The politics of the multitude

Spinoza's focus on the equality and sovereignty of philosophy and theology turns seamlessly into an account of equality and sovereignty in political life. What we have seen in the last two chapters is that both philosophy and theology are organically connected to certain kinds of political stances – that transcendence and immanence alike, taken in themselves, result in a confusion that fails to harness the human power that is actually available to us and turns human relationships into sites of conflict and strife. This confusion can be clearly seen, for Spinoza, in the ways the Bible has been read, and most especially in the assumption that it is either wholly true or wholly false. Texts, like all forms of human production, are works that express truth and falsity in close proximity to each other, and the task of reading is therefore always about establishing the principles that any given text itself enunciates. In this chapter and the next one, I turn to Spinoza's political theory, or rather his theologico-politics – his treatment of the relationship between God, law, and the twin ideals of freedom and obedience.