Hobbes and Spinoza on Sovereign Education

Abstract

Most comparisons of Thomas Hobbes and Baruch Spinoza focus on the difference in understanding of natural right. We argue that Hobbes also places more weight on a rudimentary and exclusive education of the public by the state. We show that the difference is related to deeper disagreements over the prospect of Enlightenment. Hobbes is more sanguine than Spinoza about using the state to make people rational. Spinoza considers misguided an overemphasis on publicly educating everyone out of superstition—public education is important, but modes of superstition may remain and must be offset by institutions and a civil religion. The differences are confirmed by Spinoza’s interest in the philosopher who stands apart and whose flourishing may be protected, but not simply brought about, by rudimentary public education. Spinoza’s openness to a wisdom-loving elite in a democracy also sets up an interesting parallel with Thomas Jefferson’s own commitment to the natural aristocracy needed to sustain republicanism. In demonstrating the 17th century philosopher’s skepticism toward using the state exclusively to promote rationality, even as he recognizes the importance of a sovereign pedagogical role and the protection of philosophy, we move to suggest that Spinoza is relevant to contemporary debates about public education and may reinvigorate moral and political discourse in a liberal democracy.

Between Public Justification and Civil Religion: Shared Values in a Divided Time

“…20 He made the case in Leviathan, but these and other arguments of his are also especially in evidence in Behemoth, where the English philosopher meditated specifically on the causes of social disintegration. Hobbes focused on these institutions in a way that even Spinoza did not (Kabala and Cook 2022). Their educational mission, he was clear, had to undergo focusing and reform, if stability and prosperity were to have a chance.…”