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Determined to Be Free: The Meaning of Freedom in Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2011

Steven Frankel
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Abstract

The goal of this essay is to offer an alternative account to the view that political freedom and philosophical freedom are consistent, harmonious, and mutually reinforcing. Certainly, freedom is central to Spinoza's political thought, but to understand it properly, we need to explain how it alleviates, rather than encourages, superstition among the nonrational multitude. In light of his belief in the permanency of irrationality and superstition, Spinoza does not hope to expunge illusions from political life. Advocating freedom is an attempt to adapt the facts of the imagination to the needs of our political order and create stability. The belief in freedom—that is, the belief that we are individual actors who decide our actions and determine our fate—is the most powerful and abiding illusion in politics.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 73 , Issue 1 , Winter 2011 , pp. 55 - 76
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2011

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References

1 Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (henceforth TTP), in Spinoza Opera, ed. Carl Gebhardt (Heidelberg: Carl Winters Verlag, 1925), 3:1–267. TTP references are given according to chapter number and Latin page number. I have used Yaffe's, Martin D. outstanding recent translation in Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise, ed. Yaffe, Martin D. (Newburyport: Focus, 2004)Google Scholar, which incorporates the Gebhardt pagination. I have also consulted Curley's, Edwin translation in A Spinoza Reader: The Ethics and Other Works, ed. Curley, E. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994)Google Scholar.

2 See, for example, Leo Strauss: “Spinoza may be said to be the first philosopher who advocated liberal democracy” (Strauss, “Progress or Return? The Contemporary Crisis in Western Civilization,” in An Introduction to Political Philosophy: Ten Essays by Leo Strauss, ed. Gilden, Hilail [Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989]Google Scholar, 254). See also the preface to the English translation of Leo Strauss, Spinoza's Critique of Religion, trans. Sinclair, E. M. (New York: Schocken Books, 1962), 1–6Google Scholar.

3 See, for example, Levene, Nancy, Spinoza's Revelation: Religion, Democracy, and Reason (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004)Google Scholar; Hunter, Graeme, Radical Protestantism in Spinoza's Thought (Surrey: Ashgate, 2005)Google Scholar; Havers, Grant, “Was Spinoza a Liberal?” Political Science Reviewer 36 (2007): 143–74Google Scholar.

4 As Paul Kashap describes it, “the sort of freedom involved in speaking of moral freedom is generally believed to consist of the feeling or awareness that human beings have of being able to choose between alternative ends themselves, without consciousness of any psychological or physical compulsion” (Kashap, Paul, Spinoza and Moral Freedom [Albany: SUNY Press, 1987], 153)Google Scholar.

5 Ethics (henceforth E) Book II, proposition 48. The Latin version of the Ethics is in Spinoza Opera 2:45–308. I have used Edwin Curley's translation in A Spinoza Reader.

6 Epistle 58, in A Spinoza Reader, 267–68 (emphasis in the original). Spinoza argues that freedom means “to exist solely from the necessity of one's nature and to be determined to action by it alone” (E Idef7). A thing is free if its “existence and action are determined exclusively by its own nature; and ‘forced’ if its existence and action are determined by something else, according to a fixed and determinate law. … Thus God's understanding of himself and all things is free because it follows necessarily from his nature alone. So you see that I base freedom not on free decision but on free necessity” (Ep. 58). God is the only fully determined thing and hence the only free thing in the world (see also E IIp7d).

7 E IIIp2s. In his lucid and useful account of Spinoza's determinism, Harold Skulsky shows that “the idea of self-determination is empty. On the other hand, his parable of the slung stone goes to show that nothing is easier than to confuse the absence of compulsion with the absence of necessity. The confusion is ripe for the using. Nothing can serve the legislator better than to build the illusion of ‘freedom’ into the regime of reason we design for a species with so feeble a grip on reason” (Skulsky, Harold, Staring into the Void: Spinoza, the Master of Nihilism [Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2009]Google Scholar, 153; see also chap. 10).

8 Kolakowski, Leszek, The Two Eyes of Spinoza, and Other Essays on Philosophers (South Bend: St. Augustine's Press, 2004)Google Scholar, 5.

9 Kashap, Spinoza and Moral Freedom, 169.

10 Spinoza's discussion of freedom in the Ethics is closely connected with his argument about knowledge. In this sense, there is a gradual ascent toward freedom as we ascend toward knowledge of necessity, not just of particular things and their causes, but of the very essence or nature of particular things. Spinoza claims that by understanding things through their essence, we can have a knowledge that is akin to the “infinite intellect of God” (E IIp40s2; see also Kashap, Spinoza and Moral Freedom, 180–81).

11 As Douglas Den Uyl puts it: freedom does not “have the same meaning in the political writings [as] in the Ethics. ‘Freedom’ in the political writings, for example, does not refer to ‘freedom’ as an activity in books 4 and 5 of the Ethics. One can therefore be free in the political sense and yet be completely passive from an ethical perspective” (Uyl, Den, God, Man, and Well-Being: Spinoza's Modern Humanism [New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2008]Google Scholar, 16; see also 58).

12 Smith, Steven, Spinoza, Liberalism, and the Question of Jewish Identity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997)Google Scholar, 135 (emphasis added).

13 Ibid., 122 (emphasis added).

14 Kolakowski exposes this problem: “when [Spinoza] says that a thing is free, he means simply that its behavior is not determined by external conditions. … But it is unclear whether it is possible at all. God is free in this way, but can this kind of freedom also characterize human existence? … It is hard to see how the view—that our capacity of self-consciousness is not more than passive observation, and cannot be the efficient cause of our physical actions—could be reconciled with the view that our behavior is not, or need not be, externally determined” (The Two Eyes of Spinoza, 13). He refers to these views as the “two eyes” of Spinoza's thought, one directed toward the all-encompassing power of God, and the other toward the finite view of the Cartesian scientist. Kolakowski argues that these two eyes fix their gaze in different directions, and these visions cannot be harmonized. An alternative view is suggested by Kashap, who argues that certain inadequate ideas are “natural”: “This awareness [of freedom] is by no means an illusion, but an authentic idea of perception in the common order of nature” (Spinoza and Moral Freedom, 162). In other words, he argues that our belief in free will does reflect a natural prejudice, or a common way of imagining reality. This opens up a space for subjectivity and political life, which though not true, has an overwhelming reality for most people. Political freedom is an interpretation of the world whereby we use man's consciousness of his freedom of choice to hold him responsible for his actions. In this sense, freedom is a “natural” interpretation of the world by the imagination since it expresses our experience, however inadequate, of nature.

15 Halper, Edward C., “Spinoza on the Political Value of Freedom of Religion,” History of Philosophy Quarterly 21, no. 2 (2004): 167–68Google Scholar. A more radical position was pioneered by Louis Althusser nearly fifty years ago in France, where it has been developed ever since. For a recent example, see Lucchese, Filippo Del, “Democracy, Multitudo and the Third Kind of Knowledge in the Works of Spinoza,” European Journal of Political Theory 8, no. 3 (2009): 339–63Google Scholar. One of the most subtle versions of this view was developed by Alan Donagan over of the course of nearly forty years of work on Spinoza. Donagan refers to Spinoza's view as a “naturalized theology,” by which he means (in Edwin Curley's reconstruction) that “nature has sufficiently many of the characteristics traditionally ascribed to God to make it reasonable to identify nature with God” (Curley, , “Donagan's Spinoza,” Ethics 104, no. 1 [1993]Google Scholar: 117). But even Donagan concedes that Spinoza's work is aimed at “chosen readers” who are open to his mechanical conception of nature. See Donagan, Alan, Spinoza (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989)Google Scholar, 65.

16 TTP XX, 233. Alternatively, we could interpret this statement to mean that, even if most people will not enjoy or benefit from philosophical freedom, it remains essential as a stepping stone for a few extraordinary individuals who require political freedom to achieve intellectual excellence. In turn, when the arts and sciences flourish, everyone benefits from the advances in technology. Such freedom indirectly benefits the entire society. This is a plausible argument but it ignores Spinoza's continual warning that philosophy might undermine the security and stability of the community (TTP III, 33).

17 Political Treatise (henceforth PT) chapter I, paragraph 6. I have used the widely available translation of the PT by Elwes in de Spinoza, Benedict, A Theologico-Political Treatise and A Political Treatise, trans. Elwes, R. H. M. (Mineola: Dover, 1951)Google Scholar, unless otherwise noted.

18 Spinoza rejects equality and refers contemptuously to the overwhelming majority of any community as “the vulgar,” a group characterized by ignorance and superstition. This elitism and contempt for the multitude of irrational citizens clearly conflicts with his advocacy of freedom. This is because inequality for Spinoza refers primarily to intellectual inequality, and such inequality is largely irremediable. Lewis Feuer, observing the contradiction between Spinoza's elitism and his advocacy of equality and freedom, argued that it reflects Spinoza's deep-seated ambivalence about democracy, and ultimately could not be resolved. See Feuer, Lewis, Spinoza and the Rise of Liberalism (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1987)Google Scholar, 103. Steven Smith, on the other hand, argues that such a contradiction, though problematic, is not fatal to Spinoza's argument: “Not for nothing have readers often found it difficult to square Spinoza's defense of democracy with his passionate commitment to the radical autonomy of rational life. Spinoza recognizes that the relationship between the rational individual and the ordinary run of mankind is deeply problematic. He therefore wants to assure his readers that society has nothing to fear from this type of [philosophical] individual while at the same time retaining his emphasis on the utterly solitary character of the philosophic life” (Smith, Spinoza, Liberalism, and the Question, 137).

19 Maimonides, according to Spinoza, attempted to import reason covertly into religion and inadvertently exacerbated superstition within the Jewish community. Spinoza also refers to Aristotelians and Platonists who have done the same within the Christian community.

20 In contrast, practical political men have little knowledge of philosophy or nature; despite this fact, they have been far more successful at managing public affairs. Spinoza's point is not that the theoretical perspective, or reason, is worthless. To the contrary, such understanding as provided by philosophy helps us to avoid the errors of the imagination by analyzing human behavior, including vice, dispassionately as “natural phenomena following nature's general laws” (E III, preface). But such knowledge, while it may lead to the salvation of philosophers, is no substitute for the practical experience of statesmen who understand how to deal effectively with the imagination.

21 PT I, 5 and I, 1. The translation here is by Samuel Shirley, in Spinoza, Baruch, Political Treatise, ed. Uyl, Douglas Den, Barbone, Steven, and Rice, Lee (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2000)Google Scholar.

22 Douglas Den Uyl, responding to Smith's claim that democracy fosters rationality, makes a similar point: “Political action is never active in Spinoza's sense, and the effort to make it such carries with it confusions that can translate into social conflict. Politics for Spinoza has a simple limited function that in itself has nothing to do with perfection, activity, or blessedness. … The best we could say is that ‘democracy’ does not contradict the perfected active life—not that it fosters it. To foster it would mean we would have some clear conception of how to bring activity about through political means” (God, Man, and Well Being, 12–13).

23 See Mignini, F., “Theology as the Work and Instrument of Fortune,” in Spinoza's Political and Theological Thought, ed. De Deugd, C. (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1984)Google Scholar, 130. Mignini argues that reason can never have very much control over the passions and therefore religion is always necessary, even for rational men: “the imagination is the instrument and impassable limit of fortune; if it is founded upon the relation between the human body and other bodies, as the representative structure of affectiones, one can understand why Spinoza affirmed that reason, considered as true knowledge, has no power of the imagination and can do nothing against the course of fortune and the emotions which it produces” (ibid.). See also Wolfgang Bartuschat, “The Ontological Basis of Spinoza's Theory of Politics,” in the same volume. Bartuschat argues that, for Spinoza, the state “fits into an ontological structure which is independent of all human projects, without being based on a knowledge of this ontological structure” (35).

24 Spinoza's concern with relieving the misery of the multitude is revealed not so much in combating superstition but rather in preserving religious superstitions and dogmas which are “a great source of comfort to those who cannot exert much power by reason” (TTP XV, 176).

25 “Those who long without measure for uncertain things are very addicted to every kind of superstition; and all beg for divine help with prayers and effeminate tears—mostly when they're caught in dangers and unable to be of help to themselves—and call human wisdom vain and reason blind (since it is unable to show the certain way to the vain things that they long for)” (TTP preface, xvi).

26 See my “Politics and Rhetoric: The Intended Audience of Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus,” Review of Metaphysics 52, no. 4 (1999): 897–924Google Scholar.

27 This account in chapter XVI is natural in the sense that it applies universally to all men without, Spinoza says pointedly, taking into account the claims of revelation or theology.

28 The pursuit of self-preservation is a passion which is connected closely with the imagination: I feel an urge to preserve myself and I imagine that I am free to pursue those things which I believe will enhance my self-preservation. “Each deems that he alone knows everything, and wants everything to be modified on the basis of his own mental cast, and figures something is equitable or inequitable … insofar as he judges it to fall to his profit or harm” (TTP XVII, 193). Spinoza's account of human action is developed in E III, especially propositions 28–39. For a more detailed commentary, see Skulsky, Staring into the Void, 121–29.

29 Den Uyl, God, Man, and Well-Being, 108.

30 As we shall see, theocracy is a perpetual possibility in political life because it remains the most effective means for convincing the multitude of the superiority of a few.

31 Some readers, like Nietzsche, suspect the sincerity of Spinoza's claim here and point out that the wise, like everyone else, are concerned first and foremost with their own preservation. As such, they are willing to employ any means—including deception—to secure it. “Just as the wise man has highest right to do everything that reason dictates, or to live on the basis of the laws of reason, so also he who is ignorant and weak-spirited has the highest right to everything that the appetite dictates, or to live on the basis of the laws of appetite” (TTP XVI, 180). Clearly Spinoza does admit that deception is, at times, necessary and sanctioned by nature herself: whatever an individual perceives is useful to himself, he “is permitted to seek and to take for himself by the highest right, whether by force, ruse, prayers, or any other means” (TTP XVI, 180; see Skulsky, Staring into the Void, 128–32). “Everyone has by nature a right to act deceitfully, and to break his compacts, unless he be restrained by the hope of some greater good, or the fear of some greater evil” (TTP XVI, 182). See E IVp18. Also see Donagan, Spinoza, 164.

32 In lieu of intellectual or moral virtue, Spinoza proposes that the domain of politics concern itself with subrational goods that all men can appreciate, particularly bodily health and security. These lower goods are not unreasonable, even if they neglect intellectual and moral perfection, and have the further advantage of promoting the stability of the community (see TTP III, 33–34). The pursuit of bodily well-being, when combined with the belief in freedom, does not undermine reason even while it accepts the intractability of superstition.

33 “Ordinary people have found no stronger proof of God's providence and rule than that based on the ignorance of causes. This shows clearly that they have no knowledge at all of the nature of God's will, and that they have attached a human will to him, i.e., a will really distinct from the intellect. I think this misconception has been the sole cause of superstition” (Appendix Containing Metaphysical Thoughts, Part II, chap. 7, in Spinoza Opera 1:261).

34 In other words, he wishes to challenge the authority of the Bible in order to restore it selectively. Elsewhere I have shown how the paradoxical strategy is meant to work by enlisting a new cadre of scholarly theologians to check the spread of religious superstition. See “Spinoza's Response to Maimonides: A Practical Strategy for Resolving the Tension between Reason and Revelation,” International Philosophical Quarterly 45, no. 3 (2005): 309–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 We should note that Spinoza does not rule out “the Koran or dramatic fables of the poets” from the lists of texts which may have a salutary effect on the mores of society (TTP V, 64). Nevertheless, he is quite critical of the Ottoman Empire and Islam for enslaving its subjects. Spinoza's observation about the Western tradition is historical, not prescriptive.

36 Spinoza uses the expression “God is equally gracious to all” ironically throughout the TTP. It could mean that God truly cares about our fate or, to the contrary, God is equally indifferent to the fate of all individuals. See Strauss, Leo, Persecution and the Art of Writing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988)Google Scholar, 171. Paradoxically, our belief in freedom, in an undetermined realm where we can exercise our power and choice, actually weakens our power over nature because it subjects us to any number of false interpretations of nature. For more details on this theology of freedom, see my “Spinoza's Liberal Theology: A Practical Solution to the Quarrel between Religion and Revelation,” Archiv für Geshichte der Philosophie 84 (2002): 273–96Google Scholar. See also Gildin, Hilail, “Notes on Spinoza's Critique of Religion,” in The Philosophy of Baruch Spinoza, ed. Kennington, Richard (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1980), 155–71Google Scholar.

37 “Faith,” as Spinoza says, “does not require truth so much as piety, and it is not pious and salutary except by reason of obedience” (TTP XIV, 166).

38 TTP VII, 99. When describing intellectual perfection, Spinoza notes that for most people the highest good is bodily pleasure, a mistake that distorts their view of reason: “The worldling cannot understand these things, they appear foolishness to him, because he has too meager a knowledge of God, and also because in this highest good he can discover nothing which he can touch or eat, or which affects the fleshly appetites wherein he chiefly delights, for it consists solely in thought and purely in the mind” (TTP IV, 46).

39 Democracy is based on reason in the sense that it is the most effective strategy for securing the well-being of the entire community, but not because it makes men more rational. The piety which embraces freedom is the most stable and least threatening superstition. This is why all “honorable men” (honestos)—philosophers and nonphilosophers alike—will accept the dogmas of universal faith (TTP XIV, 166; see also E IV, appendix). By conceding the essential teachings of the Bible, the philosopher avoids the reputation for being dishonorable, an all-too-common fate, and gains the power to pursue philosophy in relative safety and security. Moreover, conceding such religious claims in no way restricts the philosopher's own exercise of reason since he is free to interpret the dogmas according to his intellectual capacity. As Alan Donagan explains, Spinoza shows us how a “naturalized theology” allows us to move easily between the terms “nature” or “substance” and “God” without compromising the demands of reason (Donagan, Spinoza, esp. chaps. 4–6). In short, philosophers must sacrifice their hope of making the community more rational and with it their authority in the community, but at least such actions are consistent with their well-being (see E IVp18). For an analysis of “ad captum vulgi loqui” see Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing, 178–93.

40 Compare this with Hobbes's Leviathan: “For men measure, not only other men, but all other things, by themselves: and because they find themselves subject after motion to pain and lassitude, think everything else grows weary of motion, and seeks repose of its own accord; little considering whether it be not some other motion wherein that desire of rest they find in themselves consisteth” (Leviathan, chap. 2). For Hobbes, common sense is a poor point of departure for science and philosophy.

41 Spinoza writes: “You ask how I differ from Hobbes in politics. The difference is that I, for my part, maintain natural right intact, and claim that the sovereign's right over the subject in any civil society does not exceed the measure of his power over the subject. This is always the case in the state of nature” (Epistle 50, in Spinoza, Baruch, The Letters, ed. Barbone, Steven et al. [Indianapolis: Hackett, 1995]Google Scholar, 258). Regarding this last point, Skulsky adds: “And the state of nature is always the case. To put the main point delicately, the state of nature survives the social contract in Spinoza, allowing the sovereign no more or less right than the power ceded to him by the parties to the contract. To put the point less delicately, inside and outside civil society, might makes right” (Skulsky, Staring into the Void, 133).

42 Den Uyl shows that Spinoza “conceives political society to be a dynamic process of individual interactions” (Uyl, Douglas Den, Power, State, and Freedom [Assen, Netherlands: Van Gorcum, 1983]Google Scholar, 67). Our account follows Den Uyl's explanation of collective power, especially the relation between political institutions and individual conatus.

43 Steven Barbone and Lee Rice, introduction to Political Treatise, 16–17. In chap. XVII of the TTP, Spinoza links an individual's potentia to his essence.

44 See Curley, Edwin, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 65 (1991–1992)Google Scholar: 41.

45 “We cannot without great impropriety call a rational life obedience” (PT II, 20).