A Survey on Spinoza's Notion of Cartesian Free-Will

The histories of philosophies regard Spinoza as a determinist vs. Descartes as a voluntarist. The former knows God as cuasa sui or immanent cause of all things, believes in the unity of substance, denies the free-will from both God and man, defines freedom as equal with free necessity, and finally, declares that the universe follows necessarily from God. Through these doctrines, it seems that Spinoza separates his line of though from that of Descartes. Spinoza raises some important objections against Descartes, one of which concerns with the free-will. But yet some scholars regard the Spinozan view on necessity as a kind of natural development within Cartesian framework. They claim that Spinoza's criticism on Descartes theory of free-will has no relation to the Cartesian main theme on freedom. As a result, if the Cartesian idea of freedom is read correctly off, its close relationship with the Spinozan one will be discovered. The present paper tries to show that in spite of spinozan criticisms against the Cartesian theory of free-will, there is no inconsistency between necessity and freedom concerning the highest degree of freedom for Descartes. To Descartes, in this level of freedom, there is no distinction between reason and will, so that one can be justified in saying that the Spinozan objection against the Cartesian idea of the absolute and free will cannot be raised.