ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the state of Nature, the democratic civil state, and the fiction of moral equality. It examines the claim that egalitarianism is inherent in substance monism, and arrives at the key point that for Spinoza, there is no equality of natural right. Ontological equality is the notion that all beings are equally real modes of God, each with its own essence, or power to be what it is, complete and perfect according to its own nature. The state of Nature, for Spinoza, is literally a state in which Nature as a whole is sovereign, and which is ruled by the power and natural right 'of all individual things together'. Equality have an important role to play in a democracy. Democratic citizens, unlike those in the state of Nature, have equal civil right, an equal stake in governing and making the law.
