The Case of the Generation of the State in Spinoza (Contractualism and Naturalism in Early Modern Political Philosophy)

This paper deals with the determination of the spinozistic model on the generation of the State described in the Political Treatise. To achieve this purpose we must separate the Spinoza’s model from the contractualistic one,for the former is usually conceived by means of the latter (even when commentators conceive it as a naturalistic model). In the first part,we will identify the “presence’s field” on which both Hobbes and Spinoza are thinking. This field,which entails a fundamental ambiguity,will be characterized as the “political aristotelianism”. Then,we will proceed to a detail examination of the model by which Spinoza built an answer to this problematic ambiguity.