Theological-Political Treatise

Introduction

Spinoza published the Latin treatise anonymously in Amsterdam in 1670, with a false Hamburg imprint. In twenty chapters he argues that prophecy rests on imagination rather than superior knowledge, that miracles in the sense of breaches of natural law are impossible, and that the Bible must be interpreted from its own history and language. He doubts, for instance, that Moses wrote the Pentateuch. The last chapters turn to politics: the purpose of the state is freedom, and in a free republic everyone may think what they wish and say what they think. In 1674 the Court of Holland banned the book together with Hobbes’s Leviathan.

Read the full text

• Wikisource (English)

Free full text, often an older edition or translation

Connections

Builds on

• Leviathan1651 · Thomas Hobbes

Criticizes

• The Guide for the Perplexedc. 1190 · Maimonides

Taken up in

• The Savage Anomaly1981 · Antonio Negri

More works by Baruch de Spinoza

• 1677Ethics, Demonstrated in Geometrical Order