Machiavelli recommended in this classic that the end justify the mean and that a leader should use fear, not hatred, to maintain control. Although Sun Tzu,Chanakya and Machiavelli was trying to development a theory of management, insights teach us an important lesson about Management. And its help to think about management of organization Apr 21, · It was likely the writings of the De la Courts that impressed upon Spinoza the perspicacity of Niccolo Machiavelli. The notion of balancing the interests of competing parties was ultimately derived from Machiavelli (see Haitsma Mulier , –). Spinoza’s Political Treatise is shot through with Machiavellian insights and recommendations power. This paper is based on the on-going research for the author’s Ph.D. dissertation. blogger.comCEPTOFPOWER& The subject of power has been an interest of social scientists for many decades, if not centuries, if one were to go back to writings
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Nevertheless, Spinoza was a penetrating political theorist whose writings have enduring significance. In his two political treatises, Spinoza advances a number of forceful and dissertation machiavelli arguments in defense of democratic governance, freedom dissertation machiavelli thought and expression, and the subordination of religion to the state.
On the basis of his naturalistic metaphysics, Spinoza also offers trenchant criticisms of ordinary conceptions of right and duty. And his account of civil organization stands as an important contribution to the development of constitutionalism and dissertation machiavelli rule of law. Despite being perhaps the most tolerant country in early-modern Europe—a sanctuary for free thinkers and members of religious minorities—the United Provinces were riven by religious conflict, as the Dutch sought to establish their identity after gaining independence from Spain.
The confessional rifts of the seventeenth century were certainly an important part of context in which Spinoza composed his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus [hereafter: TTP]. The early part of the seventeenth century was marked by a religious schism that rapidly took on political significance.
The Arminians, or Remonstrants, defended religious toleration on the grounds that faith is expressed in the conscience of the individual, and so is not subject to the coercive power of the state.
The doctrinal and political views of the Remonstrants were opposed by the conservative Gomarists followers of Franciscus Gomarusor Counter-Remonstrants. For a little over a decade roughly — dissertation machiavelli, the dispute raged on, expanding outward from Holland and Utrecht.
Finally, ina national synod convened the Synod of Dort to define the public faith more clearly, dissertation machiavelli. The fallout from the Synod of Dort was disastrous for the tolerant Arminians, dissertation machiavelli.
The Advocate of the States of Holland, Johan Oldenbarnevelt, who staunchly defended the Remonstrants, was put to death. And Arminians throughout the country were purged from town councils and universities Israelff.
The second half of the century witnessed its own major theologico-political dispute in the United Provinces. At the center, dissertation machiavelli, once again, were two theologians: Johannes Cocceius, a liberal theology professor dissertation machiavelli Leiden, and Gisbertus Voetius, dissertation machiavelli, Dean of the University of Utrecht, dissertation machiavelli.
Disputes between Cocceian and Voetians began over abstruse theological matters, dissertation machiavelli, but developed into a larger political and cultural affair. The Voetians led the assault on the Cartesian philosophy being taught in the universities. They thought that the new science advocated by Descartes, dissertation machiavelli, with its mechanistic view of the material world, dissertation machiavelli, posed a threat to Christianity in a variety of ways Nadler—2 and — Spinoza was no stranger to religious persecution.
As is well known, he was himself excommunicated from the Jewish community in Amsterdam in While Spinoza apparently endured the excommunication with characteristic equanimity, fellow Dutch apostate Jew, Uriel da Costa, was unable to bear the indignity of excommunication from the Amsterdam Jewish community.
In —when Spinoza was only eight years old—da Costa, who had denied the immortality of the soul and challenged the status of the Torah as divine revelation, dissertation machiavelli, took his own life. In Koerbagh published two treatises that provoked the wrath of the Calvinist clergy, dissertation machiavelli. In the more scandalous of the two— Een Bloemhof van allerley lieflijkheyd A Flower Garden of all Kinds of Loveliness —Koerbagh ridiculed a number of traditional religious doctrines and practices, and, in the process, articulated his own religious and metaphysical views.
Among the shocking views that he advanced were that Jesus is not divine, that God is identical with nature, that everything is necessitated by the laws of nature the laws of Godand that miracles are impossible. These are all positions that Spinoza dissertation machiavelli endorsed. However, dissertation machiavelli, while Spinoza was famously cautious, Koerbagh was not, publishing the works in Dutch thereby making them accessible to the general literate public under his own name.
Consequently, Koerbagh was tried and sentenced on charges of blasphemy, dissertation machiavelli. During his subsequent imprisonment under squalid conditions Koerbagh became ill. He died soon thereafter in Liberal republicans were dealt a major blow in In this so-called disaster year rampjaardissertation machiavelli, French troops, under the command of Louis XIV, invaded the United Provinces, capturing a number of Dutch cities Nadler Grand Pensionary chief statesman and legal advisor Johan de Witt shouldered much of the blame for this military embarrassment.
De Witt was the leader of the States of Holland for much of the republican period that followed the death of Stadholder a quasi-monarchical position held by the House of Orange William II in After the French invasion, the stadholdership was reinstituted in the person of William III, and De Witt was forced to resign.
Shortly afterward he and his brother, Cornelis, were brutally killed by a zealous mob. This incident evoked uncommon anger in Spinoza, who was an admirer of de Witt and the republican ideals for which dissertation machiavelli stood.
Van den Enden was an ex-Jesuit and radical egalitarian with revolutionary tendencies. He was put to death in after having been found guilty of conspiring to depose Louis XIV in order to establish a free republic in Normandy. Van dan Enden was an anti-clerical democrat who appears to have profoundly influenced Spinoza.
We know that Spinoza read De Cive carefully and that it was among his possessions when he died in He might also have read Leviathanwhich appeared in Latin inas Spinoza was completing the TTP Sacksteder Here I want to mention dissertation machiavelli impact of Dutch Hobbesians on Spinoza. Hobbesian thought was introduced into Dutch political discourse by Lambert van Velthuysen, an anti-clerical, liberal physician Tuck ; Blom Aside from Velthuysen, the other primary Dutch conduits for Hobbesian thought prior to Spinoza were the De la Court brothers Petry ; Kossmann However, because it remains unclear how much Pieter added and how much he took credit for the work his studious younger brother, I will refer to these authors of these writings simply as the De la Courts, dissertation machiavelli, so as to avoid attribution problems.
The De la Courts were ardent republicans who maintained good relations with Johan De Witt. Indeed, De Witt is thought to have written two chapters in the second edition of their book Interest van Holland see Petry According to them, the aim of the dissertation machiavelli is to ensure that the interests of rulers are tied to the interests of the ruled, which is possible only if one adopts a series of dissertation machiavelli measures, such as the use of blind balloting, dissertation machiavelli, the removal of hereditary posts, and the rotation of offices.
Republics, dissertation machiavelli, they argued, will be marked by greater checks against self-interested legislation than monarchies see Blom Spinoza evidently studied these works carefully; his dissertation machiavelli recommendations in the Tractatus Politicus [hereafter: TP] reflect his debt to the Dissertation machiavelli la Courts Petry ; Haitsma Mulier It was likely the writings of the De la Courts that impressed upon Spinoza the perspicacity of Niccolo Machiavelli.
The notion of balancing the interests of competing parties was ultimately derived from Machiavelli see Haitsma Mulierdissertation machiavelli, — Machiavelli, The Prince I. Spinoza, dissertation machiavelli, like Machiavelli, understood that prescriptions for improving the governance of a state can be offered dissertation machiavelli after one has a dissertation machiavelli diagnosis of the problems and a proper grasp of human nature see Steinberg a, dissertation machiavelli.
Collectively, these three claims entail that human behavior, like the behavior of everything else, is fully necessitated by, and explicable through, dissertation machiavelli, the immutable—and non-providential—laws of God or Nature.
This forms a significant part of the metaphysical backdrop against which Spinoza develops his political theory. This naturalism led him to adopt bold views about the source dissertation machiavelli status of rights, obligations, and laws that distinguished his dissertation machiavelli from that of other seventeenth-century political theorists.
This is a direct rebuke not only of defenders of the divine right of kings, dissertation machiavelli, but also of most accounts of natural rights as entitlements that were embraced by many seventeenth-century theorists. Moreover, this naturalism also rules out the possibility of a normative order of things, dissertation machiavelli, or a way that things should be, distinct from the actual order of things.
This undermines the teleological assumptions that form the basis of natural law theory, whether Thomistic or Protestant. Even those who wished dissertation machiavelli separate natural law from theology e. According to this view, humans act contrary to nature when they act contrary to the prescriptions of right reason, dissertation machiavelli. In both of these passages, Spinoza criticizes the assumption that man is governed by his own set of rational, normative laws, rather than the laws that govern the rest of nature.
In short, by adopting the view that nature is univocal and that man is governed by the same laws as everything else in nature, dissertation machiavelli, Spinoza rejects the natural law tradition Curley ; A. Garrett ; for contrasting views, dissertation machiavelli, see Kisner and Miller He introduces this concept in TTP 16, where dissertation machiavelli boldly writes:.
In claiming that the right of nature is coextensive with the power of nature and that this applies mutatis mutandis to the individuals in nature, Spinoza is simply rejecting non-naturalism, rather than making a positive normative claim. In fact, I take it that the coextensivity thesis is not to be understood as offering a new normative standard; rather, it is intended as a denial of any transcendental standard of justice see Curley dissertation machiavelli, ; Balibar In other words, natural right is the liberty to do anything consistent with the natural law ibid.
In short, as A, dissertation machiavelli. Specifically, it covers those actions that are not contrary to the law of nature. In Leviathanhowever, Hobbes dissertation machiavelli to advance an account of natural right that is apparently not bound by such normative constraints Ch. But while it may seem that in the later work Hobbes strips the concept of natural right of all normative content, even the view expressed in Leviathan may be seen to be at odds with a thoroughgoing naturalism.
The difference between Hobbes and Spinoza on right bears directly on their distinct accounts of obligation. Hobbes thinks that we incur binding obligations when we make pledges under the appropriate conditions. To demand otherwise would be absurd, since men are bound by nature to choose what appears to be the greater good or lesser evil. We are bound by nature to act on our strongest dissertation machiavelli and dissertation machiavelli be obligated by previous agreements to break this inviolable psychological law of nature.
If a sovereign is to maintain its right, it must legislate wisely, so as not to incite insurrection. But given his naturalism and repudiation of rights and obligations as traditionally understood, one might be left wondering how or whether Spinoza could offer a normative political theory at all. As Edwin Curley rightly points out, to deny that there is a transcendental standard of justice is not to deny that there is any normative standard by dissertation machiavelli we can evaluate action Curley And just as the individual ought to do those things that maximize his or her own power or welfare, dissertation machiavelli, Spinoza takes it as axiomatic that the state ought to do those things that maximize the power of the people as a whole e.
As indicated above, throughout the seventeenth century the United Provinces were torn apart by disputes concerning, among other things, the political authority of the church. The stated goals of this work were to parry charges of atheism Spinoza was hilariously unsuccessful in this respectto oppose the prejudices of the theologians, dissertation machiavelli, and to defend the freedom to philosophize Epistle My exposition of the political claims of the TTP will focus on the last two goals.
This will be followed by an analysis of the role of the social contract in the TTP. The TTP contains a good deal of what has come to be known as biblical criticism, dissertation machiavelli.
Through careful linguistic and historical exegesis Spinoza identifies numerous textual inconsistencies, dissertation machiavelli, which, with some philosophical buttressing, lead Spinoza to deny the exalted status of prophets, the objective reality of miracles, and ultimately the divine origin of the Pentateuch.
Among the politically relevant claims that Spinoza makes in the first fifteen chapters of the work is that Scripture does not compete with philosophy as a source of knowledge; nor do the injunctions of Scripture compete with the commands of civil authorities.
We may call the claim that faith is distinct from reason the separation thesis and the claim that dissertation machiavelli law is dependent on and determined dissertation machiavelli civil law the single authority thesis.
And a good deal of the biblical criticism in the Dissertation machiavelli can be understood as paving the way for the separation thesis, since in the earlier chapters much of what Spinoza is doing is undermining the claim of Scripture as a source of genuine knowledge.
Rather, it lies in the simple dissertation machiavelli truths that Scripture contains, which encourage obedience to the state Ch. The books of Scripture are written for an unsophisticated, uneducated audience and convey information in a way that is suited to such an audience, in dissertation machiavelli form of fantastical accounts and parables that appeal to the imagination rather than the intellect, dissertation machiavelli.
This ethical understanding of religion is reflected in the way that Spinoza re-conceives of several crucial religious concepts. For instance, he claims that a text is sacred to the extent that it fosters devotion to God and charity to others e.
Since the aim of religion is obedience and good works, and the aim of philosophy is truth, religion and philosophy ought not to be seen as rivals.
According to Spinoza, dissertation machiavelli, because reason and faith have separate domains, neither is subservient to the other. The dissertation machiavelli thesis has profound political import, since by claiming that religion is not, like philosophy, dissertation machiavelli, a source of knowledge, Spinoza undercuts the grounds for the theological disputes that were the source of considerable unrest in the Dissertation machiavelli Republic.
Machiavelli: A Very Short Introduction - Quentin Skinner - Talks at Google
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