Journal of the History of Philosophy

Smith's well-crafted narrative contributes substantially to revealing the moral and political intentions "at the core" of the Ethics (140). Its focus is the role and possibility of freedom in Spinoza's metaphysics, based on Smith's thesis that a version of teleological eudaemonism and democratic politics are the principal themes of the Ethics. Indeed, Smith considers the Ethics a "founding document of . . . democratic individualism" (200). He places Spinoza in his Enlightenment context, building on known connections with Hobbes and others, and tracing his influence on other giants of western thought and political history. An important example is Smith's discussion of Spinoza's modification of Hobbesian conatus, which elevates it to a teleological striving for freedom and joy (109). This sympathetic retelling of Spinoza's case for liberation and blessedness is appealing—but equally controversial, for it is told at some cost to its metaphysical basis.

A longstanding challenge is to reconcile Spinoza's overt determinism with his ideas about human freedom. The Ethics presents a metaphysics in which infinitely many attributes and modes follow necessarily from the nature of Substance/God/Nature (Deus sive Natura), the immanent cause of all things. This thesis undercuts teleological explanations and explicitly rejects final causality (Ethics I, Appendix, and elsewhere). The standard view begins reasonably enough with these metaphysical first principles, but finds Spinoza's subsequent views on human freedom problematic if not irreconcilable with them. Smith acknowledges this problem (38, 157), but thinks it rests on a misconception that ignores a compatibilist interpretation (78–79). However, this move requires adjustments to the complex of concepts Spinoza uses to lay out his system. [End Page 361]

Smith confronts the challenge by reversing the order of explanation, emphasizing the moral ends of the Ethics over its metaphysical beginnings (xii–xiii) and reinterpreting the latter to suit the former. This shift derives, in part, from Smith's studies of Spinoza's earlier treatises, which highlight Spinoza's democratic intentions. These intentions, in turn, require a specific notion of human freedom, not one of indeterminate will (79), but one based on the "ability to form reasons and act upon them . . . a reflective consciousness capable of conceiving, imagining, wishing and doing" (80). Although we might object to lumping all of these functions under "reason," Smith's view that Spinoza grounds freedom in reason overlaps with the standard view. On both views, freedom involves choice (81, 103); though they differ on whether and how this is possible. The Ethics, Smith insists, is "constructed around a conception of human agency, and the idea of agency without the related notions of purpose . . . is unintelligible" (60). Clearly, Smith intends to reinterpret Spinoza's views on teleology (28).

Smith's case employs recent post-modern reinterpretations of Spinoza's geometrical method and conception of God. Along these lines, Spinoza's method ceases to be an expression of the strict deterministic order of nature and becomes a device of moral and pedagogical rhetoric (19). Spinoza's use of "God" becomes a rhetorical "ruse" stripped of theistic significance (39, 43) and reduces to a principle of the authority of Nature (42). Such measures seek to diminish the force of Spinoza's talk of causal necessity. But Smith's boldest step is his alternative reading of Spinoza's rejection of final causality in Part I, Appendix. Smith believes that Spinoza rejects only divine and natural teleology (57), but attributes final causality to the human mind. According to Smith, Spinoza holds that only the order of nature is nonteleologically deterministic, but "human activity and rationality is teleological through and through" (96). Now, one might admit that selected passages in Spinoza can be read this way in order to make sense of his propositions on freedom, but that reading remains inconsistent with the initial metaphysics.

Recall that Spinoza's Deus sive Natura thesis comprehends under one Nature both minds and bodies as modes of their respective attributes. Furthermore, Spinoza explicitly argues that the...