Self-Realization as a Way to Freedom: Plato and Spinoza in Dialogue
Self-Realization as a Way to Freedom: Plato and Spinoza in Dialogue

Summary/Abstract: What does true freedom mean? For Plato and Spinoza, freedom requires finding the true self and becoming like God. This paper demonstrates their philosophical communicability by showing that both thinkers ground freedom in a metaphysical division between two orders of existence, one external and temporally determined, the other internal and eternal, and that the ethical life consists in one’s progressive identification with the latter. For Plato this means the soul’s ascent toward the intelligible realm through self-mastery, requiring detachment from and devaluation of the sensible world. For Spinoza, freedom is not a transition between realms but a transformation in causation, from external determination to joining God’s self-causation as causa sui. Since Extension and Thought are equal attributes of God, Spinoza does not devalue the sensible world, and self-realization is equally expressed in political life through the rational preservation of conatus. The comparison illuminates how Spinoza transforms the Platonic ideal by grounding freedom in a metaphysics that gives equal weight to the bodily and political dimensions of human life.

• Details
• Contents