Spinoza: Freedom

One of the most peculiar features of Spinoza’s philosophy is his radical interpretation of the notion of freedom. Even though it plays a significant role in his metaethics and political philosophy, freedom is, for Spinoza, a deeply metaphysical notion, rooted in the most fundamental features of his ontology. In this paper, I analyze the internal structure that identifies a being as “free” within Spinoza’s metaphysics. I argue that this structure leads to an internal paradox, entailing that the very component that (...) allows a being its freedom – its essence or nature – is itself externally determined. I further proceed to resolve this issue indicating how Spinoza’s metaphysics of freedom can accommodate this paradox. I conclude by presenting possible solutions for both Natura naturans and Natura naturata, attempting to integrate the notion of metaphysical freedom with more familiar images of ethical and epistemological freedom. (shrink)

This article is the FOURTH of several excerpts from my book The Nondual Mind: Vedānta, Kashmiri Pratyabhijñā Shaivism, and Spinoza (the full book is posted on this site). “I liked James H. Cumming’s The Nondual Mind a lot. It is beautifully written, thoughtful, and very clear.” (Prof. Yitzhak Y. Melamed, Charlotte Bloomberg Professor of Philosophy, Johns Hopkins University) “James H. Cumming’s scholarly interpretation of Spinoza’s works, persuasively showing how 17th century European ideas that ushered in the Enlightenment find a precursor (...) in 10th century Kashmir, is a masterpiece of reason and philosophy that will leave the reader with profound thoughts on the meaning of history, God, and life itself. As a senior staff attorney in my chambers for many years at the California Supreme Court and a top scholar of ethics and philosophy of law, Mr. Cumming never ceased to amaze me with his outstanding research and intellect. This scholarly book is a must read for all who want to know why Spinoza continues to influence contemporary philosophy and how his work is still relevant in today’s challenging, interconnected world.” (Hon. Ming W. Chin, Associate Justice (Retired), Supreme Court of California, 1996–2020). (shrink)

In his lectures, Kant suggested to his students that the freedom of a divine holy will is “easier to comprehend than that of the human will,”(28:609) but this suggestion has remained neglected. After a review of some of Kant’s familiar claims about the will (in general), and about the divine holy will in particular, I consider how these claims give rise to some initial objections to that conception. Then I defend an interpretation of Kant’s conception of the divine will, and (...) of its historical development in relation to Leibniz and Spinoza, that identifies the content, origin, and role of God’s representations in a way that is responsive to some of the historical and contemporary problems. Finally, I trace a few of the implications of this account of the divine will for our understanding Kant’s account of freedom more generally, including human freedom. (shrink)

Spinoza is often conceived as a highly intellectualist philosopher, and it is tempting to read human freedom without attention to its material basis. In this paper, I study Spinoza's claim that the more the body can undergo, the more the mind can know in order to establish Spinoza's view of freedom under the attribute of extension.

In this paper, we reconstruct the development of Spinoza’s theory of judgment against the backdrop of the development of his political views. In this context we also look at the difference between Descartes’ meta-act theory of judgment, which Spinoza criticises, and his own all-inclusive approach. By “meta-act theory” we understand the claim that content and judgment about the truth of the content are metaphysically really distinct mental items. By an “all-inclusive theory” we understand the claim that judgment and content constitute (...) only one mental act. We show further how the core intuitions of this all-inclusive theory are developed by Spinoza in an increasingly radical manner and how the practical implications of his all-inclusive theory come to the fore in the Theological-Political Treatise: given that content and act are not really distinct, it is metaphysically impossible that human subjects can give up their ability to judge, which is why Spinoza can plausibly contend that everybody has an inalienable right to form their own judgment. (shrink)

In recent years, the notion of relational autonomy has transformed the old debate about the freedom of the individual in society. For Spinoza, individual humans are embedded in natural, social and political circumstances from which they derive their power and freedom. I take this to mean that Spinoza’s is best described as a constitutive theory of relational autonomy. I will show how by defining freedom in terms of power, Spinoza understands individual freedom as irreducibly relational. I propose that Spinoza develops (...) his theory of power to understand how individual power or freedom is limited and enhanced by the power of those around one. For Spinoza, the power of an individual is a function of that individual’s emotions, imaginative conceptions of itself and the world and its appetites. In this paper (1) I will argue that Spinoza reformulates a concept of freedom in terms of power. (2) His mature theory of freedom as power proposes that individual power is determined through social interaction, and is thus best understood as a relational theory of freedom. (3) I will show that as a consequence of Spinoza’s theory, individual power and empowerment relies on those around the individual, and thus, to achieve individual liberation we must pursue collective empowerment. (shrink)

In this paper I clarify a major affinity between Nietzsche and Spinoza that has been neglected in the literature—but that Nietzsche was aware of—namely a tendency to etiology. Etiologies provide follow-up, second-order explanations of first-order matters that have already otherwise been decided. The example I take up here is Nietzsche's and Spinoza's rejections of free will—and especially their etiologies concerning how we wrongly come to think that we may boast of such a capacity. In working through the former (i.e., their (...) rejections of free will) in order to make my central metaphilosophical point regarding the latter (i.e., their accounts of why we generally affirm that we have free will), I shed important new light on Nietzsche's relation to Spinoza. I also further our understanding of what role such second-order accounts play within each of their larger projects on their own terms. (shrink)

In the Bhagavad-Gita, Krishna lays out three paths of yoga as the means to achieve human perfection: the path of self-less action, the path of knowledge, and the path of devotion. In this paper I will argue for an interpretation of the Gita in which the path of devotion is the last step that leads to moksha. This is not to claim that bhakti yoga is more important than karma and jnana yoga, but rather that the latter two are more (...) elementary. In order to practice bhakti yoga, one must first have practiced karma and jnana yoga. All three forms of yoga are equally important—but there is a prioritized order in which they are to be practiced. On my reading, bhakti is more than having an intense feeling of love for God, because practicing devotion to God is an intellectual love of God that entails an intuitive understanding of the essence of things. My approach is to cross-examine the concept of human perfection as discussed in the Gita and Spinoza’s Ethics. Human perfection is characterized in both texts as a total liberation from being guided by things external to oneself other than one’s own nature. In other words, the aim of life is to liberate oneself by acquiring the right kind of knowledge. The freer one becomes and the more knowledge that one has, the more perfect one becomes. Thus, Spinoza’s idea of the “free man” resembles the self-realized agent in the Gita, because a human being becomes more “perfect” when he expresses God’s power to a greater degree. Bhakti yoga is the last step on the path to attain knowledge of God because in bhakti yoga, one employs the method of intuition to grasp God’s essence. As such, unlike karma and jnana yoga, the knowledge acquired in bhakti yoga is not empirical. In the Gita, rational devotion is a single act of both the mind and the heart, which, in turn, will lead to the practice of self-less actions. (shrink)

One of the main themes in Spinoza’s Ethics is the issue of human freedom: What does it consist in and how may it be attained? Spinoza’s ethical views crucially depend on his metaphysical theory, and this close connection provides the answer to several central questions concerning Spinoza’s conception of human freedom. Firstly, how can we accommodate human freedom within Spinoza’s necessitarianism—in the context of which Spinoza rejects the notion of a free will? Secondly, how can humans, as merely finite beings, (...) genuinely attain freedom? Can Spinoza defend his claim that we may even attain blessedness? I will argue that these questions are answered by appeal to a twofold in human nature. According to Spinoza, we are finite in infinity. (shrink)

It is often put forward that the entire political project of epicureanism consists in the overcoming of fear, whereby its scope is deemed to be very narrow. I argue that the overcoming of the fear of death should actually be linked to a conception of freedom in epicureanism. This idea is further developed by Spinoza, who defines the free man as one who thinks of death least of all in the Ethics, and who develops this idea more in the Theological (...) Political Treatise. (shrink)

Resumo Tencionamos, nestas reflexões, analisar os conceitos spinozianos de Deus, do homem e da razão, para, a partir do caráter necessário que os permeia, interrogarmos se existiria também a possibilidade de uma liberdade humana no pensamento do autor da Ética. Se tal liberdade existe, ela estaria situada no próprio plano racional, o que, por sua vez, levantaria ingentes problemas. A mesma questão - a da possibilidade de uma liberdade, em Freud - estaria colocada na margem de ação que, até certo (...) ponto, ele assinala ao eu, por intermédio de sua nova divisão do aparelho psíquico, em Além do princípio de prazer e O eu e o isso. Avancemos desde já que, se a ênfase de Spinoza, no que diz respeito à liberdade, recai sobre a razão, em Freud o acento é colocado sobretudo na simbolização e na significação que a tensão do desejo pode acarretar. Portanto, o nosso objetivo não é o de mostrar, ou provar, qualquer vínculo de dependência de Freud vis-à-vis de Spinoza. A nossa intenção é, antes, fazer ressaltar as diferenças que os separam, no que concerne à questão da necessidade e da liberdade.This article begins with an analysis of the Spinozian concepts of God, man, and reason, as well as the necessary character that permeates them. Based on that, we will ask if there exists the possibility of human freedom in the thought of the author of Ethics. If such a freedom does really exist, it would be situated on the rational level, which would raise huge problems. The same question in Freud - that of the possibility of freedom - would be related to the action that, to a certain extent, he attributes to the ego in the context of his new division of the psychical apparatus in Beyond the Pleasure Principle and The Ego and the Id. But if Spinoza’s emphasis with respect to freedom is placed upon reason, in Freud the emphasis is placed principally on the symbolization and signification that desire can bring about. Our goal is not to show that there is any dependence of Freud on Spinoza. We rather intend to underscore the differences that separate them with reference to the question of necessity and freedom. (shrink)

ABSTRACTFor Dōgen, the Buddhist doctrine of “no self” ultimately presents the self as contextualized. The self is for him not an independent entity, but is intricately related to its environment, determined through the many beings around it. In a quite different philosophical setting, Spinoza developed similar ideas. While Dōgen challenged the specifics of a tradition that explicitly argues against the idea of an absolute self, Spinoza faced a more radical challenge: questioning an absolute, unchanging, and free self that the Western (...) tradition has mostly taken for granted. After an analysis of the ideas of the two thinkers, the essay presents some important implications for contemporary times. Our domination of the earth and one another is arguably rooted in the individualism Dōgen and Spinoza seek to overcome. The insight that we are contextualized is a first step toward re-determining ourselves as placed within a larger whole. (shrink)

Generosity is not best understood as an alliance of forces, necessary for mortal beings with limited time and skills. Sociability as generosity exceeds the realm of need and follows directly from our strength of character [fortitudo] because it expresses a positive power to overcome anti-social passions, such as hatred, envy, and the desire for revenge. Spinoza asserts that generous souls resist and overwhelm hostile forces and debilitating affects with wisdom, foresight, and love. The sociability yielded by generosity, then, is not (...) just a form of cooperation we need to survive and produce leisure for study and contemplation. Generosity is not a mere means but a positive expression of freedom, because it is the activity through which a strong soul (and body) transforms enemies into friends. It is not an expression of lack, but of an acquired power that infuses one’s social milieu with empowering love and joy, creating agreements in nature and power where they did not previously exist. Attention to generosity reveals not only that there are social virtues proper to Spinoza’s understanding of freedom but that freedom itself is, by necessity, social. (shrink)

Contributors: Steven Barbone, Laurent Bove, Edwin Curley, Valérie Debuiche, Michael Della Rocca, Simon B. Duffy, Daniel Garber, Pascale Gillot, Céline Hervet, Jonathan Israel, Chantal Jaquet, Mogens Lærke, Jacqueline Lagrée, Martin Lin, Yitzhak Y. Melamed, Pierre-François Moreau, Steven Nadler, Knox Peden, Alison Peterman, Charles Ramond, Michael A. Rosenthal, Pascal Sévérac, Hasana Sharp, Jack Stetter, Ariel Suhamy, Lorenzo Vinciguerra.

Affects are intentional structures of beliefs and desires. Many philosophers have plausibly argued that Spinoza’s theory of ideas is a kind of theory of belief by this time yet this claim has rarely been taken into account when it comes to Spinoza’s theory of affects, which is actually a part of his theory of ideas. This paper shows that if this point is taken seriously when regarding Spinoza’s theory of affects we reach significant results about the fifth part of Ethics. (...) To show this, I shall strive to show that all affects depend on some sort of beliefs by analyzing Spinoza’s theory of affects in terms of his theory of ideas, and in particular an affirmation which an idea naturally involves. From this revelation, we will be able to see that Spinoza’s theory of affects appeared in third and fourth part of Ethics is inconsistent with the fifth part of Ethics in so far as three therapy methods given in the beginning of the fifth part of Ethics are considered. Additionally, and suitably to this assertion, I will also show that arguments by which soundness of these therapy methods are guaranteed seem actually logically invalid. Finally, I will try to revise Spinoza’s therapy methods by taking all errors and core ideas in Spinoza’s theory of affects into consideration. (shrink)

In the last part of Ethics Spinoza introduces the doctrine of the intellectual love of God: God loves himself with an infinite intellectual love. This doctrine has raised one of the most discussed puzzles in Spinoza scholarship: How can God have intellectual love if, as Spinoza says, God is Nature itself? After examining existing.approaches to the puzzle and revealing their failures, I will propose a Neo- Confucian approach to the puzzle. I will compare Spinoza's philosophy with Neo-Confucian philosophy and argue (...) that we can develop a new approach to the puzzle by appealing to the comparison. I conclude that the intellectual love of God can be properly understood from different perspectives. From God's perspective it is understood as the creative power of God. From an individual's perspective it is understood as the essence of this very individual. Moreover, once we combine these two perspectives we can reach what I consider to be the correct interpretation of Spinoza' s view: Given that intuitive knowledge and action are one and the same the intellectual love of God should be comprehended not only as man's final fulfillment of freedom through intuitive knowledge, but also as man's self-cultivation in practice. I maintain that a free man, as Spinoza endeavors to become, is equivalent to a Neo-Confucian sage. (shrink)

Education and Free Will critically assesses and makes use of Spinoza’s insights on human freedom to construe an account of education that is compatible with causal determinism without sacrificing the educational goal of increasing students’ autonomy and self-determination. Offering a thorough investigation into the philosophical position of causal determinism, Dahlbeck discusses Spinoza’s view of self-determination and presents his own suggestions for an education for autonomy from a causal determinist point of view. -/- The book begins by outlining the free will (...) problem in education, before expanding on a philosophical understanding of autonomy and how it is seen as an educational ideal. It considers Spinoza’s determinism and discusses his denial of moral responsibility. Later chapters consider the relationship between causal determinism and autonomy, the educational implications of understanding free will and how free will can be utilised as a valuable fiction in education. -/- This book will be of great interest to academics and postgraduate students in the field of education, especially those with an interest in moral education and philosophy of education. It will also be of interest to those in the fields of philosophy and psychology and specifically those focusing on the free will problem, on Spinoza studies, and on the relation between moral psychology and external influence. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that despite undeniable fundamental differences between Descartes’ and Spinoza’s accounts of human action, there are some striking similarities between their views on right action, moral motivation, and virtue that are usually overlooked. I will argue, first, that both thinkers define virtue in terms of activity or freedom, mutatis mutandis, and thus in terms of actual power of acting. Second, I will claim that both Descartes and Spinoza hold a non-consequentialist approach to virtue, by which human (...) actions are evaluated as virtuous or good on the basis of their motivational forces rather than their consequences. I will show further that both philosophers identify virtue qua free action with the highest good, and thus with that which is to be sought for its own sake and not as a means to anything preferable to it. (shrink)

Spinoza’s philosophy is a philosophy of liberation rather than a philosophy of freedom. Originally and naturally subjected to adversity and servitude, human beings conquer their freedom through political life and thought. The emancipatory perspective that is put into play is based on an ontology that breaks with the classical opposition between freedom and necessity. Rather, the Spinozist construction of freedom dispenses with the notion of “free will”, and subjects it to philosophical review. The freedom that results from the philosophy of (...) immanence is public, a collective lifestyle that establishes the material, social and political conditions for the individual and common power in civil conversation. Spinoza calls democracy the collective existence thus organized, and contrasts it with the «state of solitude». (shrink)

The chapter introduces the function of authority in Spinoza's Theological Political Treatise and Political Treatise.

Against much of the philosophical tradition, Spinoza and Nietzsche defend an understanding of freedom opposed to free will and formulated as an ethical ideal consisting in a transition from a smaller to a greater power of acting. Starting from a shared commitment to necessity and radical immanence, they present freedom as a passage to a greater power of self-determination and self-expression of the body. Nevertheless, the continuities between their power ontologies and their respective commitments to a life of knowledge break (...) down in their discussion of the various possible manifestations of power. I will argue that Nietzsche's distinctive formulation of power as struggle between wills to power enables him to formulate the question of the qualitative dimension of empowerment in a way that is foreign to Spinoza's rational determinism. While acknowledging the profound similarities, I will argue that we must see Nietzsche's discussion of affirmation as the culmination of his disagreement with his predecessor on the topic of freedom and empowerment. (shrink)

This paper examines the coherence of Spinoza’s combined account of freedom, reason, and the affects and its applicability to real humans in the context of the perfectly free man Spinoza discusses towards the end of part 4 of the Ethics. On the standard reading, the perfectly free man forms the model of human nature and thus the goal to which real humans should aspire. A recently proposed non-standard reading, however, posits that the perfectly free man should not be considered the (...) model of human nature. Consolidating FRA into a system of ten theses and outlining their intricate interconnections, I argue that under both the standard and non-standard readings of Spinoza’s perfectly free man, FRA founders when applied to real humans. While it is no big news that FRA may face deep problems when applied to real humans, the paper is innovative: in the specific tensions in FRA it exposes; in the strategy deployed to expose the latter; and in showing that a recent non-standard approach to resolving these tensions is unsuccessful. Depending on the specific reading of FRA that I suggest, my critical conclusions may not apply to every reading of FRA. They nonetheless pose a serious challenge to similar readings prominent within the literature. (shrink)

Spinoza's Ethics, published in 1677, is considered his greatest work and one of history's most influential philosophical treatises. This volume brings established scholars together with new voices to engage with the complex system of philosophy proposed by Spinoza in his masterpiece. Topics including identity, thought, free will, metaphysics, and reason are all addressed, as individual chapters investigate the key themes of the Ethics and combine to offer readers a fresh and thought-provoking view of the work as a whole. Written in (...) a clear and accessible style, the volume sets out cutting-edge research that reflects, challenges, and promotes the most recent scholarly advances in the field of Spinoza studies, tackling old issues and bringing to light new subjects for debate. (shrink)

This chapter will discuss Spinoza’s critique of free will, though our brief study of this topic in the first part of the chapter will aim primarily at preparing us to address the main topic of the chapter, which is Spinoza’s explanation of the reasons which force us to believe in free will. At times, Spinoza seems to come very close to asserting the paradoxical claim that we are not free to avoid belief in free will. In the second part of (...) the chapter I will closely examine Spinoza’s etiological explanation of how we come to form the belief in free will. In the third part, I will raise and respond to a crucial objection to Spinoza’s explanation of the formation of our belief in free will. I will then turn to examine Fichte’s intriguing claim that Spinoza’s position on the issue of free will suffers from an internal contradiction, as evinced in Fichte’s suggestive remark: “Spinoza could not have been convinced of his own philosophy. He could only have thought of it; he could not have believed it [Er konnte seine Philosphie nur denken, nicht sie glauben].”. (shrink)

ABSTRACTWe seem to have a direct experience of our freedom when we act. Many philosophers take this feeling of freedom as evidence that we possess libertarian free will. Spinoza denies that we have free will of any sort, although he admits that we nonetheless feel free. Commentators often attribute to him what I call the ‘Negative Account’ of the feeling: it results from the fact that we are conscious of our actions but ignorant of their causes. I argue that the (...) Negative Account is flawed. The feeling of freedom also depends on a vacillation of the mind. When the mind forms too many incompatible associations, it vacillates between them. When we act, the mind vacillates back and forth between the kinds of actions that we associate with our present mental state. We then mistake this subjective vacillation for an objective feature of ourselves—namely, the power to do otherwise. (shrink)

Spinoza and Education offers a comprehensive investigation into the educational implications of Spinoza’s moral theory. Taking Spinoza’s naturalism as its point of departure, it constructs a considered account of education, taking special care to investigate the educational implications of Spinoza’s psychological egoism. What emerges is a counterintuitive form of education grounded in the egoistic striving of the teacher to persevere and to flourish in existence while still catering to the ethical demands of the students and the greater community. -/- In (...) providing an educational reading of Spinoza’s moral theory, this book sets up a critical dialogue between educational theory and recent studies which highlight the centrality of ethics in Spinoza’s overall philosophy. By placing his work in a contemporary educational context, chapters explore a counterintuitive conception of education as an ethical project, aimed at overcoming the desire to seek short-term satisfaction and troubling the influential concept of the student as consumer. This book also considers how education, from a Spinozistic point of view, may be approached in terms of a kind of cognitive therapy serving to further a more scientifically adequate understanding of the world and aimed at combating prejudices and superstition. -/- Spinoza and Education demonstrates that Spinoza’s moral theory can further an educational ideal, where notions of freedom and self-preservation provide the conceptual core of a coherent philosophy of education. As such, it will appeal to researchers, academics and postgraduate students in the fields of philosophy of education, theory of education, critical thinking, philosophy, ethics, and Spinoza studies. (shrink)

This paper demonstrates that an ethical justification for political resistance can be found in Spinoza’s writings. It establishes that important elements of his ethical analysis of politics entail an ethical imperative to actively resist any attempt on the part of the sovereign to abolish or unduly curtail freedom of thought and expression. It shows that, under such circumstances, active resistance will be in accord with reason: the less it is motivated by any species of hatred; and the more it serves (...) to empower people. Since freedom of thought and expression necessarily involves the freedom to engage in the philosophical critique of prejudices, and the latter can itself function as a form of political resistance, the ethical imperative to preserve libertas philosophandi amounts to an enjoinder to preserve a form of perpetual resistance within the normal functioning of the rationally-ordered state. (shrink)

Spinoza’s moral philosophy is trending. This is the fourth book written in English in six years devoted to various aspects of it; that may not qualify as viral, but it is progress. The volume’s five essays cover moral responsibility, akrasia, moral realism, and Spinoza’s model of human nature: the free man. Hence its subtitle is misleading. There is nothing uniquely contemporary about the issues discussed, as is evident from the essays themselves. Also, the moral problems are not the type one (...) might expect. You will not find an analysis of Spinoza’s position on the moral status of non-human animals, for example. What you will find is an effort to bring Spinoza into contemporary debates. In their introduction... (shrink)

Éric Delassus | : Selon Fabienne Brugère, un point de rencontre existe entre l’éthique spinoziste et les éthiques du care, le care pouvant être envisagé comme une réactualisation du conatus spinoziste. Cet article vise à démontrer que cette convergence peut s’établir à partir d’une éthique narrative inspirée de la pensée de Paul Ricoeur. Cela concerne principalement la perception que l’on peut avoir de soi en tant que corps et esprit, dans la mesure où l’esprit est défini par Baruch Spinoza comme (...) « idée du corps ». L’éthique spinoziste invite à se rendre utile aux autres pour augmenter notre puissance d’être et nous libérer d’une servitude qui n’est pas sans rapport avec la vulnérabilité telle que définie dans les éthiques du care. L’humain.e vulnérable a besoin pour se sentir exister d’avoir une idée cohérente de son corps, et le récit est l’une des voies lui permettant de progresser dans cette direction. Encore faut-il, pour y parvenir, trouver des pourvoyeuses et pourvoyeurs de care disposé.e.s à écouter, aptes à susciter en soi le désir de se raconter. | : According to Fabienne Brugère, there is common ground between Spinoza’s ethics and the ethics of care, which can be regarded as a renewal of the Spinozan concept of ‘conatus.’ This article aims to demonstrate that this form of convergence can be based upon a narrative ethic as inspired by Paul Ricoeur’s thought. It is mainly about how people can perceive themselves both as mind and body, insofar as “mind” is defined by Spinoza as the “idea of the body.” The Spinozan ethic leads us to make ourselves useful to other people in order to expand our capacity to be and to free ourselves from a form of servitude that is somewhat linked to vulnerability as it is defined in the ethics of care. Therefore, vulnerable people each need to develop consistent ideas of their bodies if they wish to feel that they do exist. Narrative is one of the many ways of advancing in that direction. However, vulnerable people should not be alone; they must be accompanied by care providers who have a sympathetic ear and who can arouse in them the desire to tell and share their stories. (shrink)

Doing without Free Will: Spinoza and Contemporary Moral Problems introduces Spinoza into the current discussion of the possibility of morality without free will, as it was he who first accomplished such a task. While his contemporaries reacted with shock to his determinist philosophy, today more people are ready to take seriously Spinoza's moral philosophy, which provides a foundation for our understanding of responsibility, akrasia, and moral values without the need for free will.

In the TTP Spinoza addresses in its full complexity the question of whether a republican theorist, committed to the view that the primary goal of political life is freedom conceived as the absence of slavery or dependence on arbitrary will, has any need for the notion of a right. His answer is designed to draw us away from many of the assumptions that run through the natural law tradition. Rather than accepting that our rights are stable, located in individuals, and (...) absolute, we should be prepared to accept that the only natural right we possess, our power to do what we can to maintain ourselves, is manifested in claims that are fluctuating, collective and come in degrees. The overriding advantage of this outlook is that it directs our attention to the practical business of politics – to the project of creating rights that will secure our freedom. (shrink)

In this essay, I will explore the much neglected relationship between Heidegger and Spinoza—and thus of Heidegger and the modern sense of freedom. The free man, for Spinoza, is one who has not only cultivated the stronger active emotion of acquiescence to the univocal chorus of necessity, but has also learned to disengage external factors which are coincident with such passive emotions—to organise an ‘order of encounters’ as Deleuze describes in his Expressionism. Heidegger, on the contrary, who undertakes a meditation (...) upon ‘Spinozism’ in the context of his 1936 lecture course, Schelling’s Treatise on Freedom, would seem to take issue with Spinoza in his own contention that the one who faces his or her ownmost possibility of death without evasion, is the one who is most free—or, who will have found him or herself in a moment that discloses the necessity of one’s own singular freedom. It will be in the context of this divergence between substance and event that I will argue that Spinoza’s notion of freedom as it consists in the acquiescence to substance is a falsification of human existence for the sake of a hedonistic escapism. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine Spinoza's 'model of human nature' in the Ethics, and especially his notion of the 'free man'. I argue that, contrary to usual interpretations, the free man is not an individual without passions and inadequate ideas but rather an individual who is able consistently to live according to the guidance of reason. Therefore, it is not an impossible and unattainable ideal or incoherent concept, as has often been claimed, but a very realizable goal for the achievement (...) of human well-being. (shrink)

Review of Essays on Spinoza's Ethical Theory edited by MJ Kisner and A Youpa.

Over the last two decades there has been an increasing interest in the influence of medieval Jewish thought upon Spinoza's philosophy. The essays in this volume, by Spinoza specialists and leading scholars in the field of medieval Jewish philosophy, consider the various dimensions of the rich, important, but vastly under-studied relationship between Spinoza and earlier Jewish thinkers. It is the first such collection in any language, and together the essays provide a detailed and extensive analysis of how different elements in (...) Spinoza's metaphysics, epistemology, moral philosophy, and political and religious thought relate to the views of his Jewish philosophical forebears, such as Maimonides, Gersonides, Ibn Ezra, Crescas, and others. The topics addressed include the immortality of the soul, the nature of God, the intellectual love of God, moral luck, the nature of happiness, determinism and free will, the interpretation of Scripture, and the politics of religion. (shrink)

This article reviews the influence of Stoic thought on the development of Spinoza's and Nietzsche's ethics and suggests that although both philosophers follow the Stoics in conceiving of ethics as a therapeutic enterprise that aims at human freedom and flourishing, they part company with Stoicism in refusing to identify flourishing with freedom from the passions. In making this claim, I take issue with the standard view of Spinoza's ethics, according to which the passions figure exclusively as a source of unhappiness (...) and bondage from which we must be liberated. I argue that, in fact, Spinoza anticipates Nietzsche and breaks with the Stoics in offering a more positive assessment of the role of passion in a flourishing life. The reading pursued here takes Spinoza's divergence from the Stoic account of the passions to be a consequence of his insistence on the immanence of human being in nature. I outline Spinoza's and Nietzsche's conception of immanence and suggest that it entails a common understanding of our nature as dynamic power or desire, which is simultaneously expressed as a capacity to act and be acted on, to affect and to be affected. The recognition of the complex relationship between passive and active power requires a revaluation of our vulnerability and openness to what can affect us and leads each philosopher to a consideration of the ways in which the passions might be made to support our striving to increase our power and to realize an essentially limited freedom and precarious flourishing. Copyright. (shrink)

In what follows, I will substantiate the argument that there are at least two senses in which Spinoza’s principles support revolutionary change. I will begin with a quick survey of his concerns with the problem of insurrection. I will proceed to show that if political programs can be called revolutionary, insofar as freedom is their motivation and justification, and insofar as freedom implies an expansion of the scope of the general interest to the whole political body, Spinoza ought to be (...) called a revolutionary. Finally, I will contend that even if he does not praise mass insurrection, he finds its guarantee in the laws of human nature itself, which cannot tolerate tyranny. And, thus, it is in a revolutionary vein that Spinoza cites Seneca repeatedly: violenta imperianemo continuit diu (TTP 5 8, 16 9). (shrink)

It turns out that you can teach an old dog—even a “dead dog,” as Lessing would describe Spinoza—new tricks. In Spinoza and German Idealism, we learn not only how Spinoza influenced the German Idealists, but also how they transformed and gave new life to the key concepts of his system. In this collection of fourteen essays, we see how Kant, Schleiermacher, Herder, Goethe, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and Trendelenburg understood (and misunderstood) Spinoza’s conception of God, intellectual intuition, human freedom, and the (...) relation between the infinite and the finite—to name but a few of the topics treated in these pages—and also how they defined their own philosophical projects in response to Spinoza on those points. .. (shrink)

This paper adopts Deleuze’s reading of Spinoza’s expressionism and pure semiotics to argue that Spinoza’s Ethics offers an alternative notion of freedom of speech that is based on the potentia of the individual. Its aim is to show how freedom of thought is connected to the problem of individuation that connects our mode of being with our power to speak and think. Rather than treating freedom of speech as an enlightened idea that is in opposition to, for example, religious authority, (...) or the suppression of human rights, this paper argues that freedom of speech should be understood by what Spinoza calls ‘an adequate idea’: an idea that explains the cause of its own production. What is to be considered is: who wants this freedom, in what situation, why, what is at stake? No freedom in itself is ever given. This paper argues for speech as an assembled body that is always in connection with other bodies. It is argued that to understand the power and value of the freedom of speech, we should study the praxis of the utterance as an assembled body, its causal dimensions, and its affective immanent relations with other bodies, and other modes of speaking. (shrink)

There can be little doubt that without Spinoza, German Idealism would have been just as impossible as it would have been without Kant. Yet the precise nature of Spinoza's influence on the German Idealists has hardly been studied in detail. This volume of essays by leading scholars sheds light on how the appropriation of Spinoza by Fichte, Schelling and Hegel grew out of the reception of his philosophy by, among others, Lessing, Mendelssohn, Jacobi, Herder, Goethe, Schleiermacher, Maimon and, of course, (...) Kant. The volume thus not only illuminates the history of Spinoza's thought, but also initiates a genuine philosophical dialogue between the ideas of Spinoza and those of the German Idealists. The issues at stake - the value of humanity; the possibility and importance of self-negation; the nature and value of reason and imagination; human freedom; teleology; intuitive knowledge; the nature of God - remain of the highest philosophical importance today. (shrink)

Susan James explores the revolutionary political thought of one of the most radical and creative of modern philosophers, Baruch Spinoza. His Theologico-Political Treatise of 1670 defends religious pluralism, political republicanism, and intellectual freedom. James shows how this work played a crucial role in the development of modern society.

While Spinoza’s political philosophy is often described as liberal, it is not always clear what this label means or whether it is warranted. Calling Spinoza ‘liberal’ implies that he belongs to a historical tradition of political philosophers, who formulated and defended claims, which later became identified as central to political liberalism. Consequently, clarifying how Spinoza is a liberal requires specifying precisely which liberal views he articulated and defended. This paper, first, examines the various ways that commentators have interpreted Spinoza as (...) defending liberal commitments. This examination shows that most commentators describe Spinoza as liberal on the grounds that his politics defends the value of individual political freedom, specifically of speech and thought. The paper, second, considers whether he upholds a claim that is important to contemporary liberalism, what is sometimes called the fundamental liberal principle. The paper concludes that Spinoza does not, which suggests that he does not sit as easily in the liberal tradition as some scholars have suggested. (shrink)