  One might wonder why Spinoza, having published the TTP in 1670, spent the last years of his life (until his death in 1677) working on a second political treatise that covers some of the same ground as the first. It is tempting to suppose that he must have come to reject many of his earlier views. However, with the possible exception of his view of the social contract (see 4.1), there is little evidence that Spinoza came to reject any of the central claims of his earlier treatise. Rather, the TP is distinguished from the earlier treatise chiefly by its aims and rhetorical style. Whereas the TTP was an occasional piece, written for an audience of liberal Christian theologians to address the problems posed by officious Calvinist theocrats, the TP is concerned with the general organization of the state and was written for philosophers. In the later treatise, Spinoza abandons what has been described as the “theological idiom of popular persuasion” in favor of the dispassionate style of a political scientist (Feuer 1987, 151; cf. Balibar 1998, 50).