Abstract

Spinoza dedicates two remarkable, though brief, paragraphs of his Political Treatise to Machiavelli’s thought: in the first one he investigates the political meaning of the writings of the Florentine secretary, whereas in the second one he summarizes and discusses more closely the different political theories. Spinoza’s interest in Machiavelli is clearly centred on the latter’s political views, however another relevant issue can be traced in Spinoza’s work, an issue that legitimates the theoretical frame of Machiavelli’s political philosophy: plural temporality and contingency. In this sense Machiavelli’s concept of chance becomes central to Spinoza’s interpretation, however distant from the Dutch philosopher’s ontology this concept may appear, an ontology which has been defined as governed by a “logical”, “blind”, “absolute” necessity