Rationality And Liberty-A Study On Spinoza's Political Liberalism

Benedict De Spinoza, a philosopher and scientist of politics,lived in 17th century of Holland, the golden period in economic prosperity and scientific and artistic development as well as social turbulence due to war, revolution and religion strife. Because he experienced Renaissance, religious reform and bourgeois revolutionary movement, his philosophical and politics thought were characteristics of his modern aspect. Inherited by natural science and the achievement of Protestantism reform, he enlightened the contemporary democratic thought. He was mainly influenced by Hebric mysticism, the natural science in Renaissance, the new rational philosophy, natural law and contract theory .Moreover, based on critical inheritance of these sources, he reconstructed his own philosophical system which was an induction system because it began with the highest category and induced other concept according to logic rules. The highest category within the system was God, nature or substance while the final destination was the highest sphere for human being that was man's liberty and happiness. Matter reaches its destination at ethics and the highest unity between search for truth and the pursuit for goodness. His central thought resided in the study on the relationship between man and nature and pursuit for perfect knowledge on correspondence between man's soul and nature to control emotion so that man can attain his happiness. Spinoza stresses individualism, the self-control of rational to overcome emotion, the relation between altruism and the individualism and the harmonious coexistence between individualism and social order, which shaped the foundation of his unique thought on liberalism. The application of the thought to politics field produces the promotion of freedom. The democratic nation founded on the contract theory was the best dream for achieving liberty rather than authoritarian polity because it retained the liberty of thinking and the liberty of belief and pointed out that the truth for politics is to obtain and keep liberty and enlightened the positive value of individual liberty and negative one, which reflected that his democratic thought was optimistic, positive.