Theologico-Political Treatise
- This article is about the treatise published by Baruch Spinoza. For the similarly-titled work by Ludwig Wittgenstein, see Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.
Written by the philosopher and
pantheist Baruch Spinoza, the
Theologico-Political Treatise or
Tractatus Theologico-Politicus was an early criticism of religious intolerance and a defense of
secular government. In particular, it was a preemptive defense of his later work,
Ethics (published posthumously in
1677), for which Spinoza anticipated harsh criticism.
The text was published anonymously under the auspices of
Dutch magistrate Jan De Witt in
1670, and was at first well-received within the secular community. Following De Witt's murder in
1672, political support for the treatise waned. In
1673, it was publicly condemned by the
Synod of Dort and was banned officially the following year.
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