Spinoza denies an uncaused faculty of will. A thing is free insofar as its activity follows from its own nature, rather than being externally determined. Human freedom is consequently a matter of more adequate understanding and activity within nature. Turning a passion into an understood affection changes our relation to it; freedom does not require suspending the causal order.
Works or evidence:Ethics I definition 7 and proposition 29; II proposition 48; V proposition 3.
Spinoza wrote after the Dutch Republic's religious conflicts and scientific transformations, drawing on Cartesian vocabulary while confronting questions of scriptural authority and civic liberty.
Key ideas
One substance
God or Nature is the single infinite substance of which finite things are modes, rather than a transcendent creator outside the world.
Freedom through understanding
Human liberation involves adequate ideas and active affects that lessen passive bondage to confused causal forces.
Legacy
His work influenced Enlightenment debates, biblical criticism, German idealism, political theory, and modern naturalism, while provoking condemnation in his own lifetime.