Simon Gros

---

This lecture explores a central tension in Baruch Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico-Politicus: how can theology and philosophy be both strictly independent and yet arranged in a clear hierarchy of cognitive and ethical excellence?

Written in the highly charged political and religious climate of the Dutch Republic, the Theological-Political Treatise was a polemical intervention in defence of civil peace and the libertas philosophandi, the freedom to think and speak without fear of ecclesiastical or political repression. Spinoza diagnoses the “unholy alliance” of confessional factions and state power as a source of superstition, persecution, and the curtailment of scientific and philosophical questioning, and he responds by arguing for a secularized conception of sovereignty in which the state safeguards peace precisely by protecting freedom of thought and expression.

At the heart of this project lies Spinoza’s rigorous demarcation of theology and philosophy. Philosophy aims unconditionally at truth; it proceeds from universally valid axioms and must be constructed by the study of Nature alone. Faith, by contrast, rests on history and language and takes Scripture and revelation as its proper sources; its sole aim is obedience and piety. For that reason, Spinoza insists that Scripture teaches only what is needed for justice and charity, not speculative doctrine, and that genuine faith condemns as heretical only those teachings that foment hatred and sedition rather than strengthening our capacity for mutual assistance. In this configuration, faith actually grants “the utmost freedom to philosophise,” since disagreement about theoretical questions does not in itself threaten piety.

Susan James argues that long-standing worries about Spinoza’s supposed subordination of theology to philosophy arise from a misreading of this dual structure. Drawing on Spinoza’s Ciceronian inheritance, she reconstructs his position as a nuanced, two-tiered account of ethical and epistemic life. On the first tier, theology addresses the imaginative and affective capacities of ordinary believers, inculcating simple but powerful norms—above all the commands to love God and to love one’s neighbour—that are sufficient to sustain a just and cooperative commonwealth. On the second, more demanding tier, philosophy seeks a rational understanding of God or Nature, moving from obedience to the intellectual love of God and transforming external conformity into an inner joy that arises from seeing ourselves as parts of an infinite natural order. Rather than cancelling theology, this higher form of life fulfils its ethical intention from within.

James situates this reading against Spinoza’s radical redefinition of divine law. Rejecting the notion of a transcendent legislator who issues arbitrary commands, Spinoza identifies God with Nature and equates divine law with the necessary laws of nature themselves. Ceremonial and ritual prescriptions thus acquire a merely civil or customary status, valuable insofar as they help secure obedience and social cohesion, but lacking intrinsic salvific force. Salvation in the sense accessible to faith consists in steadfast obedience to the simple universal religion articulated in Scripture; salvation in the philosophical sense consists in aligning thought and desire with the intelligible order of Nature. This hierarchy of perspectives—imaginative faith and rational insight—provides the frame within which philosophy can be epistemologically superior without encroaching on the legitimate autonomy of theology as a practice of moral formation.

The lecture also brings these seventeenth-century debates into conversation with contemporary concerns. Spinoza’s insistence that the state should restrict itself to regulating actions and leave beliefs free anticipates modern accounts of freedom of conscience, religious pluralism, and democratic citizenship. His vision of a state whose true purpose is to free people from fear and to create the conditions under which they can “use their reason without restraint” offers resources for thinking about how theoretical insight can be embodied in institutions and practices that sustain cooperative forms of life. At the same time, his identification of divine law with the order of Nature invites reflection on ecological responsibility: if piety ultimately means living in accordance with the intelligible structure of the natural world, then rational devotion requires us to rethink our collective relation to the environments that make our shared flourishing possible.

Across these themes, James presents Spinoza as offering a model of philosophical piety: a way of life in which the pursuit of truth is neither a luxury nor an abstract intellectual game, but a disciplined practice that can clarify when truth matters—and how, in different registers of life, it can guide us toward more joyful, just, and cooperative forms of existence.

Susan James, FBA (b. 1951), is a leading historian of early modern philosophy whose work has decisively shaped contemporary understandings of Spinoza, Cavendish, and their intellectual milieu. Professor Emerita at Birkbeck, University of London, she has also held appointments at the University of Connecticut and at the University of Cambridge, where she served as Chair of the Faculty of Philosophy from 1997 to 1999. Her early monograph The Content of Social Explanation (1981) examined the forms of intelligibility appropriate to social life, while Passion and Action: The Emotions in Early Modern Philosophy (1997) helped inaugurate the now-flourishing field of early modern affect studies.

James has been especially influential in reinterpreting Spinoza’s ethics, politics, and philosophy of emotion, emphasizing the ways in which his theories of affect and fortitude are meant to be lived out in concrete practices and institutions. She has also been a central figure in the recovery of early modern women’s political thought, notably through her edition of Margaret Cavendish’s political writings (2003), and has extended her interests into the intersections of philosophy and visual art in her work on Nicolas Poussin. Elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2019, she has held visiting positions at Princeton University, the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, and the University of California, Berkeley. Through her long-standing involvement with the London Spinoza Circle and ongoing research projects, James continues to provide models of historically grounded, philosophically ambitious scholarship and to mentor new generations of researchers working on Spinoza and early modern philosophy.