Will, Divine Right, Democracy

Spinoza's equation of God and Nature entails one of Divine Right and Natural Right, and, hence, that a Democracy is a Theocracy. Thus, the immediate context of his theory of Natural Right is the doctrine of the 'divine right of kings', not the ancient priority of the Good, as Leo Strauss has it. However, it theory does entail a mediate challenge to the latter--whereas that idea of the Good is a source of enlightenment accessible to only a few, Spinoza's doctrine re-conceives Ethics as program of universally accessible empowerment, i. e. available to any entity possessing what is here defined as Will. In other words, Spinoza's Pantheistic transformations of Political Theory and Ethics elude Strauss's interpretive scheme, and the Oligarchical purposes to which the it is sometimes put.