Political Studies (1993), XLI, 2 8 4 2 9 6

Spinoza on Positive Freedom

WEST*
DAVID
Australian National University

Much of the liberal tradition in political thought has shared Isaiah Berlins fears about
all positive concepts of liberty. Indeed these fears seem justified in relation to Marx and
Hegel. However, the danger of a tyrannical paternalism derives not from the concept
of positive freedom itself but from the reification of the self associated with
rationalism. Spinozas monism and his notion of individual conatus make any
rationalist reification of the self implausible. Consequently his account of positive
freedom enriches rather than undermines the commitment to negative liberty, whilst
also helping to explain his ability to reconcile liberal toleration with the strikingly
Hobbesian premises of his political philosophy.

Isaiah Berlins influential attack on the positive concept of liberty has set much of
the tone for political thought within the liberal tradition. Liberal theorists have
echoed the warnings about any account which sees freedom as the expression of
the rational or true self, as the fulfilment of the real or authentic interests
rather than the actual preferences of the agent. By and large these theorists have
shared Berlins fear that by a monstrous impersonation a positive notion of
freedom would encourage that particularly insidious form of paternalism which
views coercion as the essential means to true freedom. Paternalistic coercion
forces me to act according to my true self, according to the dictates ofmy real will,
and thereby allegedly frees me from the tyranny of the misguided and irrational
promptings of my actual will. Coercion can make me truly free. Berlin attributes
what he diagnoses as the rationalist theory of politics underlying positive
accounts of freedom to such diverse figures as Plato, Spinoza, Rousseau, Kant,
Hegel, Fichte, Comte and even Locke. Bentham and Constant figure as lonely
representatives of that tradition of liberalism satisfied with the more modest but
less dangerous ideal of negative liberty. Bentham is celebrated for recognising
that freedom also involves the freedom to do wrong, to behave in ways which
other people, especially people in authority, may regard as irrational or even evil
for, in Benthams words, Is not liberty to do evil, liberty? If not, what is it?2
Only the tradition of negative liberty recognises that virtue is not equivalent to
knowledge, that the ends of all rational beings may not fit into a single
universal, harmonious pattern, that there is an irreducible plurality of ultimate
* 1 would like to thank all those people who offered comments on an earlier draft of this paper. in
particular David Boucher. Geoffrey Brennan, Moira Gatens, Philip Pettit and Glenn Worthington.
Isaiah Berlin. Two Concepts of Liberty in Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford, Oxford University
Press, 1969),p. 151.
Cited by Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty, p. 148, (footnote).

0 Political Studies Association 1993. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley

Road, Oxford OX4 IJF, UK a n d 238 Main Street. MA 02142, USA.
 Debate 285

values and ways of life and that, therefore, people must be allowed to pursue
whatever goals and preferences they may happen to have, however much we
might disapprove of them.3
Against Berlins attack on positive freedom and against the substance, though
perhaps not the spirit, of the tradition of negative liberty, I shall argue that
Berlins account is only partly justified. It is largely justified in the case of both
Hegel and Marx who can with some justice be interpreted as philosophers of
objective reason. Their basic principles may indeed lead to unpalatable
conclusions. By contrast, Spinozas account of human freedom differs in two
crucial respects from the syndrome identified by Berlin. In the first place,
Spinozas metaphysical monism and his account of individual conatus render
implausible the rationalist assumption of a single, correct way of life. Secondly,
the account of positive freedom which Spinoza builds on this metaphysical
foundation does not encourage the despotic impersonation which so worries
Berlin.4 On the contrary, this central feature of Spinozas philosophy explains,
at least in part, his ability to reconcile a defence of liberal toleration with the
explicitly Hobbesian premisses of his political philosophy.

Hegel, Marx and the Reification of Positive Freedom

In common with much twentieth-century political thought it is the double
trauma of fascism and Stalinist communism which forms the implicit backdrop
for Berlins strictures on positive freedom. He observes that socialized forms of
this doctrine of freedom are at the heart of many of the nationalist, Marxist,
authoritarian, and totalitarian creeds of our day.5 He presumably refers to the
same ideologies when he remarks that the tendency to preserve our absolute
categories or ideals at the expense of human lives is an attitude found in equal
measure on the right and left wings in our days.6 Indeed, Berlins diagnosis of
the dangers of positive freedom can be applied with reasonable success to these
creeds. In what follows, I shall confine my remarks to Hegel and the problematic
relationship of Marxism and liberty.
Berlin describes a series of stages in the evolution of a fully-fledged and
insidious concept of positive freedom. As he admits, his initial definition of
positive freedom is not too distant from the notion of negative freedom: The
positive sense of the word liberty derives from the wish on the part of the
individual to be his own master. The relevant notion of positive freedom is the
result of the transition, by what Berlin describes as an independent momentum,
to a much stronger notion. From the experience of liberating myself from
spiritual slavery, or slavery to nature I become aware of a higher nature, a self

Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty, p. 154.

In this respect Spinoza differs from Kant. According to Kant also we cannot be coerced to be
good, because for people to act in the right way involves them knowing why they ought to do so,
which nobody could do for, or on behalf of anyone else (Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty, p. 152).
Nevertheless, according to Berlin, the Kantian legislator will almost inevitably assume that anyone
who opposes what is evidently a rational law is pro tanto irrational and must be disciplined for his or
her own sake. I shall not discuss the force of this claim against Kant. My concern here is to argue that
Spinozas philosophy and, in particular, his ethics and his philosophy of mind, do not allow the same
assumption.
Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty, p. 144.
Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty, p. 171.
Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty, p. 13 1.
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286 Debate

which calculates and aims at what will satisfy it in the long run, a real, or
ideal, or autonomous self which is contrasted with irrational impulse,
uncontrolled desires, my lower nature, the pursuit of immediate pleasures, my
empirical or heteronomous self, swept by every gust of desire and
passion. This catalogue of terms serves to identify a distinctively positive
notion of freedom. Negative freedom exists when we are able to act according to
our will. Positive freedom requires beyond this that the will itself is formed
autonomously. If what I want is the product either of external interference or
subjective incapacity then I cease to be truly my own master. However, Berlin
goes on to describe a further and more sinister transition. Paternalistic actions
may, Berlin admits, sometimes be justified. However, the paternalist is likely to
take excessive liberties, if he can plausibly claim that his actions are not only
really in my interests but actually willed by me, because they correspond to the
real wishes of my true self. In other words if it is my good, then I am not being
coerced, for I have willed it, whether I know this or not, and am free - or truly
free. This transition is particularly insidious when the real self is understood as
a collective entity identified as being the true self which, by imposing its
collective, or organic, single will upon its recalcitrant members, achieves its
own, and, therefore, their, higher freedom. This collective entity may take a
variety of forms - a tribe, a race, a church, a state.* It is this monstrous
impersonation, Berlin claims, which is at the heart of all political theories of self-
realization and which is implicated in the tyrannical regimes of fascism and
Stalini~m.~
Indeed, something like this absorption of the individual into an organic
collective is perpetrated by the main targets of Berlins criticism, the Hegelians.
At the heart of what has been called the Hegelian turn in philosophy is an account
of the social constitution of the individual which underlies Hegels notion of
positive freedom. The individuals impulses and inclinations are understood not
as given prior to society but rather as formed or constituted within it. This fact
allows the theoretical reconciliation of universal and particular, individual and
society, inclination and morality. The moral or rational will can be conceived as
something not necessarily opposed to and imposed upon a pre- or asocial
individual nature, but rather as a rationalization of inclinations which itself
produces the individual. The will, in Hegels words, is particularity reflected into
itself and so brought back to universality, i.e. it is indi~iduality.~ In acting
Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty, p. 132.
As Berlin describes it the distinction between negative and positivefreedom does not, of course,
correspond to the distinction between negative and positive rights. Positive rights are generally held
to support claims to material resources, whereas negative rights simply require the non-intervention
of others. Thus a negarive right to life implies a duty on the part of others not to murder, whereas a
positive right to life implies a claim to resources in the form of food, shelter and so on. The distinction
between negative and positive rights is at issue in the well-worn argument between libertarians and
social liberals. Libertarians are satisfied with the strictly negative liberty secured by negative rights,
for example the liberty defended by Nozicks minimal state. On the other hand, social liberals and
liberal socialists think that genuine rights (to free speech, access to the law, equal opportunity and so
on) must be positive rights. They involve resources and therefore imply measures of welfare and
redistribution. In other words, they argue that even negative liberties can only be secured by means of
positive rights. The significant point here is that both positive and negative rights may be involved in
the protection of negative freedoms.
lo Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty, p. 134.

I Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty, p. 132.

Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty, p. 132.

Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty, pp. 1 3 3 4 .
lo G. W. F. Hegel. The Philosophy of Righr (Oxford, Ciarendon Press. 1952), p. 23.

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 Debate 287

according to the dictates of this rational will, the individual both conforms to the
ethical demands of the community and fulfils her true self, achieving the positive
freedom of concrete self-realisation rather than the abstract and, in Hegels
terms, merely negative freedom of Kantian autonomy.
However the Hegelian solution is flawed. Against Kants transcendentalism,
Hegel maintains that there can be no critical vantage point outside of society, no
abstractly rational and universal morality (Moralitiit) in terms of which a
society might be criticised. Rather the individual must rely on ethical life
(Sittlichkeit)or the concrete values of a particular community. However Hegel is
calm about the absence of transcendental values, only because existing society is
identified as an episode within a predetermined dialectic of spirit, a stage in the
unfolding history of human self-development. As this dialectic is unique - all
societies are found a place in the series as either higher or lower forms - the only
position from which existing society can be criticised is a later stage. The debate
between left and right Hegelians arises from the obvious question which
remains. Should existing society be understood as essentially the last or as only
the latest stage of the dialectic? With the right Hegelian solution the individual is
effectively absorbed into an organic community conceived as the culmination of
history. Far from society being judged in terms of its usefulness for its members,
individuals find their true fulfilment, their positive freedom, only by playing their
part within society. Because the developmental logic of cultural forms is also an
ideal or intellectual one, individuals only have significance as representatives of
ideas or of the conflicts between ideas. The refractory material of the particular
human individual, the material basis for difference, is left behind. The
suppression of individuality which Berlin attributes to Hegelian worshippers of
the state is at hand.I5
The absorption of the individual into the history of an idealized community is,
in a different way, also at the heart of the sacrifice of negative freedom perpetrated
by Marxism, though this time on the left Hegelian assumption that present
society will inevitably be replaced by a higher one, a later stage in the dialectic.
Marx provides an at least partially convincing critique of Hegels philosophy of
right. The apparently noble but abstract ideals of bourgeoisjustice or right
only serve to mask the exploitative realities of civil society. Bourgeois principles
of justice simply regulate and legitimise the antagonistic relations of capitalist
civil society, diverting attention from the necessary transition to a higher form of
society where these relations would no longer prevail. A just society is inferior to
a society where the scarcity and selfishness which render justice necessary
(Humes circumstances of justice) have been abolished.I6However the initially
attractive utopian vision implicit in Marxs critique of capitalist alienation is
soon overwhelmed in the subsequent development of historical materialism. The
consequentialism of most of its later exponents, their hard- headed view that the
end justifies the means, is fatally reinforced by absolute confidence in the
imminence of communism. The dangers are only too apparent in some of the

Is The unpalatable conservatism of Roger Scruton is a contemporary manifestation of an

analogous tendency. See his The Meaning of Conservatism (London & New York, Penguin Books,
1980).
l6 For a clear discussion of Marxs critique of bourgeois right, see S. Lukes, Marxism and Morality

(Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1987). On the circumstances of justice see Hume, A Treatise of
Human Nature, (ed.) L. A. Selby-Bigge (Oxford,Clarendon Press, 1888), pp. 486ff.Compare Michael
Sandels parallel critique of Rawls in Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press, 1982), esp. ch. 1.
10Political Studies Association. 1993.
288 Debate

declarations of central figures in the Marxist tradition. Trotsky, for example,

asserts that that is permissible . . . which really leads to the liberation of
mankind and that no proletarian revolution, however mature, could avoid
ruthlessness and violence. With a favourable outcome guaranteed, there is
little danger that the revolution might be corrupted nor any real need for the
movement to engage in the battle for intellectual and moral leadership. The
absorption of the individual into the organic community is exacerbated by
historical prophecy.
In fact, however, the syndrome which Berlin attributes to the positive
conception of freedom can more usefully be analysed as three distinct claims.
What I shall call the thesis ofpositivefreedom refers to the claim that the freedom
to do ones will does not guarantee the freedom of that will or the authenticity of
ones wants. Negative freedom may not amount to real or genuine freedom but
this claim must be distinguished from what might be called the thesis ofthe reified
self. The self is reified to the extent that it is regarded as an object of knowledge
which can be known, in principle, as well or better by a person other than that
self. This thesis is implied by any view which abolishes the privileged status of
subjective preferences. There are several possible versions of the reification thesis.
The thesis o f t h e social self identifies the true or authentic self with a social or
collective entity (a tribe, a race, a church, a state). Once this identification has
been made it becomes plausible to suppose that the true interests of the members
of the organically conceived society are more reliably ascertained by the
philosophical observer, the leader or the priest, by the revolutionary hero or the
party intellectual. It is this version of the reification thesis which can most
appropriately be attributed to Hegel and Marx. Of course, other versions are
possible, for example, religious theories of the soul, the Kantian postulate of a
noumenal rationality or the naturalistic appeal to a biologically defined
normality.
Arguably, what is significant in each case is that the true self is identified in
such a way that the views of someone other than that self become authoritative.
The rational self can be understood more adequately by the moralist or the
legislator, the soul by the theologian or priest, biological normality by the natural
scientist. The member of the organic collectivity can only be truly free with the
help of a strictly imposed discipline or sense of duty, or in a state of subjection to
the dictates of a charismatic leader. Against Berlin, I would suggest that the chief
danger derives from this pretension to a knowledge of someones interests or self
or will more adequate than that persons self-knowledge. Berlins monstrous
impersonation arises from the reijication of the real self and its interests, not
from the thesis of positive freedom alone. In fact, as we shall see, considered by
itself the thesis of positive freedom might equally well be taken to discourage
rather than to imply a totalitarian outcome. This outcome is not a necessary
consequence of the thesis of positive freedom as such.

Spinoza: The Basis for an Alternative Account of Positive Freedom

What seems inadequate, then, about Berlins presentation is the implication that
any positive conception of freedom involves a potentially tyrannical reification of
I In Their Morals and Ours. cited by Lukes, Marxism and Morality, Q . 1 19.
Cited in Lukes, Marxism and Morality, Q. 114.
l9 The Marxism of Antonio Gramsci obviously has very different implications.
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 Debate 289

the self. Positive freedom may, on the contrary, be defined so as to enrich rather
than to undermine the negative freedoms prized by the liberal tradition. It may be
possible to provide an account of positive freedom which does not rely on a
reified view of the self. Spinoza, in particular, should be rescued from Berlins
global condemnation of all rationalist theories of politics. He is especially
interesting because he provides an early defence of toleration but on premisses
which are very close to those of Hobbes. I shall suggest that it is Spinozas
particular conception of positive freedom which allows him to avoid the
authoritarian conclusions to which these premisses have often been taken to lead.
Spinozas characterization of government, or the right of supreme
authorities, is evidently influenced by Hobbes. The natural right of every
individual thing extends as far as its power.20There is no moral restraint on the
power or right of the individual prior to the contract which founds the state, for
wrong-doing cannot be conceived of, but under dominion.21For Spinoza:

the law and ordinance of nature, under which all men are born, and for the
most part live, forbids nothing but what no one wishes or is able to do, and is
not opposed to strifes, hatred, anger, treachery, or, in general, anything that
appetites suggest.

Spinozas realist account is close to Hobbes description of the right of nature

as the Liberty each man hath, to use his own power, as he will himselfe, for the
preservation of his own Nature; that is to say, of his own Life; and consequently,
of doing any thing, which in his own Judgement, and Reason, hee shall conceive
to be the aptest means there~nto.~
Spinoza also understands the origin of dominion in terms of a founding
contract. The fear and anxiety which would infect life in the state of nature, the
impossibility of an individuals maintaining self-defence when he is overcome
daily by sleep, often by disease or mental infirmity, and in the end by old age
explain the origin of the commonwealth. The natural right of the isolated
individual could never be made good in the state of nature and exists, therefore,
in opinion rather than fact. It finds its natural expression in a form of social
contract:

And so our conclusion is, that that natural right, which is special to the
human race, can hardly be conceived, except where men have general rights,
and combine to defend the possession of the lands they inhabit and cultivate,
to protect themselves, to repel all violence, and to live according to the
general judgment of all. For. . . the more there are that combine together, the
more right they collectively possess.25

Furthermore, the upshot of this very Hobbesian derivation of the state shares
other features with Hobbes account. The subjects duty to obey the dictates of

Benedict de Spinoza, A Political Treatise in A Theologico-Political Treatise and A Political

Treatise. translated with an Introduction by R. H. M. Elwes (New York, Dover Publications, 1951),
I1 4, p. 292.
SDinoza. PoliticalTreatise, I1 19, P.298.
Spinoza, Political Treatise, I1 8, p 294.
* Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (London, Dent, 1973). p. 66.
Spinoza, Political Treatise, I11 11, p. 306.
*Spinoza, PoliticalTreatise, I1 15, pp. 296-7.
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290 Debare

the sovereign appears equally absolute, for however iniquitous the subject may
think the commonwealths decisions, he is none the less bound to execute
them.26 Also, although democracy is favoured as the perfectly absolute
dominion, the identification of power and right has other unpalatable
consequences. Spinoza excludes from citizenship women and slaves who are
under the authority of men and masters as well as children and wards who are
under the authority of parents and guardians. The subordinate position of
women is justified by their natural subjection to the authority of men as a result of
their weakness. The equation of right with power has the seemingly familiar
implication that power is always right.
However, Spinoza undoubtedly has a much more liberal outcome in mind. The
individual justly cedes the right of free action, though not of free reason and
judgment:

No, the object of government is not to change men from rational beings into
beasts or puppets, but to enable them to develop their minds and bodies in
security, and to employ their reason unshackled . . . In fact the true aim of
government is liberty.

Spinoza also excludes something like Mills private sphere from the legitimate
scope of the rule of law. The law should not seek to interfere with those areas of
life where the harm caused by the interference of law would be likely to outweigh
the benefits. For (H)e who seeks to regulate everything by law, is more likely to
arouse vices than to reform them.29By contrast, according to Hobbes account
the sovereign has the absolute right of life or death over his subjects, though by
allowing him to kill me, I am not bound to kill my selfe when he commands me.30
Apart from this and a few other not very reassuring concessions (the right to
refuse to serve in the army without Injustice though his Soveraign have Right
enough to punish his refusall with death) other liberties, for Hobbes, depend on
the Silence of the Law.3We are only at liberty to do those things which the law
does not expressly forbid. The law is not constrained by any system of natural
right^.'^
What enables Spinoza to avoid the authoritarian conclusions to which
Hobbes similar premises so swiftly and surely seem to lead? The crucial
difference derives from Spinozas positive conception of freedom and the related
metaphysical account of the individual. In Spinozas system, human beings are
unequivocally part of nature, a realm governed exclusively by cause and effect.
Nature is also conceived monistically. Mind and body are equally basic and
fundamental attributes or aspects of the one substance. This dual aspect theory
of mind and body is referred to by Deleuze as a form of parallelism. The theory
26
Spinoza, Political Treatise, I11 5, pp. 302-3.
I Spinoza, Political Treatise, XI 3, p. 386. However, it is worth recalling that even J . S. Mill
excludes barbariansfrom the protection of a liberal civilization. See On Liberty, in Utilitarianism,
On Liberty and Considerations on Representative Government, (ed.) H. 8. Acton (London, Dent,
1972), p. 73.
Spinoza, A Theologico-Political Treatise in A Theologico-Political Treatise and A Polirical
Treatise, XX, p. 259.
19 Spinoza, Theologico-Political Treatise. XX, p. 261.

Hobbes. Leviathan, I i 2 I , p. 1 14.

Hobbes, Leviathan, I1 21, p. 115.
l2 Compare Roger Scrutons less than libertarian account of individual rights in The Meaning of
Conservatism. ch. 4.
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 Debate 29 1

does not consist merely in denying any real causality between the mind and the
body, it disallows any primacy of the one over the other. This implies, in an
anticipation of theories of the unconscious, that the body surpasses the
knowledge that we have of it, and that thought likewise surpasses the consciousness
that we have fit'.'^ In this metaphysical system there is no room for traditional
notions of free will. Our conviction that our wills are free is based on an illusion.
For Spinoza, what we perceive as decisions of the mind are, like all other mental
phenomena, simply material processes viewed under the attribute of thought.
The illusion of freedom is a simple consequence of consciousness, or more
precisely, the inevitable partiality of consciousness: men believe themselves to be
free, simply because they are conscious of their actions, and unconscious of the
causes whereby those actions are determined.34
There is, of course, a long philosophical tradition of compatibilists who
maintain that free will can be reconciled with determinism. Hobbes himself is
responsible for a classic statement of this position but crucially for Hobbes,
firmly within the traditions of empiricism and negative liberty, freedom is
compatible with determinism because it applies only to the man and not to the
will. In making this point Hobbes provides a classic statement of a negative
concept of freedom:

from the use of the word Free-Will, no Liberty can be inferred of the will,
desire, or inclination, but the Liberty of the man; which consisteth in this,
that he find no stop in doing what he has the will, desire, or inclination to

We are only unfree, on this interpretation, if we are prevented from doing what
we are causally determined to will. The fact that our decisions are themselves
caused, lies beyond the scope of negative freedom in this sense.
Spinozas approach is very different, although it is built on a moral ontology he
largely shares with Hobbes. The basic unit of Spinozist ethics is the individual but
this is not the individual of the mainstream of liberal theory. Rather, as Deleuze
succinctly remarks, (A)n individual is first of all a singular essence, which is to
say, a degree of p~wer..~ Two famous propositions of the ethics express this
claim:

Everything, in so far as it is in itself, endeavours to persist in its own being. . .

The endeavour, wherewith everything endeavours to persist in its own being,
is nothing else but the actual essence of the thing in q ~ e s t i o n . ~

G. Deleuze, Spinoza: Practical Philosophy (San Francisco, City Light Books, 1988), p. 18.
Spinoza, The Ethics in The Chief Works of Benedici de Spinoza, Vol. 2, translated with an
Introduction by R. H. M. Elwes (New York, Dover Publications, 1955), 111 2, footnote p. 134.
Hobbes, Leviarhan, p. 110. In fact, as Michael Oakeshott has pointed out, Hobbes develops
something much more like a positive concept of freedom in his discussion of what Oakeshott calls the
moralization of pride. Oakeshott claims that Hobbes was unmistakably a philosopher of the
morality of individuality. See The moral life and the writings ofThomas Hobbes in his Raiionalism
in Poliiics (London, Methuen, 1962), pp. 289 and 294. In an interesting way Hobbes and Spinoza
seem to have complementary strengths and weaknesses: a more developed political philosophy with
Hobbes, a more developed moral theory with Spinoza.
j6 Deleuze, Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, p. 21.

Spinoza, Ethics, 111 6 and 7, p. 136. This view of conatus is not very different from Hobbes
description of the general1inclination of all mankind, a perpetual1 and restlesse desire of Power after
power, that ceaseth only in death, Leviathan, p. 49.
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292 Debate

This conatus, the endeavour of every individual to persist in its own being, is the
basic unit of force in Spinozas ethics. As for Spinoza there is no creator
independent of existence God is simply nature under another attribute he
~ ~

rejects any idea of human essence as implying some purpose of life common to all
human beings. Hampshires comparison of Spinoza with Aristotle is enlightening
on this point. Like Aristotle, Spinoza values a thing in terms of the degree to
which it realizes its nature or essence. For Aristotle, however, this essence is
common to all the individuals of a particular kind. Spinoza, on the other hand,

identifies the essential nature of a n y individual thing with its individuality,

with that which makes it a distinct individual: an d this is its power of self-
maintenance in relation t o other things. Its virtue is its power as a n
individual.

The difference is very significant. Aristotles account of human essence serves to

distinguish human beings from other species (and is explicitly humanist in this
sense): it is in the exercise of that capacity namely rationality, that the summum
bonum for human beings consists. Rationality in this disembodied sense leads
swiftly to the reified conception of the self at the heart of the tyrannical
degeneration of positive freedom described by Berlin. The good life is essentially
the same for all human beings. However, no such universal standard of
behaviour can be derived from Spinozas definition of individual essence. This
much he has in common with Hobbes. For both of them the individual is no more
and no less than its power of self-maintenance in relation to other thing^'.^'
Where Spinoza clearly differs from Hobbes is in the role which rationality plays
in the self-maintenance of the individual. Although Spinoza does not see the
exercise of rationality as the goal of human life, he differs from Hobbes in seeing
rationality as an essential means of achieving the good life. Rationality is not just
useful instrumentally as a way of better ensuring the satisfaction of our impulses
and inclinations. Rather it is essential for the full development of our
individuality or, in other words, essential for our positive freedom.The central
arguments of the Ethics explore this relationship between rationality and
individuality which, as we have seen, is also central to Hegels account of positive
f r e e d ~ m . ~Spinozas
overriding intention is to identify the means whereby
individuals more effectively persist in their own being. Although all our actions
are causally determined, Spinoza wishes to distinguish between different ways in
which our decisions may be caused. In particular he distinguishes between mental
events and states (including decisions of the will, emotions and inclinations)
whose causes are internal and those whose causes are external to the
individual. The former are classed as actions or affections in regard to which we
are active and the latter as passions or occasions where we are passive in relation
to our affections. This distinction is the basis for his account of positive freedom.

Stuart Hampshire. Spinoza and the idea of freedom in P. F. Strawson (ed.), Srudies in the
Philosophy of Thoughf and Acrion (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1968). pp. 55-6.
Hampshire. Spinoza and the idea of freedom. p. 56.
ly
It is at least arguable whether regarding individuality as what we are essentially can be
condemned as a form of essentialism. Individuality can be understood as an essence which denies
essence, individuality as the potential for difference. In Sartres terms, for human beings existence
comes before essence. See Jean-Paul Sartre. Exisfenrialism and Humanism (New York, Haskell,
1977).On Hobbes, see also footnote 35 above.
See above. Section 11.

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 Debate 293

We are active or free when the causes of our actions are internal and unfree when
these causes are external to us.
However internality might seem at first sight to bear no obvious resemblance
to a criterion of positive freedom. An individual could, presumably, be enslaved
by his or her inner drives or passions but even those emotions or affections which
do not obviously come from outside the individual, which apparently arise quite
spontaneously within us, may be external in Spinozas sense. This is because the
criterion of internality is at the same time a criterion of rationality. Stuart
Hampshires restatement of the distinction between active and passive emotions
is succinct and worth quoting at some length:

I experience an active emotion, if and only if the idea which is the

psychological accompaniment of the affection is logically deducible from
the previous idea constituting my mind; only if it is so deducible, can I be said
to have an adequate idea of the cause of my emotion. If the idea annexed to
the emotion is not deducible from a previous idea in my mind, it follows that
the emotion or affectionmust be the effect of an external cause, and that I am
in this sense passive in respect of it. As the ideas constituting my mind are the
psychical equivalents of the modifications of my body, I can only have
adequate knowledge of the causes of those of my affectionswhich are not the
effects of external cause^.^'

Because for Spinoza ideas are modifications of my body under the attribute of
thought, the conclusion that I can only have adequate knowledge of the causes
of those of my affections which are not the effects of external causes would
seem to So the realm of activity understood as internally caused and
understood as adequately conceived fall together. Adequate understanding of
the causes of mental states or events is a test or criterion of internality. Passive
affections resist the understanding, they cannot be adequately conceived because
their causes are external to the individual. The self, if it is ruled by passive
affections, acts from reasons which are not its own and therefore acts less than
rationally and less than freely.
Significantly, Spinoza is not committed to the view that freedom consists
simply in the outright mastery of the passions by reason. Only the one eternal
substance God or Nature could be completely determined by internal causes
and, in that sense, completely free. By definition, the one substance includes
everything and so cannot be determined by anything external to itself. The
individual human being, on the other hand, is only a small part of nature and can
never be completely independent of external influences. However, the extent of
the individuals independence from external causes is subject to the exertions of
the understanding. In Spinozas system rationality or understanding is not
merely a symptom of freedom, but also a means o f attaining it. The improvement
of the understanding is a form of emancipation. Everyone has the power of
clearly and distinctly understanding himself and his [passive] emotions, if not
absolutely, at any rate in part, and consequently of bringing it about that he
should become less subject to them.44 In the process of understanding my
affections I achieve at least partial freedom, because through the exercise of my

S. Hampshire, Spinoza (Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1951). pp. 136-7.

Hampshire, Spinoza, p. 137.
14 Spinoza, Ethics, p. 249.
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294 Debate

understanding I free myself from subjection to those influences which are

transient and variable.
As natural beings we can never hope to be free of all passions or to be totally
active beings but we are subject both to sad and to joyful passions. Sad
passions correspond to a diminution in the power of the individual, joyful
passions to an increase of this power. As Deleuze puts it:

when we encounter an external body that does not agree with our own. . . it is
as if the power of that body opposed our power, bringing about a subtraction
or a fixation; when this occurs, it may be said that our power of acting is
diminished or blocked, and that the corresponding passions are those of
sadness. . . when we encounter a body that agrees with our nature, one whose
relation compounds with ours, we may say that its power is added to ours; the
passions that affect us are those ofjoy, and our power of acting is increased or
enhanced.

The Ethics looks in detail at the ways in which through understanding we can
achieve the maximum degree of freedom in relation to our passions and, insofar
as we are subject to passions, how understanding can liberate us from the sad
passions. Spinozas detailed moral and psychological insights and observations
are thus contributions to the moralistes tradition of Montaigne, Pascal, la
Rochefoucauld, Nietzsche and Freud. This is a tradition of positive freedom
because it concentrates on freeing the individual from the delusions and
obsessions which are destructive of it.
How, then, is Spinoza able to avoid the authoritarian conclusions usually
attributed to Hobbes? The toleration of religious and ideological diversity is
essential because the true freedom of the individual is inconceivable without the
unhindered exercise of the understanding. Religious and intellectual freedom is
therefore a prime goal of political organization beyond mere stability. Further,
understanding cannot be established once for all or by one for all. The particular
affections of every individual, reflecting their unique situation in the natural
order, are peculiar to them (or at least cannot be known not to be so). The
transformation of these affections into active emotions or joyful passions must be
performed by each and all for themselves. Spinozas Ethics is designed to aid in
the practice of that self-understanding. Although people can certainly be forced
to act in a certain way, they cannot be forced to believe, let alone understand
anything. However unlimited the power of the sovereign, it can never prevent
men from forming judgments according to their intellect, or being influenced by
any given emotion.&
Spinoza was inevitably unaware of the many modern techniques of psych-
ological manipulation and subliminal persuasion, sophisticated forms of
advertising and so on. Still the strength of his position remains. Such forms of
manipulation could only serve to increase the passivity of the individual. They
might bring about behaviour which we take to be symptomatic of virtue but they
could never bring about genuine understanding or true virtue, because the only
efective understanding is one inextricably linked to individual will or conatus. In

Deleuze, Spinoza: Practical Philosophy. pp. 27-8.

16Spinoza, Theologico-PoliticalTreatise. XX, p. 258. Compare Hobbes remark on torture that
what is in that case confessed, tendeth to the ease of him that is Tortured; not to the informing of the
Torturers, Leviathan, p. 73.
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 Debate 295

fact Spinozas Ethics is a major work within the tradition which emphasises the
identification of virtue and happiness. Virtue, like freedom, is understood as the
optimal realisation of the individuals endeavour to persist in its own being.
Ethical behaviour is in the enlightened interest of individuals. Deleuze
distinguishes ethics in this sense from morality, which always refers existence to
transcendent values and for which moral law is an imperative that has no other
effect, no other finality than obedience. In general:

Law is always the transcendent instance that determines the opposition of

values (Good-Evil), but knowledge is always the immanent power that
determines the qualitative difference of modes of existence (g~od-bad).~

Morality, as distinct from ethics, is a command imposed upon the individual that
must simply be obeyed. Even the Kantian imperative is based on the
requirements of a being of pure practical reason which coincides with
contingent individuals only by metaphysical fiat. Ethics, on the other hand, is a
form of knowledge which is potentially effective. Our understanding of ethics is
inseparable from the process in which we become more active in relation to our
affections, the process in which we become more genuinely free.
Thus, a positive notion of freedom in Spinozas sense seems, if anything, more
resistant to the paternalistic impersonation which Berlin is so concerned to
prevent. For the tradition of negative liberty, the causes of the will are
unimportant, so long as we are free to do whatever our will decides. It follows
that causing someone to believe or want something is not necessarily
incompatible with her liberty. Such interference could be condemned only as the
violation of a presumed interest in autonomy or the desire to remain free of such
interference but the force of such a wish for autonomy is weak, as long as it is just
one wish amongst many. The paternalist could still argue that he knows best how
to maximise the overall preference satisfaction of someone. By contrast, it is the
strength of Spinozas account that he is in a better position to identify such
interference as incompatible with the subjects freedom, however benign the
intention. There can be no paternalistic justification for attempting to impose
understanding on the individual, because such an imposition can only increase
the passivity of the one subjected to it and must inevitably fail to encourage the
practice of her self-understanding. Freedom in Spinozas sense is inseparable
from the individuals overall self-fulfilment. Individual preferences are only
authenticated as truly personal preferences in that practice of freedom and
understanding.
At the same time, freedom in Spinozas sense does not require the complete
isolation of the individual from external influence or social context. In fact the
exercise of understanding is something the individual is unable to achieve alone.
In his political treatises Spinoza argues, as we have seen, that in the state of nature
our powers are neutralised by fear. The improvement of human understanding is
inconceivable without the security guaranteed by the commonwealth but the
forces of the individual are further enhanced by membership in the common-
wealth, for to man there is nothing more useful than man and our intellect
would be more imperfect, if mind were alone, and could understand nothing
besides itself.48Society is necessary for the full development of individuality. It

Deleuze, Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, pp. 23- 5.

48 Spinoza, Ethics,IV18, footnote, p. 201.
18 Politicdl Studies Association. 1993.
296 Debare

is not simply a necessary evil, a constraint which inevitably limits the negative
freedom of individuals. Understanding is impossible without language and
culture, without the insights o f a moral tradition, even if that tradition cannot be
taken as the source of a list of moral rules which the individual has only to obey in
order to be virtuous.

Conclusion
Spinozas ethics and in particular his conception of positive freedom have
considerable attractions. They recognize no absolute division or opposition
between body and mind, rationality and feeling. We are inevitably subject to both
active and passive emotions but the exercise of reason can make us less
susceptible to the bondage of the passive emotions, less at the mercy of whim
and circumstance. Unlike Kant, Spinoza has no problem about the interest we
take in morality because it is in our interest to be moral. Virtue is tantamount to
the fuller development of our individuality. Virtue is the expression of individual
conatus or power, rationalized by the understanding. However the outcome of a
rationalized conattts is potentially different for every individual and under-
standing must be exercised by everyone for themselves, so no one can justifiably
impose their interpretation of virtue or the good life on another. Spinozas
conception of positive freedom allows us to condemn forms of interference
which, despite their apparent compatibility with negative freedom, it would be
implausible not to see as intrusions on liberty. On the other hand, his notion of
positive freedom, far from inviting tyranny, makes paramount the autonomous
practice of self-understanding. The self, as Spinoza describes it, is sociable but
resists being absorbed into the social. Society is a necessary catalyst but never a
substitute for the practice of freedom.
Obviously considerable problems are faced in the attempt to develop further
something like Spinozas account of positive freedom. I have simply tried to
provide support for two broad conclusions. First, Berlins global assault o n
positive freedom and rationalist political thought misses the mark as far as at
least one significant philosophical tradition is concerned. Spinozas metaphysics
and ethics do not support the rationalist assumption that we can identify a single
form of life or set of values, defining the good life or the rational or real self
and then impose it on an unwilling humanity. Individual conatu~is the ultimate
and intrinsically plural ethical foundation for his account of positive freedom. It
follows, secondly, that much of the liberal tradition may have been led astray in
its almost automatic rejection of positive freedom.49 This is particularly
worrying to the extent that, as a result, the dangers of a negative conception of
freedom have also been neglected. A negative account of freedom can offer only
weak resistance to forms of manipulation which are cultural, ideological or
psychological. A more resilient resistance to these forms of manipulation would
require the further development of a positive conception of liberty.

Of course, a notable defence of positive liberty is advanced by Charles Taylor in his Whats
wrong with negative liberty?, Pltilosophicul Papers Vol. 2 (Cambridge. Cambridge University Press,
1985).

1 Poliiical Siudies Associauon. 1993