Stimulated by the other contributors to this issue, I return to Spinoza’s philosophy of mind and to the account of freedom of mind which he considered compatible with the thesis of determinism.

There is, perhaps, no great philosopher who presents us, with so much confidence and assurance as Spinoza does, with such stark contradictions so rigorously deduced from indubitable first principles. Our first reaction is the conviction that something must have gone wrong with the reasoning at some obscure point; but more careful examination of his system and his explicit statements reveal that there is no actual inconsistency and that the conflicts in his doctrines are only apparent. Let us first notice briefly (...) what they are. (shrink)