Exode, colonie, révolution: Machiavel, Spinoza et la démocratie originaire

Abstract

For Spinoza, democracy is the most stable and secure regime. Starting from an implicit quotation from Machiavelli’s Discourses on the Ten Books of Titus Livy contained in the Tractatus politicus, we will show that the Spinozian idea of democracy is aporetic, because the strategies that Spinoza suggests for the establishment of a democratic regime contrast with his ontology of conservation. Thus, the absence of the part on democracy in the Tractatus politicus represents an opportunity to rethink politics as the art of understanding and managing social conflicts rather than neutralizing them. In this sense, democracy is nothing but the manifestation of the natural conflictuality of society, a request for equality that leads to the perpetual questioning of private rights and property, as well as of every institutionalized State form.