Spinoza and the ethics of political resistance

My dissertation examines the question of the justification of political resistance in Spinoza's philosophy. More specifically, its purpose is to determine whether or not Spinoza regards political resistance as harmonizing with the dictates of reason, where the latter amount to prudential counsels for maximizing one's "power to exist". Having demonstrated the partial validity of the 'conservative' interpretation of Spinoza's ethico-rational politics – according to which reason commands strict obedience to political authorities – I go on to challenge its near-hegemonic status in the secondary literature by extracting from Spinoza's Ethics and political treatises a conditional, ethico-rational justification for political resistance.;The ultimate criterion for the ethico-rational validation of an act of resistance is the empowerment of its agent(s). Since one's true empowerment is, in Spinoza's view, inextricably related to the empowerment of all those with whom one's life is intertwined, and the chief source of personal empowerment is the rational understanding of nature's causal order, it follows that any act of resistance ought to contribute to an increase in the cognitive powers of the greatest number (including, ideally, those against whom it is directed).;On the basis of the fact that, by Spinoza's own reckoning, the philosophical critique of prejudices through the development of adequate ideas regarding their constitution can serve to undermine the disempowering forms of rule that depend upon them, I contend that the critique of prejudices is the ethico-rationally justified form of resistance par excellence. Thus, a State is only organized rationally if it secures institutional 'spaces' for the exercise of this form of resistance as part of its normal functioning. Finally, I maintain that active civil disobedience subverting a political regime that prohibits the continuous exercise of resistance-as-critique is not only justified but is akin to a duty if individuals are to live up to Spinoza's paradigm of rationality, the "wise" or "free" person.