Abstract

This chapter discusses one way to understand one of Spinoza's most vital, controversial concepts – essence – and attempts to show how this interpretation of essence illuminates and animates the basic precepts of his political theory. It shows that the radical metaphysics of the Ethics are the beating heart of Spinoza's ethical and political prescriptions. The chapter considers how the knowledge of essences of singular things, scientia intuitiva, is the key to the method by which an individual achieves freedom, virtue, and beatitudo. An idea that involves the unity of the formal and actual essence of a thing in the finite intellect is the object of the third kind of knowledge. Unity, for Spinoza, is a critical theme underlying his metaphysics, his epistemology, and his politics. For Spinoza, man can only achieve wisdom hand‐in‐hand with freedom, that is, hand‐in‐hand with his fellow man.