Spinoza on Democracy and the Good Life
25 April 2007

On the 25th of April AKU-ISMC held a lunch-hour seminar, Spinoza on Democracy and the Good Life, led by Birkbeck College Professor Susan James.

James spoke of her forthcoming book, Spinoza on Politics and Religion, which looks at the extent to which Spinoza can be described as a democrat, his views on governance and its impact on happiness in society. The discussion centred on the idea that Spinoza was not a straightforward democrat, taking into consideration the role that he assigns to the sovereign and his philosophy on the nature of man.

Spinoza was a 17th century Dutch philosopher born into an exiled Portuguese family, and was later expelled from his Jewish community for his biblical interpretations and support for tolerance of alternative religious beliefs. Spinoza believed that God and nature are one, and some of his most important ideas include arguments for the separation of the church and state and the importance of intellectual freedom.

Throughout the talk, James spoke of Spinoza's views on the role of governance in society, and his argument that democracy is the best but not only form of good governance.

“According to Spinoza, democracy is the ideal, but it must be realised that other forms of government might be unable to be free, and in this case they are all that they can manage to achieve. For Spinoza, this leads to the troublesome conclusion that subjects of any state can be said to be free, even oppressive ones.”

James also described Spinoza's ideas on the link between freedom and rationalism and the role that community and cohesion should play in society.

After the talk a discussion was held, in which a number of important questions on James' ideas on Spinoza and his approach to democracy were raised.

One question asked concerned how Spinoza's system functioned – how power is delivered, who makes the law, and how control is managed. James suggested that the reason why Spinoza had not given explicit details of how democracy should function was because Spinoza believed that for a society to create a sound democracy, it should imagine the mechanics of the political process for itself, against the backdrop of its own history and tradition.

Another discussion concerned Spinoza's relevance to Muslim civilisations, especially his belief that democracy, although the optimum, is not the only form of government under which people can be free. James explained that Spinoza believed that in a democracy, religion was not completely separate from the state; however religion should also not be used as a means of violence and oppression.

James explained that in Spinoza's work the process to democracy can be seen as a tension between the ethical push towards democracy and the belief that human beings are a part of nature.

Online Resources

For a full transcript of the talk, please click here.

External Links *

Professor Susan James' profile

A brief introduction to Spinoza

Further Reading

For information on governance and ethics in Muslim contexts:

Brown, L. Carl (Leon Carl)
Religion and state: the Muslim approach to politics
New York :  Columbia University Press, 2000

Black, Antony
The History of Islamic Political Thought: from the Prophet to the present
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2001

Hashmi, Sohail H. (Editor), Miles, Jack (Foreword)
Islamic political ethics: civil society, pluralism, and conflict
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002

For information about Spinoza:

Wolfson, Harry Austryn
Philosophy of Spinoza: Unfolding the Latent Process of His Reasoning
Harvard University Press, 1983

* Links to sites does not imply endorsement of the contents of those sites.