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Spinoza Studies

Spinoza's Critique of HobbesLaw, Power, Freedom

By Christian Lazzeri

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Published 31 October 2026

About this book

Studies how Spinoza’s critical reading of Hobbes allowed him to develop a new kind of political theory

  • Systematically compares Spinoza's political philosophy with Hobbes' to reconstruct Spinoza's ideas
  • Highlights how Spinoza's political theories are valuable for understanding modern political issues like cooperation, consent, tolerance, resistance and how political institutions operate

Christian Lazzeri examines the relationship between the political theory of Hobbes and that of Spinoza. Arguing against longstanding one-sided interpretations, he shows how Spinoza both took up and modified, accepted and distanced himself from Hobbes’s ideas. This also brings out problematic aspects of Hobbes’s thinking from Spinoza’s perspective.

Most importantly, Lazzeri traces how Spinoza constructed a political philosophy, not on the narrow basis of an autonomous political sphere constituted by the relationships between rational legal subjects to produce indivisible sovereignty, but rather on the broad basis of the complex web of social relations and a purely institutionalist framework.

Reviews

This newly translated work of Christian Lazzeri's is a masterpiece of both interpretation and political philosophical reasoning. The depth, thoroughness and fairness of the analysis of both Hobbes and Spinoza is such that the result is more a comparison than a critique. From now on, anyone working seriously on the political philosophy of Hobbes or Spinoza, and the era in which they wrote, will need to consult Lazzeri's work.
Christian Lazzeri’s 1998 master work offers a penetrating study of Hobbes’s political theory and how Spinoza both adopted and adapted it. This first English version, fluently translated by Nils F. Scott, adds invaluable insights concerning Spinoza’s supposed shift vis-à-vis the social contract between the TTP and TP.
Thanks to Schott’s meticulous and highly readable translation into English, more readers will benefit from Lazzeri’s illuminating, erudite, and subtle analysis of the Spinoza-Hobbes relationship. The English edition includes additional material, providing further insight into precisely how Spinoza incorporates, transforms, and departs from Hobbes’s political theory.
Table of contents

Abbreviations

Introduction: Spinoza, a Disciple of Hobbes?

1. Reason and Passions
2. The Logic of Conflicts
3. Natural Right and Natural Law
4. What is a Transfer of Rights?
5. The Formation of the State
6. The Question of Sovereignty
7. Regime and Government

Postface to the English Edition

Bibliography
Index

About the contributors

Christian Lazzeri

Christian Lazzeri is Professor Emeritus of Political Philosophy at Paris Nanterre University. His books include Droit, pouvoir et liberté (PUF, 1998), Force et justice dans la politique de Pascal (PUF, 1993) and the edited volumes Spinoza: Puissance et impuissance de la raison (PUF, 1998), La reconnaissance aujourd’hui (CNRS, 2009) and Reconnaissance, identité et intégration sociale (Presses universitaires de Paris Ouest, 2009). He has published numerous translations in addition to authoring more than a hundred articles in political philosophy, philosophy of science and the philosophy of the social sciences.

Nils F. Schott

Nils F. Schott is an academic translator and editor.
With Alexandre Lefebvre, he is the co-editor of three books: Henri Bergson’s lectures on Freedom at the Collège de France (Bloomsbury, 2024); a collection of essays, Interpreting Bergson: Critical Essays (Cambridge University Press, 2019); and a translation of Vladimir Jankélévitch’s Henri Bergson (Duke University Press, 2015). With Hent de Vries, he edited Love and Forgiveness for a More Just World (Columbia University Press, 2015).
He has translated more than twenty books in philosophy and related fields, including, for Edinburgh University Press, Deleuze's Philosophy of Law by Laurent de Sutter.

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