In an unsettled time when democracy is contested and populists claim to speak for the people, Sandra Leonie Field’s important and insightful Potentia: Hobbes and Spinoza on Power and Popular Politics critically examines two radical democratic currents of thought, the American public law tradition and European post-Marxism. Through a careful reading of Hobbes and Spinoza, she proposes a neo-Spinozist standard of popular power that is normatively satisfying and effective: collective influence is not spontaneously democratic but requires institutions to sustain equality and participation in the long term. Among the many strengths of her book is that Field draws on the full range of works by both authors, including neglected texts in political theory, such as Spinoza’s Ethics, and multiple Hobbes and Spinoza literatures.

The central contrast in Field’s book is potestas versus potentia or authorized versus concrete power. Relevant literature usually locates Hobbes supporting the first, and Spinoza the second. After her introductory chapter, Field problematizes this dichotomy. In chapter 2, she establishes Hobbes’s movement away from an early view of individual power as internal abilities to a later one that by Leviathan emphasizes interpersonal effects, including reputation and perception by others of influence. In chapter 3, she shows that in Leviathan this conceptualization extends to the people as a whole. The earlier understanding of collective power is juridical and depends on authorization by contract, but the interpersonal dimension of influence in Leviathan makes possible a nonjuridical account. Within the sovereign people understood through the lens of potentia emerge patrons, churches, and factions. The political problem (chapter 4) is that these associations inhibit the exercise of sovereignty and seek to co-opt it. Compellingly, Field uses this analysis to make sense of Richard Tuck’s recovery of direct action by the popular sovereign (Sleeping Sovereign, 2016) in De Cive but not Leviathan. In the earlier work, Hobbes still conceptualizes collective influence as potestas, whereas by Leviathan he sees it through the more realistic lens of potentia (pp. 95–98). Field connects this later Hobbesian critique to her own disapproval of plebiscites as the exemplary case of popular power: they may be formally democratic but actually result in real disparities in group influence.

Based on concrete inequality in the people, Hobbes recommends repressive egalitarianism that crushes these informal power blocs (chapter 5). Field builds on recent work by Jeffrey Collins, The Allegiance of Thomas Hobbes, (2015) showing the consistency of Hobbes’s willingness to use state power with Independency, the Christian denomination he seems to recommend. (My discussion in “The Return of the Intolerant Hobbes” [History of European Ideas, 45, 2018] of the Independents’ second edition of the Humble Proposals, which included a state-enforced confession of faith, would also have strengthened Field’s case.) The strategic goal remains popular: to liberate individuals from oligarchy.

Together, chapters 1–5 present three reconstructed Hobbesian challenges to Spinoza’s expression of potentia through democratic institutions, which Field outlines in chapter 6. First is the existence of actual oligarchic inequalities in the people. Second is the fact that nondemocratic institutional forms are not necessarily short-lived. Third is the tendency of emergent elites and associations in the people to co-opt sovereignty. Given these issues, why risk entrenching oligarchy by democratically expressing popular power? The worry is compounded because unlike either “radical” or “constitutionalist” Spinoza interpreters, Field’s Spinoza does not share the optimistic views that popular power spontaneously organizes itself horizontally or automatically makes for a long-lasting polity, respectively (pp. 159–65).

Starting in chapter 7, Field unpacks two different conceptions of power as part of Spinoza’s response. Potentia agendi is the power of acting adequately through the laws of one’s nature, whereas potentia operandi is the power to produce effects through one’s own and others’ natures. With reference to the one occurrence of potentia operandi in the Ethics (p. 183), Field argues against many commentators that ethical institutions do not exclusively reflect potentia agendi but can also reflect potentia operandi. That said, only the power of acting (agendi) indicates control of one’s right or existence sui juris (a normative ideal that Field emphasizes is not a binary distinction but one of degree and is applicable to states as well as individuals). Field uses the discussion of sui juris to explain why oppositional social movements are not the paradigmatic expressions of democratic power: with victory secured, they will not have a reason referring to their own nature to continue in existence (pp. 211–16).

With these categories, Field shows, starting in chapter 8, that Spinoza successfully meets all of Hobbes’s reconstructed challenges. First, collective power does spontaneously form oligarchic blocs; yet this just means that the action (potentia agendi) of a multitude existing in possession of its own right, and characterized by horizontal equality and broad-based participation, requires institutional shaping. Second, nondemocratic governments do endure, but without expressing the normative ideal of action (potentia agendi) in possession of right, instead only producing effects (potentia operandi) with right. And third, oligarchic elites and associations in the people do undermine the state: yet formal and informal balancing (civic strengthening) rather than Hobbesian repression (chapter 9) is an alternative way to prevent oligarchy and sustainably ensure collective participation equality in the people.

The institutional detail that Field provides to flesh out civic strengthening, across different regimes in Spinoza’s Political Treatise (PT), is a further strength of this book. In the monarchy, the size of the king’s advisory council, combined with a close to randomized selection procedure, minimizes the risk of oligarchic capture. In aristocracies, syndics ensure adherence to the original regime form and provide institutional counterpower. Field shows Spinoza’s increased comfort, relative to Hobbes, with a multiplicity of church and other civil society groups that pressure the democratic sovereign in positive ways. She resists a separation-of-powers interpretation (Lewis Samuel Feuer, Spinoza and the Rise of Liberalism, 1987) that leaves an opening for oligarchic capture: the syndics “need not be seen as a counterweight to popular power, but rather, an element of its expression” (p. 258). She again connects the material to current political debates, comparing the structure of the monarchical council to James Fishkin’s deliberative polling that randomly selects everyday citizens to discuss public policy questions.

One elite group in particular, which Spinoza theorizes at significantly greater length than Hobbes, does not receive the extended consideration I thought was warranted. Throughout his works, Spinoza explores “the intellectual love of God” or the intense and contemplative study of nature by a few. Field helpfully emphasizes Spinoza’s defense of collective rationality in assemblies (p. 247), and even Spinoza does not claim at any point that superstition is the preserve of the people. But his highest knowledge has antidemocratic overtones (Warren Zev Harvey, “A Portrait of Spinoza as a Maimonidean,” Journal of the History of Philosophy, 19, 1981; Steven Smith, Spinoza Liberalism, and the Question of Jewish Identity 1997). Spinoza characterizes the wise individual in terms of blessedness, which Hobbes avoids, and frames popular power in words for which Hobbes never reaches: “the mob is terrifying, if unafraid” (Ethics IVp54s). Hobbes also holds, unlike Spinoza, that the ability to reason is primarily “attained by Industry.” What kind of institutional balancing, above and beyond the civic-strengthening mechanisms Field explores in chapter 9, may be necessary to mediate between this elite and the people?

More broadly, when populist anger targets experts or other minorities, do formal and informal balancing mechanisms suffice? Spinoza was skeptical: civil religion is also necessary (Heidi Ravven, “Spinoza and the Remaking of American Civil Religion,” InCircolo 8, 2019; Firmin DeBrabander, “The Highest Form of Devotion: Spinoza on Piety, Patriotism, and the Therapy of Religion,” History of Philosophy Quarterly, 24, 2007; Ron Beiner, Civil Religion: A Dialogue in the History of Political Philosophy, 2010; and Leo Strauss, Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, 1930). Indeed, Spinoza’s discussion of beliefs necessary for civil peace, including the cosmic grounding of justice and charity, occurs close to his discussion of democracy in the Theological-Political Treatise. The need for patricians to subscribe to them is explicitly affirmed in the PT. And in making possible a piety that supports the scientific study of nature, they provide additional mediation between the people and an elite in special tension with majoritarian claims. Spinoza did not finish his chapter on democracy in the PT, and a liberal democratic civil religion is counterintuitive. But Phil Gorski, to take just one example, has recently endorsed it to promote democratic solidarity (American Covenant 2017). Addressing these possibilities, as I see it, would allow Field to engage with an important part of the Spinoza literature and an additional debate in contemporary political theory.

In conclusion, I highly recommend this erudite and thought-provoking book. Potentia shows Hobbes and Spinoza in agreement, despite significant institutional differences, on the need to demystify spontaneous expressions of collective influence and to use the state constitutively. This is to realize the democratic longing for popular power genuinely free of oligarchy.