  A good deal of scholarly attention has been placed on Spinoza’s account of the social contract in the TTP. Spinoza introduces the contract in Chapter 16, when considering how people escape the pre-civil condition. Here he claims that “[men] had to make a firm decision, and reach agreement, to decide everything by the sole dictate of reason” (TTP 16, 198), which requires, as he later makes clear, that each transfers one’s right to determine how to live and defend himself to the sovereign (TTP 16, 199–200); cf. EIVP37S2). He also cites the establishment of the Hebrew state, with Moses as the absolute sovereign, as an historical example of a social contract (TTP 19, 240). The social contract seems to confer nearly boundless authority on the sovereign. So long as we are rational, “we are obliged to carry out absolutely all commands of the sovereign power, however absurd they may be” (TTP 16, 200).