Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Abbreviations and translations
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Beyond therapy
- 1 Freedom as rationality
- 2 Justifying Spinoza's conception of freedom
- 3 Autonomy and responsibility
- 4 Freedom and happiness
- 5 The good
- 6 The natural law
- 7 Benevolence
- 8 The free man
- 9 Rational deliberation
- 10 The character of freedom
- 11 The freedom of the citizen
- Conclusion: “The true freedom of man”
- Bibliography
- Index
3 - Autonomy and responsibility
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 March 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Abbreviations and translations
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Beyond therapy
- 1 Freedom as rationality
- 2 Justifying Spinoza's conception of freedom
- 3 Autonomy and responsibility
- 4 Freedom and happiness
- 5 The good
- 6 The natural law
- 7 Benevolence
- 8 The free man
- 9 Rational deliberation
- 10 The character of freedom
- 11 The freedom of the citizen
- Conclusion: “The true freedom of man”
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Having considered how Spinoza's conception of freedom stands with respect to other conceptions, we may now turn to the question of how it stands with respect to other related concepts, autonomy and responsibility. With respect to the former, the first section of this chapter argues that Spinoza's theory of freedom encompasses autonomy, which philosophers now distinguish from freedom. The section argues that Spinoza's view of autonomy should be understood as what is now called a substantive theory, holding that autonomy requires a commitment to certain unvarying beliefs. With respect to the latter, the second section aims to pin down Spinoza's cagey remarks on responsibility, which tend to dodge the difficult question of whether his causal determinism undermines the possibility of moral responsibility. The section argues that Spinoza's remarks, while consistent with a number of theories of responsibility, nevertheless deny that freedom can be understood as the condition for moral responsibility.
SPINOZISTIC AUTONOMY
While autonomy and freedom are closely related – indeed, it is common to treat autonomy as identical to positive freedom – the subject of autonomy, at least since Kant, has become an object of special philosophical investigation, distinct from freedom. Of course, earlier philosophers would have recognized and sometimes used the Greek term for self-rule. And regardless of whether philosophers used that particular term, notions of self-rule and what it amounts to have been discussed throughout the history of philosophy. In this general sense, Spinoza is clearly concerned with notions of autonomy.
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- Spinoza on Human FreedomReason, Autonomy and the Good Life, pp. 57 - 71Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011