Spinoza and the Social Contract

ABSTRACT: There has been an outpouring of both scholarly and popular works on Spinoza's philosophy in recent times. But its exact contours remain contested. Specifically, regarding Spinoza's political philosophy, scholars disagree whether Spinoza offers a radicalised and improved social contract theory, or whether he offers a profound critique of social contract theory. The core of Spinoza's political theory is his striking reduction of the concept of right to a concept of power. Spinoza notes that for Hobbes, a social contract brings into being a civil condition where civil rights displace natural rights. But Spinoza objects: natural rights are nothing other than degrees of power, and rights so understood continue regardless of any social contract. All a social contract can do is reorganise relations of power. In this talk, I will lay out Spinoza's extremely interesting theoretical position as a follower and critic of Hobbes, and I'll argue that the lesson of his oeuvre is that we need to move beyond the social contract approach to thinking about political life.