Spinoza, Right and Absolute Freedom

Taylor & Francis

Against jurisprudential reductions of Spinoza\u2019s thinking to a kind of eccentric version of Hobbes, this book argues that Spinoza\u2019s theory of natural right contains an important idea of absolute freedom, which would be inconceivable within Hobbes\u2019 own schema. Spinoza famously thought that the universe and all of the beings and events within it are fully determined by their causes. This has led jurisprudential commentators to believe that Spinoza has no room for natural right \u2013 in the sense that whatever happens by definition has a \u2018right\u2019 to happen. But, although this book demonstrates how Spinoza constructs a system in which right is understood as the work of machines, by fixing right as determinate and invariable, Stephen Connolly argues that Spinoza is not limiting his theory. The universe as a whole is capable of acting only in determinate ways but, he argues, for Spinoza these exist within a field of infinite possibilities. In an analysis that offers.