INTRODUCTION
Spinoza’s political thought draws from a number of sources, both classical and modern. As one commentator puts it “Spinoza formed new conclusions from facts and concept borrowed from others”. It is worth briefly considering some of the sources of the facts and concepts that he inherits.
At some point in the Mid-1650’s (around the time of his cherem, or excommunication) Spinoza began studying Latin with Francisus Van Den Enden. Van Den Enden was an ex–Jesuit and radical egalitarian with revolutionary tendencies. He was out to death in 1674 after Laring izech found guilty of conspiring to depose Louis XIV in order to establish a free republic in Normandy. Van Dan Enden was an anti–clerical democrat with appears to have profoundly influenced Spinoza. One commentators has gone so far as to call Van Dan Enden’s genius behind Spinoza, claiming that Van Den Enden’s writing contain a political theory which is in fact the same as the one worked out by Spinoza. Whether or not this assessment is fair, it is clear that Spinoza’s thinking was nourished through his association with Van Den Enden and the larger radical Cartesian circle in Amsterdam.
How can we verify the real possibility of a constitutive praises? Spinoza adversaries (both on the protest anti side and on the catholic side) maintain that the political problem in Spinoza is central and that it’s the substance of the religious problem. Naturally, they have a negative opinion of this inversion. “ you refer all things to public safety. Which is the something as reducing a detailed discussion that perhaps first time in the course of their extensive correspondence assumes polemical tones, sustains this negative judgment. I finally receive the theological–political treatise, he inform Spinoza in 1675, and I have written you about.
Oldenburg is initially very perplexed by the
