  Some commentators take these problems with Spinoza’s social contract to be insurmountable, and for this reason they regard him as coming to his senses when he abandons the contract in the TP (Wernham 1958, 25–27). Others have tried to reinterpret the contract in a way that is makes it consistent with his naturalism. For instance, Barbone and Rice distinguish between two concepts that have been rendered in English as “power.” On the one hand there is potentia, which is the power that is essential to the individual (Barbone and Rice 2000, 17). This power in inalienable. What is transferable is one’s potestas, i.e. one’s authority (Barbone and Rice 2000, 17) or coercive power (Blom 1995, 211).