Abstract

“Human nature” and “history” have come to be terms used to distinguish two radically different ways in which some major political thinkers have approached their subject. “Human nature,” or “individualist,” theorists, notably Cicero, Hobbes, Locke, and most of those who wrote in English, began by considering the uniformities, necessities, potentialities, and goals of human nature, and went on to discuss the suitability to that nature of different political and social institutions. Others, notably Polybius, Machiavelli, Burke, the Hegelians, and most Continental writers, began with the study of history and of the laws of society and deduced from these the various characters of men; we are to understand men in terms of their social circumstances. A similar distinction is a commonplace among philosophic writers, but I wish, as much as possible, to discuss this matter in the terms used by political theorists. The question raised here is whether we shall regard Spinoza as using the “human nature” or the “history” approach in his political thinking.