During the drafting of the TTP, Spinoza still seemed quite skeptical about the judgment of the multitude (multitudo). In fact, he then used two main terms to refer to all citizens: either the people (populus) or the crowd (vulgus). Populus, in the chapters that analyze the Bible, designates the Hebrew people, as opposed to Moses or the kings, and the regime that preceded the monarchy was called “the kingdom of the people [populi regnum].” In the last chapters of the Treatise, devoted specifically to politics, the term also applies to the Romans, the English, the Dutch: it refers to those to whom laws are given and for whose “salvation,” that is, welfare, the republic is constituted; the people are the source of legitimacy, without necessarily being the actor in the story. The vulgus, on the other hand, is the passionate, ignorant, and superstitious mass, which is easily manipulated by theologians. At this stage, Spinoza seldom uses the word “multitude [multitudo]” and gives it an anthropological meaning close to vulgus: twice in the Preface he cites its tendency to superstition (TTPpref 8 and TTPpref 13); twice in the last chapters he emphasizes its inconstancy and cruelty (TTP17.14, TTP18.

The term ‘salvation’ (salus) is found at the crossroads of two traditions that Spinoza inherits: political discourse and religious discourse. He modifies both, but what is most interesting in the use he makes of them is undoubtedly his treatment of questions that are at the intersection of these two traditions: the status of the Hebrew people and the problem of the salvation of the ignorant.

An important part of the TTP deals with jus circa sacra, the question of the relationship between church and state, and more precisely, the question of knowing who is authorized to take decisions such as the appointment of preachers, the excommunication of members of the community, the censorship of books. Chapter 19 of the Treatise deals, as its title indicates, with the “right concerning sacred matters,” and declares that the establishment of that right “belongs completely to the supreme powers [summa potestas].” This thesis of the penultimate chapter of the Treatise is essential, both upstream and downstream. Upstream, it is largely based on notions and arguments developed in the previous chapters: the distinction between interior and exterior religion, the subordination of the jus (right) to the sovereign, the need for the individual to abandon the right of nature. Downstream, it in turn plays a role in determining the central issue of the Treatise: the freedom to philosophize.

Spinoza has long been criticized for despising experience. Critics sometimes express a preference for Descartes, more sensitive to psychological experience (such was the argument of the spiritualist school of Victor Cousin in France); others oppose him to Boyle, praised for having founded knowledge of nature on experimentation.

A historical investigation into Spinozism teaches us at least as much about the interpreters of Spinoza as it does about Spinoza’s thought itself. More than any other philosophy, Spinoza’s has been held up like a mirror to the great currents of thought, providing a particular perspective on them: one can see reflected and revealed in the mirror of Spinozism the inner and outer conflicts and contradictions of Calvinism, Cartesianism, freethinking and libertinism, the Enlightenment, materialism, the Pantheismusstreit, German Idealism, French spiritualism, Marxism, British Idealism, structuralism, and other movements. This chapter provides a condensed overview of the European reception of Spinoza from the seventeenth century until today, in both minor and major thinkers.

Introduction

In the early 1990s, the development of information sharing among individuals on the Internet seemed pervasive. Individuals started to share music files, to communicate word-of-mouth about products and the like. More than ever before a new technology enabled consumers to share information on a large scale and on a spontaneous basis. Most of the attention was then focused on the emergence of online consumers communities (OCCs) and their expected benefits (Wellman and Gulia 1999; Hagel and Armstrong 1997). According to Hagel and Armstrong (1997), OCCs were supposed to offer companies a chance to know their customers much better than ever before, through giving the latter the ability to easily interact with each other and with the company itself: firms organizing OCCs could use what they learned from communities to achieve “viral marketing” and merely create undreamed of customer loyalty.

However, rather little attention had been devoted to identifying potential obstacles to the sustainability of OCCs seen as economic entities providing an informational public good. Yet, shared resources and public goods are shown to give rise to a “tragedy of the commons” (Hardin 1968) since agents' private interest dictates individual behaviors that are eventually harmful to general interest. More precisely, individuals tend to under-invest in a public good because its non-excludability and non-rivalry give private incentives to free-ride, free-riders expecting to benefit from the shared resource even if not contributing to its provision.

Investigating “Spinozism” teaches at least as much about interpretations of Spinoza by other movements - both those approving him and (more often) opposing him - as it does about Spinoza's thought itself. More than other philosophies, Spinoza's has been held up like a mirror to the great currents of thought, a mirror in which their distorted images can be seen. Its first reception was accomplished in the midst of polemics; the modalities of its influence have always suffered from this, so that, at every period, the recovery of the exact situation of Spinozism from under the accumulation of abuses and misunderstandings is an effective intellectual instrument for analyzing the disposition of forces within the domain of ideas, its dominant and dominated ideas, and the battle they wage against one another. In this way one can see Calvinism, Cartesianism, the Enlightenment, and other movements, look upon their reflections, and see their own contradictions revealed in it.

THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

For a century and a half after his life, the first figure Spinoza assumed was that of the atheist or impious person. Leo Back (1895), P. Verniere (1954), and W. Schroder (1987) have studied the formation of this image. For many years, Spinoza was discussed primarily for refutation; it was even asserted that he must be read only with that intention. Alternatively, if he awakened some positive interest, it was with thinkers who already looked upon official religion with a critical eye. Both the orthodox and the libertine, however, concurred in conceiving him as atheistic or impious.