Spinoza seems to be committed to the view that true freedom liberates one from hope and fear. The basis for this conclusion is difficult to follow and is not stated explicitly in the Ethics , but I'll try to reconstruct the position as much as possible. According to Spinoza, "hope is nothing but an inconstant joy which has arisen from the image of a future or past thing whose outcome we doubt; fear, on the other hand, is an inconstant sadness, which has also arisen from a doubtful thing" (_Ethics_ III p18s2). Now according to Spinoza, the idea that anything in nature would be doubtful reflects a lack of understanding, because, he claims, nothing in nature is contingent (_Ethics_ Ip29). Hence in the Scholium to Ethics IVp47 ("Affects of hope and fear cannot be good of themselves"), Spinoza explains that "these affects show a defect of knowledge and a lack of power in the mind....Therefore, the more we strive to live according to the guidance of reason, the more we strive to depend less...

The question seems to imply that 'true freedom' requires that agents must be the author of their own natures, and if one is the author of one's own nature, then no being--not even God--could predict how a truly free agent would act. The assumption that one needs to be the author of one's own nature in order to be free seems to be too strong, however, for it implies that only God can be free, because only God is traditionally conceived to be the author of His own nature. Suppose that one drops the requirement that a free agent must be the author of his/her own nature, and weakens it to the requirement that a free agent must be the author of his/her own choices. Then, the worry goes, if an agent is indeed the author of his/her own choices, then those choices cannot be foreseen. The assumption that God could not foreknow the actions of a truly free agent is extraordinarily problematic, for it would compromise God's omniscience, and hence would be rejected by most believers. ...

I don't think that the view that knowledge of the history of philosophy is important for doing contemporary work in philosophy is "very popular": in fact, until very recently, few philosophers would have subscribed to it. I'm not convinced that knowledge of the history of philosopy is important for doing contemporary work in philosophy. But I do think that the history of philosophy is philosophically valuable. One respect in which the history of philosophy is valuable is that it provides a worked-out laboratory of positions on various topics. Sometimes a position in the history of philosophy may be drawn on to resolve a contemporary question. Reflection on the shortcomings of positions in the history of philosophy may also lead one to articulate a new response to a contemporary philosophical problem. Second, in studying the history of philosophy, one can come to appreciate the contingency, or historicity, of philosophical questions themselves; studying the history of philosophy can therefore...

Jay is correct that eternal truths are up to God. In a letter to Mersenne, Descartes says that "since God is a cause whose power surpasses the bounds of human understanding,and since the necessity of these truths does not exceed our knowledge, these truths are therefore something less than, and subject to, the incomprehensible power of God." Nevertheless, Peter is quite right--in virtue of the textual evidence that Alex cites--to say that the evil deceiver (or 'omnipotent God') doubt is introduced in order to cast mathematical truths into doubt. It's worth noting, however, that in the Third Meditation, this doubt about eternal truths is characterized as "slight and metaphysical". Indeed, Descartes writes: "Yet when I turn to the things themselves which I think I perceive very clearly, I am so convinced by them that I spontaneously declare: let whoever can do so deceive me, he will never bring it about that I am nothing, so long as I continue to think that I am something ; or make it ture at...

On certain conceptions of free will, freedom is bound up with rationality. On other conceptions of free will, however, freedom consists in a capacity to be a first cause of one's choices or actions, and so on such a conception, freedom seems to float free of rationality. Indeed, on such accounts, to be determined by reason seems to curtail freedom. In the Essay Concerning Human Understanding , Locke raises a good question for accounts of free will that do not tie freedom and rationality closely together. "Is it worth the name of freedom to be at liberty to play the fool, and draw shame and misery upon a man's self? If to break loose from the conduct of reason, and to want that restraint of examination and judgment, which keeps us from choosing or doing the worse, be liberty , true liberty, mad men and fools are the only free men: But yet, I think, nobody would choose to be mad for the sake of such liberty , but he that is mad already."

In the Discourse on Method , Descartes summarizes the 'meditations' that led him to discover new foundations for philosophy. He explains that he began by trying to reject as false everything about which he could have the least doubt, but then "noticed that while I was trying thus to think everything false, it was necessary that I, who was thinking this, was something. And observing that this truth 'I am thinking, therefore I exist' was so firm and sure...I decided that I could accept it without scruple." Descartes thus began by supposing that nothing existed, but then noticed that the fact that he could make this supposition--that he could suppose, or think, that nothing existed--required that he exist, and consequently concludes, from the fact that he is thinking (that nothing exists), that he himself must exist. Descartes could not, therefore, accept your proposed reformulation of the cogito (as it is sometimes called), because it assumes what is supposed to be in question--that...

Spinoza doesn't define 'essence' in Part I of the Ethics because he takes the meaning of that term to be well-understood: the essence of a thing is its nature. (Descartes, whose work Spinoza knew quite well, uses the terms 'essence' and 'nature' interchangeably in the Principles of Philosophy , Part I, Article 53.) A self-caused being, or causa sui --of which there is only one instance, God--is such that its very nature requires that it exist. Spinoza says a bit more about the term 'essence' in the second definition of Part II. "I say that to the essence of any thing belongs that which, being given, the thing is necessarily posited and which, being taken away, the thing is necessarily taken away; or that without which the thing can neither be nor be conceived, and which can neither be nor be conceived without the thing." The first axiom of Part II then distinguishes human beings from a causa sui : "the essence of man does not involve necessary existence."

This question points to a tension in our pre-theoretical views aboutemotions. On the one hand, they seem to be mental states with respectto which we are passive, and over which we have no control. Thisreflects the phenomenology of emotional experience. On the other hand,we sometimes expect people to have certain emotions, and criticizepeople for having certain emotions. If, as many philosophersbelieve, responsibility presupposes control, given that emotions seemto be states over which we have no control, it would seem, then, thatwe cannot be responsible for our emotions. So, on the one hand, itwould seem that we ought not to be responsible for our emotions, whileon the other hand, we do hold people responsible for their emotions. Isthere any way to resolve this tension? I think that this tensionmay be resolved by reconceiving the notion of control at issue here.Rather than locating the control necessary for responsibility indecision, it could be relocated in rationality. So instead of requiringthat...

I'm inclined to think that what leads the questioner to worry about the changing estimation of particular philosophical approaches in the twentieth century is that s/he seems to think that the fact that philosophy is engaged in the hunt for eternal verities should imply that philosophical approaches (and maybe even philosophical questions) themselves are not historically situated. To be sure, philosophers seek to give reasons for their claims, and thereby to resolve philosophical problems. But what philosophical problems appear important, and what methods seem appropriate for resolving those problems, certainly change over time. Certain questions that were important for medieval philosophers--e.g., 'How many angels can fit on the head of a pin?' which actually had some relevance for medieval theories of place or space--seem ridiculous to certain philosophers today. Certain methods for resolving philosophical questions--e.g., the Rationalists' appeal to a pure intellect that could operate...

I wanted to add some remarks regarding the relation between divine foreknowledge and free will. According to most orthodox Christians, the fact that God is omniscient implies that He has foreknowledge. Indeed, if God didn't have foreknowledge, it would be difficult to see how all events could be subject to His providential control, as all orthodox Christians agree. Depending on how one conceives of free will, tdifferent questions arise regarding the nature of divine foreknowledge. If one holds an incompatibilist view of free will, according to which an agent's choice is free iff that choice is not determined by some preceding cause, then it is difficult to see what basis there is for God's foreknowledge of those free choices. One famous option for reconciling this conception of free will with divine foreknowledge was elaborated by Luis de Molina, and involves an appeal to 'middle knowledge'. Roughly, what the appeal to middle knowledge amounts to is the claim that God knows all possible free...