Democracy and the Good Life in Spinoza’s Philosophy

Spinoza is widely and rightly regarded as an advocate of democracy, but his support for it is more qualified than many commentators allow. The problem is not just that, in a democracy as he conceives of it, women, servants, and others are excluded from citizenship. It is also that the success of a democratic state depends on the sovereign’s imaginative power to legitimate and sustain a realizable form of democratic life. Whether a community can achieve this goal will in turn depend on many historical and social conditions. In some circumstances, as Spinoza allows, the members of a particular community may live more freely and cooperatively under a non-democratic constitution.