| John Locke is the forefather of the doctrine of western freedom, whose theory of freedom is embodied in his thoughts of ontology and epistemology, ethics and politics. As"Moses"of the western freedom, Spinoza loved freedom and hated enslavement bitterly in his all life, and his thoughts on freedom are abundant. Locke and Spinoza discussed freedom from ontological and epistemological, ethical and political levels, and established their own comprehensive views of liberalism. Therefore, the study of their theories of freedom will contribute to comprehend the changes of the meaning of freedom from ancient to now. The comparative study between Locke's and Spinoza's theories of freedom will be taken from following three levels:ontological and epistemological ,ethical, and political. The comparison could be beneficial for us to deeply understand their theories of freedom and look for some new path to freedom by the guild of the great thinkers.This paper is composed of five parts with a preface. In Part one, the author generally introduces Locke's and Spinoza's theories of freedom from their ontology, epistemology, ethics and politics.From Part two to Part four, the paper will compares the Locke's theory of freedom to Spinoza's, which is the main part of this paper. In Part two, the author will take a comparison between Locke's theory of freedom and Spinoza's in the ontological and epistemological levels. There are similarities and differences in their understanding of"freedom"and the relations between freedom and necessity.In Part three, the author will take a comparison on their viewpoints of freedom in the ethical aspect. There is a common place between them that both thinkers understood the role of reason in realizing freedom, and a difference between them that is the matter of end-result of freedom: Locke thought that political freedom is most important to man, but Spinoza thought ethical freedom is.In Part four, the author will take a comparison on their viewpoints of freedom in the political aspect. There is a common place between them that both thinkers pointed out the role of law to guarantee freedom, and put forward the matters of"the natural situation"and the social contract. There is a difference between them that Locke maintained that the limit of law to freedom is only to individual outer actions, and Spinoza maintained that the limit of law to freedom is not only to individual outer actions but also will be transformed into inner conscience.In Part five namely the last part, the paper discusses the influences Locke's and Spinoza's viewpoints of freedom on modern western political theories and practices. In addition, the author makes a concise comment on Locke's and Spinoza's viewpoints of freedom. |
