Monarchisms in the Age of Enlightenment (1 - Spinoza on Republics)

I hope to do a chapter-by-chapter synopsis of this book in the coming posts. Monarchisms in the Age of Enlightenment is not a philosophical-political work arguing in favor or against monarchial views in the age of the Enlightenment. It is rather an intellectual history of monarchist views and monarchist authors, as well as republican authors who argued that monarchist governments were the best way to sustain republican forms of government, throughout the Enlightenment era. The Enlightenment era has come to be known as the age of democracy and classical liberalism but that is far from the truth. While there were certainly many revolutions, democratic uprisings, rebellions, and attempts to cripple monarchial regimes, the Enlightenment was filled with numerous philosophers and intellectuals who fought to preserve monarchial systems of government and in government. As our great age becomes infatuated with democracy, it is important to recollect on the monarchist ideals of the past. Especially as we witness democracy come to its dying gasps for oxygen.

Spinoza on Res Publica, Republics, and Monarchies - Hans Blom

The first chapter focuses on Benedictus de Spinoza's response to Pieter de la Court's assessment of the current state of the Dutch Republic. De la Court takes a strong anti-monarchial stance on governance and attempts to explain "that monarchies suffer from the unbridled passions of their monarchs, whose greatest good would seem to be the oppression and exploitation of their subjects, with unfaithful foreign politics in their wake" (20). Thus,  de la Court fancies a "well-ordered popular government [that] promotes commerce and trade and thus the general well-being in ways that a monarchy can only dream of" (20-21). Such an argument is bizarre to say the least. Wouldn't a popular government that is well-ordered be controlled inevitably by people who would take the same negative role a monarch would? Thus enters Spinoza to explain that the philosophy that "'Right makes might' captures the nature of politics as much in monarchial as in non-monarchial rule" (21). Spinoza sees human nature the same everywhere and "the several forms of government differ by circumstances, not on principle" (21).

If it wasn't clear, Spinoza by no means intends to argue in favor of monarchism. Spinoza instead intends to address the shortcomings of de la Court's arguments against monarchism and explain that monarchies have a tendency to work just as well as popular governments. This is similar to F.A. Hayek's own assessment of autocratic rule in The Road to Serfdom. That said, Spinoza does argue that any government's duty is to care for its people and "a well-ordered monarchy is the more absolute, the more it cares for the well-being of its people" (21). As Hayek also points out, "Nor must we forget that there has often been more cultural and spiritual freedom under an autocratic rule than under some democracies...The fashionable concentration on democracy as the main value threatened is not without danger. ... The false assurance which many people derive from this belief is an important cause of the general unawareness of the dangers which we face." (Road to Serfdom, 110-111)

Back to Spinoza. One of the concepts appearing in Spinoza is potentia multitudinis or the power of the multitudes. Spinoza develops a philosophy that "not only in a state of nature does right equal might, but that this also holds for the political state. ... the rights a state can exercise over its subjects will never exceed the power of the state's body, that is, the multitude" (Monarchisms, 25). Marxists conclude then that the multitude is the power of the state while libertarians jump to the conclusion that the multitude is an individual in an ontological sense "in practice, and according to Spinoza, it will never be the case that each and every individual of the multitude is rational...and thus fail to be an individual in the Spinozan sense" (25). But is Spinoza's philosophy fitting in either category? The two key elements for Spinoza's conception of the multitude are his focus on man as "a particle of nature" who is not his own master, but carrying on "his natural determiation" (25). The second element is his view that the republica must establish its relationship with God "a conceptual structure or frame to which men...relate in their capacity as actors in society" (25-26). The multitude is therefore a collective unit "guided as if by one mind" (27).

De la Court takes up a defense of popular government with the view that equality is the necessary regulation to ensure a functioning popular government (29). He takes the view that ordinary people with their actions and endeavors make the best rule and that "[m]onarchial rule is the worst form of government because its supposed advantage of a single-headed government to avoid dissension and lack of political virtue, in practice turns into its disadvantage: the king will be manipulated by his courtiers and reduced to a bundle of lusts" (30). De la  Court's stance against monarchy seeks to take the worst of monarchy and come to the conclusion that popular government is therefore the "lesser of evils". /this is a classical way to understand republican reactions to monarchist viewpoints. Spinoza and de la Court certainly agree on the basic ideas of government, that the state be as one body with one mind, but they differ in their treatment of monarchial rule (37).

Spinoza's republican ontology, "allowed him to insist on the reality of Orangism in the Dutch Republic. A monarchy, provided it be well-ordered, does not preclude liberty nor the well-being of the people, if only it is understood that for a state to be guided una mente veluti it has to have the proper institutions that adhere to its conatus" (39). This conatus is arrived at by "showing that a stable republic...is an individual" and the second step pointed out "the motivations of the Dutch republicans to promote a strong republic by liberating the energies of its citizens by way of an appropriate political organization" (38). Spinoza's stance thus can be considered a form of constitutional monarchy with the monarch acting as the one mind for the republic or state.