CONCEPT
Freedom as Understanding
Spinoza's radical redefinition: freedom is not the absence of external constraint or the exercise of uncaused will, but the capacity to act from adequate ideas — the comprehension of the causes that determine us.
Freedom is the most misunderstood concept in philosophy, and the misunderstanding has practical consequences that are most visible in moments of technological transformation. The modern intuition says freedom is choice: the more options, the greater the freedom. Spinoza rejects the intuition entirely. Freedom is the capacity to act from adequate ideas rather than inadequate ones. The free person is not the person who has escaped determination but the person who understands the causes that determine her and thereby acts from comprehension rather than confusion. The multiplication of options within a state of inadequate understanding is not freedom. It is the expansion of the field in which bondage operates. The consumer who chooses among a hundred products without understanding why she desires what she desires is more elaborately bound, not more free. The builder who creates everything he can imagine without understanding why he cannot stop creating has been given a larger field in which his conatus operates without resistance.
