Re: Re: Re: "Spinoza was a communist thinker long before Marx"

[Jim Devine <jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Justin wrote:
> Politically, Spinoza was in the neighborhood of being a liberal, advocated
> bourgeois rights, religious tolerance, some democracy--not the way he'd
> put it. He is rather little studied in political philosophy, a little more
> but not much in politicak theory, perhas because his political doctrines
> were all mixed up with religious discussions. His rough contemporaries
> Hobbes and Locke kept these subjects distrinct in the modern manner. --jks

according to my DICTIONARY, Spinoza regarded "the transition from the state
of nature to society in terms similar to Hobbes, although the purpose of
the state relates to wisdom, and the most advantageous form of government
is democracy." It that's really democracy -- and not the like of
property-owners' republic that Locke liked -- old Baruch was pretty good
for his time.

Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx &  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine