Abstract
Most comparisons of Thomas Hobbes and Baruch Spinoza focus on the difference in understanding of natural right. We argue that Hobbes also places more weight on a rudimentary and exclusive education of the public by the state. We show that the difference is related to deeper disagreements over the prospect of Enlightenment. Hobbes is more sanguine than Spinoza about using the state to make people rational. Spinoza considers misguided an overemphasis on publicly educating everyone out of superstition—public education is important, but modes of superstition may remain and must be offset by institutions and a civil religion. The differences are confirmed by Spinoza’s interest in the philosopher who stands apart and whose flourishing may be protected, but not simply brought about, by rudimentary public education. Spinoza’s openness to a wisdom-loving elite in a democracy also sets up an interesting parallel with Thomas Jefferson’s own commitment to the natural aristocracy needed to sustain republicanism. In demonstrating the 17th century philosopher’s skepticism toward using the state exclusively to promote rationality, even as he recognizes the importance of a sovereign pedagogical role and the protection of philosophy, we move to suggest that Spinoza is relevant to contemporary debates about public education and may reinvigorate moral and political discourse in a liberal democracy.
Highlights
Most of the literature comparing Hobbes and Spinoza focuses in a general way on the question of natural right [1] p. 168, [2], [3,4,5,6,7]
Rudimentary Public Education in Spinoza. When it comes to state public teachers of civic precepts that are necessary for sovereignty to remain intact, there is no progression in Spinoza’s works, at the universities or elsewhere, as one travels from the Theological-Political Treatise (TPT) to the Political Treatise (PT) and the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (TEI)
This paper has demonstrated that Hobbes, but not Spinoza’s, political theory contains the rudiments of a top-down state-supported public education that aims to increase rationality across society
Summary
Most of the literature comparing Hobbes and Spinoza focuses in a general way on the question of natural right [1] p. 168, [2] (pp. 206–216), [3,4,5,6,7]. Hobbes and Spinoza laid a foundation for it in more than one way, and so their work can be characterized as containing the seeds of that society’s growth and development over time This is especially true in considering the radical equality in the state of nature that Hobbes theorizes as the foundation of his social order, to be discussed below, as well as Spinoza’s status as the first modern theorist of democracy This hardly disqualifies them from teaching us a great deal about what is relevant to current educational paradigms and debates
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