Tractatus Politicus dan Demokrasi: Risalah Model-model Rezim yang Rasional

Tractatus Politicus is a work of Spinoza's political philosophy which discusses regime models arranged in stages according to the level of use of reason: Monarchy is rational, aristocracy is more rational, and democracy is most rational. Spinoza, who is known as the prophet of reason, established rationality as a normative standard for the three types of regimes. The rationality of a regime is measured by the size of the council which is tasked with discussing and controlling all state policies and Spinoza considers democracy to be the most rational because democracy allows for a people's council that is bigger than monarchy and aristocracy. Supomo adopted Spinoza's views as one of the philosophical sources for his state theory known as the "Staatsidee Integralistik". Interestingly, Spinoza saw democracy as the best model of government, while Supomo, who referred to Spinoza, actually rejected democracy. Simanjuntak then conducted a critical study of the philosophical source of the controversial “Staatsidee Integralistik”. However, Simanjuntak's study became more controversial, because he found that not only Supomo rejected democracy but also Spinoza. This study aims to respond to all these controversies and finds that while it is true that Supomo rejects democracy, it is not true that Spinoza rejects democracy. Spinoza was a staunch rationalist who supported democracy.