What does a life of human freedom look like, if it is not the life of the free man? While a free life follows reason's guidance, it is unclear what it means to live or, even, to act in accordance with reason, for, as I argued in Chapter 6, the perspective of reason is fundamentally different from one's practical perspective, since the former takes no account of particular things and one's position in space and time, which are necessary features of practical situations. In fact, understanding our actions as particular, spatial and temporal events renders them effectively invisible to human reason. To understand, then, how reason's guidance can be put into practice, this chapter considers how, for Spinoza, reason influences the deliberative processes that lead to action or, more simply, rational deliberation. The remaining two chapters will then consider the outcome of such deliberations, the specific actions and activities that characterize the free life. My central claim here is that rational deliberation requires input from inadequate ideas of the imagination, specifically about our particular perspective, including the particular things around us and our own degree of perfection. In this way, the chapter explains precisely how our imagination, and, even, passions contribute positively to a free and rational life.

The first section looks to Spinoza's psychology to explain the psychological processes by which we decide how to act. The second section considers how reason's guidance influences these processes.