Abstract

L. Bove’s text addresses the triangle formed by liberalism, orthodoxy and democracy, but from the point of view of Spinoza’s philosophy, which reflects upon a radicality of orthodoxy and a radicality of democracy outside of the jurisdiction of politics. The Spinozist perspective suggests that if democracy is the true asymetrical opponent to the politics of the modern State, the latter is built, in its effective truth, in perfect symmetry with a model of orthodoxy. This allows us to consider the worrying possibility for today’s liberalism explicitly to eradicate its democratic opponent. This possibility has been opened by a model of orthodoxy which has already managed to respond to the problem of democratic claims. It so happens that this perfect model of obedience has been described by Spinoza in the Ancient Hebrew theocracy, a model of orthodoxy of which the Hobbesian monarchic State provides its modern expression. The article explores the theoretical underpinnings of this worrying configuration and its implications. Spinoza’s reflection shows that politics is to be identified with the question of anthropogenesis