“ Homo homini Deus, & Homo homini Lupus ”: Spinoza on Human Nature and Human Relations

Abstract In the dedicatory epistle to his Latin treatise De Cive (1642), Thomas Hobbes paraphrases and combines a pair of ancient Latin proverbs into a single aphorism: Homo homini Deus, & Homo homini Lupus. Spinoza, in turn, says in the Ethics only that “man is a God to man [hominem homini Deum esse]”. In this chapter, I argue that Spinoza should not have been so quick to drop the gloomier vision of things. On Spinoza’s own terms, a human being may be not only a God to other human beings, but a wolf as well. This is true, I suggest, not only because of the ways in which human beings differ from each other, through their irrational passions, but, admittedly, despite what Spinoza explicitly says, in part because of their common human nature as well. An important (and, I suggest, Spinozistic) reason why human beings come into conflict when living under the guidance of the passions, but, to be clear, not when living under the guidance of reason, is because they are all human beings.