Research On Spinoza's Thought Of Liberty

In the West, Spinoza is such a philosopher who made a more comprehensive and systematic exposition of liberty thought, running through whose ideology is a main line of the thinking and pursuit of liberty. He considered that in order to acquire the happiness and liberty of human being we must fully understand the nature and the cognitive ability of them and establish an appropriate social order. Through the analysis of Spinoza's concept of liberty, this paper respectively discusses Spinoza's liberty thought in the fields of ethics, psychology, political science, etc.Chapter 1, Spinoza's Definition of liberty. Spinoza gave two definitions about liberty, one is the absolute sense of liberty, which is only applicable to God, the other in a relative sense of liberty, which is applicable to people.Chapter 2, the philosophical basis of Spinoza's thought of liberty-monism. It is based on the inheritance, criticism and transformation of Descartes's substance theory. By changing the substance of thought and the substance of extension in Descartes's philosophy into the attributes of the single substance-God or nature, Spinoza replaced Descartes's dualism with his monism. Monism,which is not only the feature of Spinoza's philosophy, but also the metaphysical foundation of his exposition of the relationship between man and nature, man and society as well as the relationship between people and people, opened the way for his thought of liberty.Chapter 3, the main contents of Spinoza's thought of liberty. Spinoza's thought of liberty involves three aspects-liberty and necessity, liberty and people's self-discipline, liberty and national laws. In his view, in order to achieve happiness and liberty, people must first fully understand the nature, in which there are no miracles and accidental things. There is also no free will in person's mind, any will of which has its own reason. Person's liberty is just to realize that all things are inevitable, only then could people get rid of their emotional state of slavery. And we know that the knowledge of nature necessity relies on human's reason, therefore we must find a sensible way to improve it so as to make mind to understand things successfully and completely. Spinoza considered that the highest virtue of mind lies in the understanding of God, and the best method to understand God is rational intuition. Rational intuition inevitably gives rise to the intellectual love of God, which is the highest moral realm people could acquire through knowledge. Morover, a free country must be set up,where everyone could think and express their opinions freely. Spinoza believed that theology and philosophy is separate from each other, and they have their own scopes respectively. The scope of intellect is truth and wisdom, the scope of theology is piety and obedience. Then, Spinoza began his defense of his liberty of thought and liberty of speech. He considered that only democratic government is the best form of government to be in line with human's nature. The liberty of thought is everyone's inalienable gift and the real purpose of politics is liberty.Chapter 4, the position and influence of Spinoza's thought of liberty in philosophy history. Spinoza's thought of liberty produced an extremely important impact on the subsequent free thinkers.