The law inscribed in the mind: on the meaning of a biblical image in Spinoza’s Theological-political treatise

The image of the law inscribed in the hearts and on the minds of human beings is constantly repeated in Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise. Despite this, scholarship on Spinoza has not focused specifically on this topic. In this paper, I will elucidate the metaphor and show how, from its roots in the Old and New Testaments, it became a literary topos of theology and philosophy from the Patristics until the eighteenth century. In order to understand Spinoza’s extensive use of the metaphor, I will show that this image was already used with radical outcomes among some heterodox philosophers, jurists and theologians in the context of the Renaissance, the Reformation and Early Modern thought: for example, to prove that the fundamental laws of morality, such as the Golden Rule, can be known without the help of revelation and are sufficient for salvation; or that Christianity, in its purified form, is tantamount to natural religion.