For almost two centuries, the question of the relationship between Machiavelli and Spinoza was only addressed in negative terms, mostly in Catholic and Reformed apologetics. Then for the entire twentieth century it remained at the margins of the imposing philological and critical labour dedicated to Spinoza's work: here we find far more hints of a path to follow than genuine efforts to follow it. Adolph Menzel was the first to take up the question at the beginning of the twentieth century. While he stressed Machiavelli's importance for the political theory of Spinoza's Political Treatise (but not, however, the Theological-Political Treatise), Menzel did not go beyond an analysis of the two direct citations, emphasising a common anti-utopian method of presentation. The latter would become commonplace in the Italian and German studies between the two world wars, and its fascination would not escape Maggiore, Solari, Ravà, Strauss and Gebhardt. Spinoza's polemic in TP I, 1 was thus held to be directly inspired by the well-known passages from The Prince on effectual truth. The only noteworthy result of the analysis of this theme was Strauss's observation in Spinoza's Critique of Religion that the tones of the two authors’ anti-utopian polemics are different: Machiavelli's text is lucid and cold, combating utopia exclusively in its practical effects, while Spinoza's is harsh and sarcastic, combating utopia in the name of philosophy with an attitude that is fundamentally non-political.

This point, however, exhausted the anti-utopian discussion. Other themes examined by these authors were first of all that of virtue: both Maggiore and Ravà highlight the influence of Machiavelli's concept of virtue for Spinoza's theory of virtus sive potentia. Second, these authors also give a date for the Spinoza–Machiavelli encounter. Building on the work of Guzzo, Ravà opposes Menzel's restriction of Machiavelli's influence to the TP by locating it instead already in the chapters on Hebrew history in the TTP. In his work, Gebhardt takes stock of the results achieved by these studies. In the inventory of the sources of the two works, he proposes the first sparse and largely incomplete list of Spinozian passages inspired by Machiavelli, without, however, devoting any critical reflection to the problem.