Abstract

Starting from an implicit quotation from Machiavelli’s Discourses on the Ten Books of Titus Livy contained in the Tractatus politicus, we would like to show that the Spinozian idea of democracy is aporetic, because the strategies that Spinoza suggests for the establishment of a democratic regime contrast with his ontology of conservation. Thus, we believe that the absence of the part on democracy in the Tractatus politicus represents an opportunity to rethink politics as the art of understanding and managing social conflicts rather than neutralizing them. In this sense, democracy for Spinoza is the manifestation of the natural conflictuality of society, a request for equality between men that leads to the permanent questioning of private rights and property, as well as of every institutionalized State form.