The author contrasts Machiavelli’s and Spinoza’s interpretation of the figure of Moses. Both think of the prophet as a prime example of the critique of the theological foundations of politics and as a consequence believe that politics is essentially immanent. Machiavelli maintains the supremacy of politics and states its absolute contingency from the standpoint of an interpretation of history and reality as abyssal and fortuitous. On the other hand, Spinoza refers to prophecy as knowledge of the first kind (imaginative knowledge) and for this very reason he also refers to it as the natural ontology of potency. Both the philosophers criticize transcendence and finalism, but Spinoza suggests there is something more definite than the unprincipled whirlwind of the world which Machiavelli describes.
