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The Spinoza–Machiavelli Encounter Spinoza Studies Series editor: Filippo Del Lucchese, Brunel University London Seminal works devoted to Spinoza that challenge mainstream scholarship This series aims to broaden the understanding of Spinoza in the Anglophone world by making some of the most important work by continental scholars available in English translation for the first time. Some of Spinoza’s most important themes - that right is coextensive with power, that every political order is based on the power of the multitude, the critique of superstition and the rejection of the idea of providence - are explored by these philosophers in detail and in ways that will open up new possibilities for reading and interpreting Spinoza. Editorial Advisory board Saverio Ansaldi, Etienne Balibar, Chiara Bottici, Laurent Bove, Mariana de Gainza, Moira Gatens, Thomas Hippler, Susan James, Chantal Jaquet, Mogens Laerke, Beth Lord, Pierre Macherey, Nicola Marcucci, Alexandre Matheron, Dave Mesing, Warren Montag, Pierre-François Moreau, Vittorio Morfino, Antonio Negri, Susan Ruddick, Martin Saar, Pascal Sévérac, Hasana Sharp, Diego Tatián, Dimitris Vardoulakis, Lorenzo Vinciguerra, Stefano Visentin, Manfred Walther, Caroline Williams. Books available Affects, Actions and Passions in Spinoza: The Unity of Body and Mind by Chantal Jaquet, translated by Tatiana Reznichenko The Spinoza-Machiavelli Encounter: Time and Occasion by Vittorio Morfino, translated by Dave Mesing Forthcoming Affirmation and Resistance in Spinoza: Strategy of the Conatus by Laurent Bove, translated and edited by Émilie Filion-Donato and Hasana Sharp Politics, Ontology and Knowledge in Spinoza by Alexandre Matheron, translated and edited by Filippo Del Lucchese, David Maruzzella and Gil Morejón Experience and Eternity in Spinoza by Pierre-François Moreau, translated by Robert Boncardo https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/series-spinoza-studies.html The Spinoza–Machiavelli Encounter Time and Occasion Vittorio Morfino Translated by Dave Mesing Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the humanities and social sciences, combining cutting-edge scholarship with high editorial and production values to produce academic works of lasting importance. For more information visit our website: edinburghuniversitypress.com Il tempo e l’occasione: l’incontro Spinoza Machiavelli © Vittorio Morfino, 2002 Published by LED – Edizioni Universitarie du Lettere Economia Diritto, Milan English translation © Dave Mesing, 2019 Edinburgh University Press Ltd The Tun – Holyrood Road 12(2f) Jackson’s Entry Edinburgh EH8 8PJ Typeset in 10/12 Goudy Old Style by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and printed and bound in Great Britain. A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 4744 2124 9 (hardback) ISBN 978 1 4744 2125 6 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 1 4744 2126 3 (epub) The right of Vittorio Morfino to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498). Published with the support of the University of Edinburgh Scholarly Publishing Initiatives Fund. Contents Abbreviations vi Translator’s Introduction: Unscripted Space, Devoured Time viii Translator’s Note and Acknowledgements xiii Introduction 1 1. Machiavelli in Spinoza’s Library and Texts 8 2. Machiavelli’s Implicit Presence in Spinoza’s Texts 51 3. Causality and Temporality between Machiavelli and Spinoza 118 4. Machiavelli and Spinoza: Theory of the Individual as Anti-philosophy of History 165 Conclusion 213 Bibliography 222 Index 239 vi the spinoza–machiavelli encounter Abbreviations The following abbreviations are used: Alt. Dem. Alternative Demonstration App. Appendix Ax. Axiom Cor. Corollary DA# Definitions of the Affects Def. Definition Dem. Demonstration Exp. Explanation Lem. Lemma NS From the Curley translation of Spinoza, referring to a posthu- mous edition of 1677, De Nagelate Schriften van B.D.S. Post. Postulate Praef. Preface Schol. Scholium AT Adam and Tannery’s Œuvres de Descartes (1909) CWS The Collected Works of Spinoza, trans. Edwin Curley, cited by volume and page number KV Short Treatise on God, Man, and His Well-Being (Korte Verhandeling; e.g. KV II, 2, 2 refers to Part II, Chapter 2, Section 2 TdIE Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione) TP Political Treatise (Tractatus politicus; e.g. TP I, 5 refers to Chapter 1, paragraph 5) abbreviations vii TTP Theological-Political Treatise (Tractatus theologico-politicus; e.g. TTP XVII, 7 refers to Chapter 17, paragraph 7, where the paragraph number corresponds to the Bruder edition, reproduced in Curley’s Collected Works, Volume II) viii the spinoza–machiavelli encounter Translator’s Introduction: Unscripted Space, Devoured Time Vittorio Morfino’s Il tempo e l’occasione: l’incontro Spinoza-Machiavelli con- stitutes a decisive intervention for contemporary studies of Spinoza. Owing in part to Spinoza’s apparent paucity of references to Machiavelli, Spinoza’s relation to him has often implicitly been treated as occasional: perhaps the two share some affinities for realist or anti-utopian political positions, with Spinoza taking up certain Machiavellian or Machiavellian-like insights, but the relation does not go beyond this point. This book challenges such assump- tions by demonstrating a connection between Spinoza and Machiavelli as specific as it is pervasive, arguing that Spinoza’s understanding of causality in the Ethics owes much to his study of Machiavelli’s writings on history and politics, a claim with multiple implications for Spinoza’s own views on history and politics as well as temporality. Morfino succinctly treats different approaches to the Spinoza–Machiavelli question in the introduction, and I will not rehearse them here.1 Instead, I will briefly recapitulate the main steps in his overall analysis in order to frame it in terms of the object alluded to in the title of the book – Spinoza’s encounter with Machiavelli. After synthetically summarising different approaches to the Spinoza– Machiavelli question throughout the twentieth century in the introduction, Morfino proceeds to carry out four steps in the remainder of the text. First, in chapter 1, through close examination of Spinoza’s own library, Morfino delivers a clear and thorough framework of the possible means through which Spinoza read Machiavelli. His analysis shows that Spinoza had multiple access points to the Florentine’s work: Machiavelli’s complete works in Italian (which Spinoza seemed capable of understanding, given the presence of an Italian–Spanish dictionary in his library, as well as an Italian- 1 One notable exception to this implicit consensus is Del Lucchese 2009, which had not been published when Morfino wrote this book. translator’s introduction ix language monograph), a Latin translation of The Prince, and discussions of Machiavelli in texts of Bacon, Descartes and others. Morfino is careful to note that these basic facts, of course, do not necessarily mean that Spinoza studied Machiavelli in these ways, or only in these ways, since such information cannot speak to the practical aspects of reading or other kinds of study. As such, in addition to his detailed account of these possible means, Morfino outlines Spinoza’s general approach to citation, where proper names are rare, and together with impersonal figures (such as the ‘theologians and metaphysicians’ in the appendix to Ethics I), negative, except for a remark about ancient atomists in a letter to Hugo Boxel.2 Morfino then considers Spinoza’s direct citations of the ‘ever shrewd’3 Machiavelli. Both of the latter two elements also contribute to Morfino’s extensive analysis of the Theological-Political Treatise and Political Treatise in chapter 2. He does this through the rubric of ‘Machiavelli’s implicit presence’, by which he does not intend an esoteric reading of Spinoza’s work, show- ing some kind of secret fidelity to an atemporal Machiavellianism. Instead, again undertaking a precise and painstaking labour, Morfino demonstrates substantive links between arguments within Spinoza’s political works and Machiavelli’s texts, above all Discourses on Livy and The Prince. Some key aspects that Morfino outlines in this chapter, which simultaneously consti- tutes a kind of mini-treatise on Spinoza’s political works, include the deci- siveness of Machiavelli’s conceptual pair ‘virtue’ and ‘fortune’ for Spinoza’s discussion of election in the Theological-Political Treatise, and the deploy- ment of Machiavelli’s remarks on keeping pacts in the framework of natu- ral law theory, especially in contrast to Hobbes. In the unfinished Political Treatise, Morfino outlines Machiavelli’s presence in what he terms the ‘skel- etal structure’ of the text, emphasising the idea that imperium represents a momentary equilibrium of forces, rather than a model of politics where civil society names a stabilised transcendence of the state of nature. Third, Morfino draws out the consequences of his reconstruction of Spinoza’s use of Machiavellian arguments even more fully, in what are undoubtedly some of the most exciting pages in the book. A full reckoning with these details is best left to the text itself, but we can note here that the consequences Morfino uncovers are especially relevant for Spinoza’s con- cepts of causality and eternity, and by extension, for how to think Spinoza’s political works in tandem with the Ethics. The idea at the heart of the chapter is that Spinoza’s encounter with Machiavelli’s approach to history and 2 Ep. LVI [to Hugo Boxel]; CWS II, 423–4 3 TP V, 7; CWS II, 531.