Some Indignation in Spinoza and Machiavelli and Adam Smith
In the third part of Spinoza’s Ethics, Spinoza repeatedly claims (in Curley’s translation) that “Hatred toward him who has done evil to another” is called “indignation.” (E3p22S [contra odium erga illum qui alteri male fecit, indignationem appellabimus.]; see also definition of the affects 20.) Since this is Spinoza I probably would use ‘harm’ or ‘wronged’ instead of ‘evil’ for male. I am, however, rather tempted by ‘malice’ because it is a word Smith uses in salient contexts: “[T]he weakest man in the world, in this case, endeavours to support his manly countenance, and, from indignation and contempt of their malice, to behave with as much gaiety and ease as he can.” (TMS 3.3.24, p. 146.)
In fact, according to Adam Smith typically indignation is the effect of our sympathy with the (justifiable and natural) resentment of the injured (e.g., people “readily, therefore, sympathize with the natural resentment of the injured, and the offender becomes the object of their hatred and indignation.” TMS 2.2.2.2, p 83; see also TMS 2.1.5.6, p. 76) While scholars like myself have focused on the functional role of resentment in Smith, such just indignation is a major (somewhat neglected) theme of TMS. (If you know my book you may also know that in it, I repeatedly link Smith to the reception of Spinoza; but to my own surprise now, not through their shared interest in justified indignation.)
Be that as it may, Spinoza uses his definition of indignation in a rather important political theoretical context in part 4 of the Ethics:
Indignation, as we define it (see Def. Aff. XX), is necessarily evil [mala] (by P45). But it should be noted that when the supreme power [summa potestas], bound by its desire to preserve peace, punishes a citizen who has wronged another, I do not say that it is indignant toward the citizen. For it punishes him, not because it has been aroused by Hate to destroy him, but because it is moved by duty [pietate]. E4P51S [trans. Curley]
I am a bit uneasy about Curley’s choice of ‘duty’ because it makes punishment in Spinoza a bit more deontic than I think Spinoza means to be here. In fact, in context, Curley does not have a consistent translation of pietatis (and its cognates), sometimes also opting for ‘morality.’ Since, piety is a rather important theme in Spinoza’s Theological Political Treatise, I think Curley’s choice (which he ably defends in his glossary) obscures some of the internal connections between the two works.
Of course, Spinoza’s key point is not unclear. The sovereign/ruler punishes not because he has been privately wronged or has a private feeling of indignation with the malice suffered by the victims. But I don’t think Spinoza means to convey that public law is a wholly impersonal obligation here. The sovereign does have an explicit motive to punish (the desire to preserve peace which is advantageous to sovereign and people alike), and so punishment is (and now I try to capture that pietate) to be understood as a kind of loyalty (perhaps rooted in self-interest) to the edifice (the law) that preserves public order. For not punishing crimes means on Spinoza’s views allowing disorder and corruption to enter the social edifice.
I think this reading is supported by what Spinoza says in a quite Machiavellian passage (as Curley notes) near the end of chapter IV of the Political Treatise. To be sure in this passage the language of ‘piety’ is absent, but the point I want to make is also evoked:
So for the Commonwealth to be its own master, it’s bound to maintain the causes of fear and respect. Otherwise it ceases to be a Commonwealth. For it’s as impossible for one who holds political authority (or those who do so) to run, drunken or naked, through the streets with prostitutes, to play the actor, to openly violate or disdain the laws he himself has made, and at the same time to preserve his authority, as it is to both be and not be at the same time. To slaughter and rob his subjects, to rape their young women, and actions of that kind, turn fear into indignation, and hence turn the civil order into a state of hostility…
But if that’s the nature of these laws—that they can’t be violated unless the strength of the Commonwealth is at the same time weakened, i.e., unless the general fear of most citizens is at the same time turned into indignation—by that very fact the Commonwealth is dissolved, and the contract is inoperative. So the contract is defended, not by the civil Law, but by the Law of war [non Jure civili, sed Jure belli vindicatur]. So the sovereign is bound to observe the conditions of this contract for no other reason than a man in the state of nature is bound to take care not to kill himself, if he’s not to be an enemy [hostis] to himself (as we said in §5). (PT chapter 4, paragraphs 4&6, translated by Curley.)
Notice, that enforcing the law by the sovereign is here not likened to an act of duty or morality at all. But rather as a kind of act of self-care. (Here public service is a kind of indirect loyalty to self.)
In fact, if I understand Spinoza correctly, the sovereign power never escapes the state of nature not just when facing other sovereign powers, but also when upholding the law domestically.* This is so because the state of nature remains latent in civil society, and can re-emerge when order is not maintained (and the social contract breaks down).
Spinoza’s point is not to encourage arbitrary rule—on the contrary, strict and impartial enforcement of the civil law is encouraged (except when doing so really risks the very survival of the state). But the grounds of that enforcement are not rooted in morality or duty, but rather in the risk of the permanent possibility of lethal violence. Here the desire for public peace means the desire for continued survival. And this ultimately is rooted (as Spinoza explicitly claims) in the rightful judgment of the sovereign (“At judicium de hac re, an scilicet communis salutis intersit, easdem violare, an secus, nemo privatus; sed is tantum, qui imperium tenet, jure ferre potest”), not duty.
So for Spinoza, the legal order may be justified morally, but it is founded effectively/causally on violence and practically not on obligation or duty, but on prudential judgment. Of course, if corruption is held at bay, the legal order is experienced as something natural and as relatively pacific (and so becomes self-sustaining without indignation and violence).
Even if you don’t like my way of treating Spinoza’s pietate, (and I grant that the Political Treatise treatment is not wholly identical to the Ethics) it’s pretty clear that Spinoza should be inscribed as predecessor to eighteenth century legal reformers (like Beccaria, Mirabeau, Grouchy, etc.) who tried to remove the aspect of vengeance and public spectacle of torture from the law. The execution of the law should be treated functionally as a proper part of government. As Smith puts the prevailing feeling, “The very existence of society requires that unmerited and unprovoked malice should be restrained by proper punishments; and consequently, that to inflict those punishments should be regarded as a proper and laudable action.” (TMS 2.1.5.10, p. 77.)
*A critic may claim that Spinoza only intends to suggest this in the context of sovereign violations of the law—that is in a state of emergency. But I think that critic is wrong.