Among all the ancient legislators, Spinoza and Rousseau particularly praise Moses, who created a nation which looks set to last forever, even without being a state any longer. The two philoso-phers certainly conceive Moses as a securalised charachter, whose actions are better under-stood within the field of political immanence, than within the field of religious trascendence. Nevertheless, Spinoza and Rousseau do not underestimate Moses’ extraordinary actions: be-sides unifying the Hebrews, who were nothing more than a crowd of fugitives and slaves before he set them free, Moses sensed one of the very principles of politics, namely that no human be-ing wants to be governed by his peers. Knowing this, Moses imposed his authority as a divine legacy. Altough he has perfectly clear the public and political dimension of religion, Moses is not an impostor, according to Spinoza and Rousseau: the strenght and the endurance of the so-cial bond that unites the nation of the Hebrews – it is to say the reason of its eternity – is due to his ability to persuade and drift his people without using force or constraint. On the contrary, Moses binds toghether the Hebrews and convince them to respect and love their laws by giving them identitary customs, by dictating cerimonies and religious rites which affect their imagina-tion and their passions. As a result, obedience comes not from external constraint, thus is not experienced as slavery, but from the spontaneous assent of the mind and is experienced as freedom.
