Spinoza's Argument for Political Freedom
![handle is hein.journals/cdozo25 and id is 745 raw text is: SPINOZA'S ARGUMENT FOR POLITICAL FREEDOM
Stanley Rosen*
It is a striking fact in the history of philosophy that one of the most
notorious advocates of metaphysical determinism should have been the
first great philosopher to present a systematic defense of political
freedom. This defense occurs in Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-
Politicus (1670).' The Tractatus appears at first reading to be what
Stewart Hampshire calls the great liberal conception of toleration and
freedom of thought and a classical liberal argument.2 A closer
examination of the text reveals a different picture.
It cannot be said that Spinoza's metaphysics is congenial to
freedom in any liberal sense of the term. In Spinoza's universe,
freedom is the ability to assert necessity, for no end or purpose beyond
itself. The definition of a free man is given in the section of the Ethics
entitled Of Human Bondage. Man is free to the extent that he has
adequate ideas,3 which reveal the immutable sequences of determining
causes.4 It follows that the soul acts according to fixed laws and is a
sort of spiritual automaton.'5 We imagine that we are free because we
do not understand the causes of our actions.6 The notion of adequate
ideas has important political consequences, since it underlies Spinoza's
* A substantially similar version of this piece has previously been published by Stanley
Rosen in, Spinoza 's Argument for Political Freedom, 13 GIORNALE DI METAFISICA (1958).
1 Hereinafter to be designated as the Tractatus. All quotations have been translated from
BENEDICT DE SPINOZA, 2 OPERA (J. Van Vloten and J.P.N. Land ed., 3d ed. 1882-83)
[hereinafter OPERA].
2 STEWART HAMPSHIRE, SPINOZA, 183, 205 (1951); see also LE'ON BRUNSCHVICG,
SPINOZA ET SES CONTEMPORA1NS 29-30 (1923); R.A. DUFF, SPINOZA'S POLITICAL AND ETHICAL
PHILOSOPHY (1903); FRANK THILLY, Spinoza's Doctrine of the Freedom of Speech (Chronicon
Spinozanum, vol. II, 1923, Hague); LEON ROTH, SPINOZA 7, 15, 33 (Oxford 1929). But see LEO
STRAUSS, PERSECUTION AND THE ART OF WRITING 142-201 (Glencoe 1952); E.E. POWELL,
SPINOZA AND RELIGION 65 (Chapman and Grimes, 1940) (stating a principle of interpretation
which has also been accepted in essence, without committing the present author to Powell's
conclusions concerning Spinoza's reasons for veiling his true feelings about religion); see also
Lambert Velthuysen, epistle XLII, in THE OPERA, supra note 1; Leibniz, Letters to Phillip 1-2,
Notes on Spinoza's Ethics 11-26, and Refutation of Spinoza 175-184, in THE PHILOSOPHICAL
WORKS OF LEIBNIZ (edited by G.M. Duncan) (New Haven 1890).
3 Ethics, IV, 56 scholium.
4 Id. at 1, 6, 25, 31; II, 10, scholium to corollary; II, 35 scholium; V, 18 scholium; see also I,
definition vii; propositions 7, 11, 14 (corollary i), 15, 16 (corollary i).
5 Tractatus de intellectus emendatione at 27.
6 Ethics, II, 35 scholium.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/cdozo25&div=34&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Spinoza's Argument for Political Freedom
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