Machiavelli in the Theological-Political Treatise

In his analysis of the Spinoza–Machiavelli relation at the outset of the twentieth century, Menzel speculated that Spinoza had not read Machiavelli's work until after writing the TTP. For Menzel, only the TP bears clear signs of the Florentine thinker. However, as we have seen, more than one scholar has demonstrated the weakness of this hypothesis, albeit in fragmentary ways. In fact, despite the absence of direct references to Machiavelli (a necessary precaution in order to avoid the aura of infamy that surrounded his name), numerous key arguments in the TTP are based on Machiavellian themes. I will now turn to a precise reconstruction of Spinoza's implicit use of Machiavelli, first in the TTP, and then in the TP, before considering whether and how these uses hang together.

TTP III's Ontology of History and its Debt to Machiavelli

In its project of demonstrating the imaginary status of the concept of election, a keystone of Jewish religion, TTP III forms one of the essential axes of the entire work. As he does elsewhere, Spinoza begins by defining fundamental concepts, simultaneously undermining the ground on which his theological-political adversary stands. Spinoza proposes definitions for five terms: ‘God's guidance’ [directio Dei], ‘God's external aid’ [Dei auxilium externum], ‘God's internal aid’ [Dei auxilium internum], ‘God's election’ [electio Dei] and ‘fortune’ [fortuna]. The first four terms come from the Judeo-Christian tradition while the last comes from the pagan tradition, although Boethius had claimed it for Christianity by interpreting it as the ‘servant of God’ [ancilla Dei] in The Consolation of Philosophy. Spinoza draws his rational concept of election from within the play of the identification and differentiation of the meaning of these terms. Spinoza begins by claiming that he understands God's guidance, that is, divine rule, as ‘the fixed and immutable order of nature or the concatenation of natural things’ [fixus & immutabilis naturae ordo, sive naturalium concatenatio], because the universal laws of nature are nothing other than the eternal decrees of God, which entail truth and necessity.