ABSTRACT
There is a key concept in the Political Treatise in which the essential identity between law and force is reflected and developed: the concept of sui juris. The different forms of government that Spinoza recognizes and examines in the Political Treatise become legitimate the moment that the terms and the possibility of rational control over them are fulfilled. The Political Treatise intends to carry out a research that aims at a method conducing towards the public conditions of esse sui juris. In the Ethics, the proper deduction of intuitive science begins with the attributes; in the Political Treatise, it begins with human nature. In the Political Treatise, the concept of salvation (salus) has abandoned nearly all contact with the semantic contexts of revealed religions, as well as with man's destiny after death. The Political Treatise, for instance, is clearly a realist document, mainly because it includes unfavourable conditions among its presuppositions.
