Chapter 3 - The Condition of Human Nature

Summary

This chapter examines what Spinoza means when he commits to developing his political theory from the point of view of “human nature… as it really is.” It maintains that the Political Treatise treats human nature and its powers of action as they are revealed in recorded history and through everyday experience and observation rather than in an idealized or a priori way. Spinoza’s ambition is to refrain from mocking or bemoaning human folly and instead to try to understand the causal ground of human action. Following the method deployed in natural philosophy, he vows to consider human affects not as malfunctions of human nature but as necessary and integral parts of its mode of being. But does this stated aim of the TP indicate an inconsistency or conundrum in Spinoza’s philosophy? Given his explicit critique of universals and abstractions, and his doctrine of the singular essence that defines each individual thing, is it permissible for him to posit a conception of human nature at all? If it can be shown that Spinoza does not have a robust notion of an actually existing human nature, then in what sense can the TP claim to show human nature as it really is?