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The Question of Freedom

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The Question of Freedom

What I shall continue with is a discussion of the relevance of Spinoza in understanding freedom. Now while I may have been fundamentally opposed to Spinoza’s claim that he was offering freedom in my previous papers, I feel that I am better equipped to speak about this issue now in terms of its relevance.

Spinoza’s idea of freedom is indeed relevant to philosophy today, and to crack a bad pun, he is a determinate and necessary part of understanding freedom in the modern world. Freedom is not defined by free will; in fact Proposition 32 strictly denies the existence of such a thing “Will cannot be called a free cause, but only a necessary cause.”(Spinoza, 235), or some kind of random indeterminate impulse to do something, freedom is defined by a strict adherence to the necessity of the actions dictated by the nature of something. This conceptualization of freedom is important because, while that most beloved idea of freewill remains entrenched in the minds of men, Spinoza offers not only a complete rejection of this idea, but offers an alternative idea of freedom without it. For Spinoza there is no freedom in random acts, because random acts diverge from the true nature of the singularity in question. Freedom only arises when a singularity behaves according to its nature. This does not mean that it cannot make decisions; rather it means that it can make decisions that are now in accordance with its nature. This concept of freedom removes the need

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