Abstract:
What should we make of would-be laws or sovereign commands that require an individual to violate their essential human nature? The answers that Hobbes and Spinoza offer to this question shed light both on individuals’ obligations and orientation to the civil state, and on the relationship between these two early modern political theorists. Hobbes paints a picture of competing rights, where sovereigns have the right to command even what it would be impossible for subjects to carry out, but subjects have a simultaneous right to resist. Spinoza, by contrast, limits sovereigns’ right to command to that which is possible for subjects to carry out. Spinoza’s account shifts, however, between his 1670 Tractatus Theologico-Politicus and later, unfinished Tractatus Politicus regarding the bounds of the possible. Defying common understandings of the two thinkers, the Spinoza of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus offers individuals less latitude for resistance than Hobbes offers. Spinoza’s more expansive account of the impossible in the Tractatus Politicus gives individuals greater latitude than they have in Hobbes, but without space for individualized assessments. The two thinkers thus provide three accounts of impossible commands, with a rich and complex interplay among them.