After tracing a brief history of how the relationships between metaphysics and politics in Spinoza’s philosophy have been interpreted, the author deals with Steven Nadler’s most recent book and displays its main features and ideas. Following Nadler, Caporali highlights the militant character of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, whose theoretical and political centre is focused on the unsolved problem of the establishment of democracy through the exclusion of the vulgus (whereas the demos should actually be the democratic subject par excellence). This theoretical impasse historically corresponds to the political defeat of Dutch Republicans and leads Spinoza to centre his last, unfinished work (the Tractatus Politicus) on the notion of “multitudo”.
