not complete. The Political Treatise is not as well known as it was published with the Tractatus Theologico Politicus which, it is mainly dedicated to biblical and religious questions. Like his Ethics contain critical interpretations of the Old Testament. For its political content and close relationship with the Treatise we included in the book the Tractatus’s Chapter XX with the provocative title, “In a Free State, Every Man May Think What He Likes, And Say What He Thinks.”
For this publication, part of our series Rediscovered Books, we chose the translation of English writer and scholar R. H. M. Elwes published by George Routledge and Sons Limited (London and New York) in their collection: Sir John Lubbock’s Hundred Books, (First Edition, 1884. Second Edition, revised, 1887. Reprinted, 1889, 1891.) We took the liberty to modernize some words to facilitate its comprehension.
The goal of our Rediscovered Books collection is to bring back classic books that are either out of print or difficult to find. Among these, we are proud to include the Letters between Hermann Hesse and Thomas Mann with an introduction of Pete Hamill, as well as the biographies of Stendhal, Rousseau and Victor Hugo by Matthew Josephson and two works of the English author Charles Morgan who in the 1930s was a bestseller author. In Spanish we included in the collection Santa, a famous novel by Federico Gamboa with a short essay by Cristina Pacheco, El Delirio de Santa and recently we added a series of classical Spanish authors from the XV to the XVII century such as La Lozana Andaluza by Francisco Delicado, Cárcel de Amor by Diego de San Pedro and Laberinto de Fortuna by Juan de Mena.
We believe that books are great learning tools and reading is at the core of self-educational projects. We live at a time where “knowledge is power”. The famous business philosopher Peter Drucker envisioned the rise of the “knowledge workers” a phrase he coined in The Age of Discontinuity ,published in 1969.
Italo Calvino states that a “classic is a book which has never exhausted all it has to say to its readers” (Why Read the Classics?). Following this idea, in this series we intend to bring back those classics that continue to be valuable and relevant in our modern world.
To read is a necessity in our changing societies. It is also an extraordinary pleasure. I am sure that reading the texts of Spinoza will add to the reader’s knowledge and understanding of the complexities of the human condition.