Freedom And Bondage

In the history of mankind, many thinkers have developed in the problem of ethical freedom and made contribution to human being's freedom, civilization as well as development. Spinoza, a distinguished Holland moralist, is one represent of them. The contents of Spinoza's freedom thought cover two aspects:The first aspect is on the essence of freedom. Spinoza considers that substance, God and nature can be unified. Substance is necessarily existing, unique as well as eternal. Substance can be understood by people through two attributes of thought and extension. Human is one mode of substance, existing and acting on substance. However substance or God exists and acts on the necessity of its nature, so it is freedom. Freedom and necessity do not contradict. Freedom is a kind of necessity. Necessity can be divided"forceful necessity"(external necessity) and"free necessity"(internal necessity). Thus freedom is"free necessity", while necessity is just"forceful necessity".The second is the realization of freedom. God determines the actions of human by two ways: One is by constituting the nature of each individual. When this way is used, human's action is no of freedom; another way is by constituting the real nature of human self. When this way is used, human's action is of freedom.Knowledge is of importance regarding to obtaining freedom for human. Knowledge can be divided three kinds: perceptual (imagery or idea), rational and intuitional. Respectively these three kinds of knowledge correspond to three kinds of living states: nature, society and religion state. The second aspect in the contents of Spinoza's thought of freedom is on the realization freedom. To realize freedom needs to combine self-discipline and he-discipline. Self-discipline means to control emotion with rationality, while he-discipline to build a rationality nation. Spinoza divides motion into active and passive emotion. Human lacks of freedom when restrained by emotion. To obtain freedom needs the guidance of rationality over the passive emotion. Only through self-discipline can not realize the freedom of human. He-discipline is indispensable. That means to build rationality nation. Spinoza holds that the most powerful and fully right nation is the one that is on the ground of rationality and in the guidance of rationality. So in all forms of regime, the democratic nation is the most natural, most human-freedom-conformed and most of nationality. Nation should keep freedom. But to keep freedom means to restrain freedom. People's religion state which is the integration of self-discipline and he-discipline, in the Spinoza's thought, is the final realization of Theonomy, and the eternal state of happiness.Spinoza's thought of freedom has a far reaching influence in the circle of European thought, and freedom which has insight and revelation can give meditation and reference to modernists.