Hermeneutics and subjective pluralism: the foundation of freedom in Spinoza’s thought

Abstract

The main aim in this paper is to expose one of the greatest aspirations of Spinoza’s philosophy: the liberation of the faculty to judge as hermeneutic perspective as well as in its political sense. Taking this concept as starting point, our aim is to reconstruct some of the interstices of the philosopher’s program, who is always emphatic with regard to the freedom in ethical and political ambit, as well as to reconstitute the several senses that this concept has in his work. Is there a freedom that is sub specie aeternitatis conceived and another that is sub specie durationis? This question leads us to establish the relation that this philosopher has to the political world’s things, which he always thinks in terms of passions and interests, excluding from it a sense of freedom in which it is conceived as virtuous. Without abandoning the aspirations of a superior sense of freedom, the author maintains that Spinoza proposes to examine the problem of freedom in a context in which there are more prejudices than adequate ideas, more fear than hope, more superstition than wisdom.