State, power and freedom

an ontoteleological reflection from Baruch Spinoza

Abstract

In the Early Modern period, by discovering himself as the sole creator of himself, the man detaches himself from the naturalness of the political arrangements already in place and launches into the projection of new institutional designs. The State is plastic because it mirrors human aspirations in a given context. It seems to us, however, that one constant remains in the midst of this malleability: the State, ontoteleologically, is the institutionalization of power at the service of freedom. The extent, ownership and scope of power are transfigured, as is the content of freedom, which is always in transit, because human creativity cannot be stopped. Since the State is the stage for the clash between power and freedom, Western jusphilosophical thought offers us a myriad of proposals for this confrontation. Here, we are interested in analyzing the project presented by Baruch Spinoza in the face of the power-freedom duel. To do this, we use the works Ethics, Political Treatise and Theological-Political Treatise to investigate a) the interactions between beings in the state of nature, b) the genesis and the elements of the Civil State and c) the relationship between democracy, power and freedom. At the end of this paper, we see a political power constrained by freedom of conscience, a natural and therefore unavailable right. Outside the Spinoza's State, there is no freedom, because the power to act is threatened. We observe, then, that the political power outlined by Spinoza is at the service of a freedom translated into an active stance towards the collective in which one takes part, translated into engagement in the preservation effort.