SOURCE: “Human Freedom,” in Spinoza, The University of Chicago Press, 1988, pp. 169-89.

In this essay, Donagan interprets Spinoza's philosophy of freedom in terms of his metaphysics.

9.1. Living by the Dictates of Reason

To the extent that human beings are guided by reason, Spinoza has argued, there must be a ‘convergence of their conatus’.¹ It ‘follows from the necessity of [their] own nature’ that, outside civil society, human beings not only judge by their own wits (ex suo ingenio) what is good and evil, that is, what is advantageous to them and what is not, but also strive to return evil for what they imagine to be evil done to them from hatred (by E [Ethica, Ordine Geometrico demonstrata] 3p40c2), to conserve what they love, and to destroy what they hate (by E3p28). It is therefore by ‘the highest right of nature’ (‘summum jus naturae’) that they...