Rosen, Stanley. “Spinoza’s Argument for Political Freedom.” Cardozo L. Rev. 25 (2003): 729-741.

Excerpt:

“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). 1 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 fundamental distinction between the philosophical and the vulgar. Man is necessarily a prey to his passions, which are passive emotions arising from confused and inadequate ideas. 7 An adequate idea of an emotion is no longer a passion.”

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