ABSTRACT. The current study extends past research by elucidating the place of women in Spinoza’s democracy, Spinoza’s philosophy concerning women’s capacity for political participation, and his claims about women’s “natural” disempowerment. Castoriadis points out that the societal institution determines, in each instance, what is or is not real for that society. Barrett maintains that Kristeva’s notion of subjectivity gives us a better understanding of how the subject or self is constituted through and positioned in discourse. As Simon puts it, Rosenzweig claims that the world’s ongoing relationship to god, as created creature to creator, has to occur as denial. pp. 174–179

Keywords: Spinoza, democracy, subjectivity, world, society, political participation