Tractatus politicus

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The Tractatus Politicus (Neo Latin) is a posthumously published political treatise by Baruch de Spinoza . The state-theoretical ideas are linked directly to the doctrine of affect in the third part of ethics . In 1677, shortly after Spinoza's death in Amsterdam, the work was edited and published by friends and banned in Holland in 1678 together with Hobbes Leviathan .

Spinoza took the view that man's nature, including his egoistic self-preservation urge, must be the inspiration for a state theory and not his inclination towards utopia . He turned against ideas such as those put forward by Johann Valentin Andreae , Tommaso Campanella or Francis Bacon at the beginning of the 17th century . The utopian state theories were very popular in the early 17th century. Spinoza, on the other hand, took the view that people should be taken as they are and not as they should be. You have to treat him in his followers, not so much according to his reason, but rather according to his affects.

Law, said Spinoza, is power or wealth. Laws or rules of nature assign each individual his or her ability to act. In principle, natural law is everything that is. It determines the being of man in the natural state. In natural law only what no one can do is forbidden. Positive law is statutory law; it presupposes agreement, delegation of authority and rule. In doing so, the individual never surrenders himself, his rights, his power to the ruler. Spinoza, in contrast to Thomas Hobbe's theory of the state in the Leviathan, allowed the individual interests of individuals in the social contract to exist as a natural law fact , despite a striking number of similarities .

He played through the natural affects of humans in the social concepts of monarchy , oligarchy and democracy . In doing so, he weighed the possibilities of the individual in society in a completely neutral manner and drafted social contracts for the individual possible state structures. However, the section on democracy is not finished.

expenditure

  • n.lat Amsterdam 1677 in opera posthuma
  • n.lat Jena 1803

Translations

  • Essays on Politics B. Auerbach 1874
  • Treatise on the State, by Gebhardt, Leipzig 1907

literature