ABSTRACT
Most work on Spinoza’s view of human freedom has tended to focus on what he calls “acting from reason (ratio)” and thus on Parts 3 and 4 of the Ethics, and the first half of Part 5. The kind of freedom arising from intuitive knowledge, which Spinoza equates with blessedness, salvation, and intellectual love of God in the concluding section of the Ethics, has not been part of most discussions of freedom. This chapter brings to focus this neglected aspect of Spinoza’s account of freedom – intuitive or intellectual freedom – which it considers as categorically different from rational freedom and as deserving of separate treatment. I first argue that reason and intuition, on which the two kinds of freedom are founded, differ from one another in kind and not merely in degree, and that intuition, unlike reason, is essentially experiential and non-conceptual knowledge. Relying on Spinoza’s invocation of the scholastic-Cartesian distinction between the formal/objective reality of ideas, I proceed to argue that intuitive freedom hinges on the mind’s ability to experience itself in its formal reality, as pure thinking activity and apart from the body with which it is united. On this basis, I explain how in experiencing itself sub specie aeternitatis, the mind enjoys a sense of absolute freedom in a manner reminiscent of the absolute freedom and eternity of God.
