Freedom as overcoming the fear of death : Epicureanism in the subtitle of Spinoza's Theological Political Treatise

The first part of the subtitle of the Theological Political Treatise may have been easily acceptable to Spinoza's contemporaries: the book shows that "Freedom of Philosophizing can be allowed in Preserving Piety and the Peace of the Republic."1 In the aftermath of the Reformation, this sentiment would not have been unfamiliar. The secular ideal of the separation of Ecclesiastical from temporal authority requires that there is a division between the inner self that is subject to faith and receives the message of Scripture, and the external self, who is subject to the authority of the sovereign and to the laws of the state.2 Mirroring this logic, philosophers and deists of various hues claim a private right to the freedom to philosophize"”a right that is distinct from their obligations to the state and which the first part of the subtitle ably presents. The second part of the subtitle would have come, however, as a surprise to the general educated reader in the seventeenth century. The book, indicates Spinoza, also wants to argue that "it is not possible for such Freedom to be upheld except when accompanied by the Peace of the Republic and Piety Themselves." Here, the freedom to philosophize acquires a public dimension. It is as if Spinoza is suggesting that the freedom to philosophize is a necessary precondition for a well-functioning state and for a pious Church.3 The absence of such a freedom, then, would threaten the existence of a state and would make the Church impious. It is as if"”to put it bluntly"”the freedom to philosophize not only bridges the divide between private and public, but it also becomes the condition of the possibility of public liberty. Such a collapse of the distinction between the inside and the outside challenges authority, both the ecclesiastical authority that relies on internal faith, and the temporal authority that relies on the obedience of the law.