Spinoza and Hobbes: considerations on democracy and monarchy

Abstract

This study aims to address the treatment about political regimes in Spinoza and Hobbes, especially about democracy and monarchy. In general, the Westport philosopher is treated as the opposite of the Dutch when the subject is democracy, whereby the first would defend absolute monarchy and the other, absolute democracy. In order to demonstrate this debate of ideas, in addition to the philosophers' own arguments, we will analyze the main scholars on these themes, as well as the contexts of the main intellectual sources. The reconstruction of the reception of Hobbes' texts in seventeenth-century Holland is so sui generis that it will be as much an object of study as the texts of the philosophers. In addition to the Dutch context, we rescued the English context looking for its similarities. The reception of Hobbesian texts in England in the 17th century, compared to the contemporary reception, configures a contradiction in the question of forms of government, in which the first would be a democratic Hobbes and in the second, an absolutist monarchist Hobbes. From the rescue of ancient Hobbes sources, especially Antiphon, it is possible to address the question of political regimes in Hobbes in an alternative way. Democracy and monarchy in Hobbes, from this point of view, are not mutually exclusive. These are possible and admitted regimes in the constitution of the Hobbesian sovereign power. Finally, we will present an approach that sheds new light on these studies, demonstrating that Spinoza does not antagonize Hobbes about democracy.