  Given that there will generally be more checks on authority and a greater diffusion of political power in aristocracies than in monarchies, we should not find it surprising that Spinoza claims that aristocracies are likely to be more absolute than monarchies (8/7), since a state is “absolute” to the extent that it incorporates the rights of all its members and minimizes the basis for dissent (8/3, 8/4, 8/7; Steinberg 2018b).  Absoluteness thus indicates a norm very much like peace, the cardinal civil norm; so to say that one regime form is more absolute than another amounts to declaring its superiority.