The Social: a Condition and a Danger to Politics

The distinction between the idea of the multitudo regarded as a composition of concordant and discordant forces (the societas) and the idea of it as a unified institution of powers (the civitas) paves the way to a line of inquiry into the relations between society and politics in Spinoza, an inquiry which focuses on the recognition that the social has a double face: it is both a condition for and a danger to politics. To see that natural right is not only the measure and guardian of the civitas, but also a danger to it, we must consider an individual who is obscured when the multitudo is regarded only from the perspective of communis: viz., this individual Spinoza calls the privatus (TP 4.6). Spinoza demonstrates the ontological foundation of sociability in Ethics IV. There he examines what follows given that human beings are parts of Nature, living in the company of other parts with which they share the properties of being finite and being such that their individual powers can always be surpassed. This idea is expressed in E4a: “there is no singular thing in nature than which there is not another more powerful and stronger. Whatever one is given, there is another more powerful by which the first can be destroyed.” In E4p30, Spinoza distinguishes between the conveniens and the contrarium: things of the same nature are concordant (convenientia) when one of them increases our power to act and discordant (discrepantia) when one of them restrains our power to act. A thing of the same nature as ours, therefore, is bad for us not because of what it has in common with our nature, but because of what it has that is contrary to our power. Whereas difference is established between essences, contrariety is established between powers. Convenientia is the ground for commonality, which favours the conservation of singular things whose natures agree with one another and that need each other to conserve themselves. Although the common does not prevent something from being bad and contrary to us, insofar as something agrees with our nature it is necessarily good. From this follows the identity between the good and the useful, since “nothing, therefore, can be good except insofar as it agrees with our nature. So the more a thing agrees with our nature, the more useful it is, and conversely” 2773-0107