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from R
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 January 2025
Both of Spinoza’s major political works make frequent use of the concept of right (jus). However, his understanding of right – both natural right and political right – is not moralistic. That is, to have (a) right is not an intrinsic moral status, such that others have a moral obligation either to provide some benefit or to avoid interference with the rightsholder. For Spinoza, if someone lacks the actual power to take some action or secure some benefit, they also lack the right to take that action or obtain that benefit. The same point applies to political authorities: when a political authority lacks the power to enact some law, it is simply false that they have the right to enact that law. Spinoza holds that in our political thinking, we must confront the actual distribution of power in the world, not “a Fantasy, possible only in a Utopia, or in the golden age of the Poets” (TP1.1).
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