LECTURE № 2 FROM SPINOSA TO SCHELLING: MAN AND FREEDOM

Abstract

This lecture attempts to present the ideas about freedom of such thinkers of the Age of Enlightenment as Spinoza, Hobbes, Locke, Leibniz, Hume, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Helvetius, Voltaire, Beccaria, Marat, Kant, Fichte, and Schelling, based on the works of classics and modern authors. It is shown that these philosophers laid the foundations for the struggle against ignorance, superstition, and religious dogmas and played a key role in the struggle against the feudal system and the dictatorship of the church. It is shown that it was during this era that the understanding of freedom as the highest value of European culture was laid. Freedom began to be perceived not simply as a benefit, but as a condition for the manifestation of virtue or vice, justice or injustice, observance of duty or neglect of it. In one form or another, these philosophers argued that freedom is a natural state of man. Freedom is understood as the right of a person to control himself, his personality and property, to independently choose his own destiny, without asking anyone for permission, and not to depend on anyone’s will.