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Baruch Spinoza: John Locke
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There must, Spinoza grants, be some limits to speech and teaching. Seditious discourse that encourages individuals to nullify the social contract should not be tolerated. But the best government will err on the side of leniency and allow the freedom of philosophical speculation and the freedom of religious belief. Certain "inconveniences" will, no doubt, sometimes result from such an extensive liberty. But the attempt to regulate everything by law is "more likely to arouse vices than to reform them". In a passage that foreshadows John Stuart Mill's utilitarian defense of liberty nearly two centuries later, Spinoza adds that "this freedom is of the first importance in fostering the sciences and the arts, for only those whose judgment is free and unbiased can attain success in these fields" (TTP, chap. 20, G III.243/S 226).
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Op het gebied van de politieke filosofie heeft Spinoza grote invloed gehad. In het Theologisch-Politiek Traktaat pleitte Spinoza voor volledige vrijheid van meningsuiting en godsdienstvrijheid, dit in tegenstelling tot zijn tijdgenoten die geloof onderdanig wilden maken aan de staat. Hierdoor werd Spinoza, tezamen met John Locke, de eerste die de principiële tolerantie verdedigde. Spinoza's grootste bijdrage aan de politieke filosofie is dat hij de tolerantie zodanig definieerde dat deze behalve op geloofsconflicten ook op andere gebieden toepasbaar werd. Spinoza baseerde zich op de kenmerken van de mens. Hierdoor ontstaat er een symmetrische relatie tussen tolereerder en getolereerde.
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Spinoza was most interested in creating a state in which it would be safe to philosophize and trying to rein in the more pernicious forces of religion. Spinoza had already died when John Locke had to leave England and went to Amsterdam. But in Amsterdam, Locke did hang with these dissident Protestant thinkers who Spinoza had made a big impression on. And when Locke went back to England, he produced his writings on tolerance that influenced the people who created this extraordinary country that we're fortunate enough to live in. It's a wonderful kind of conceit to think that this reviled Jew might have played a role in creating America.
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It's worth noting that Locke emerged from his years in Amsterdam a far more egalitarian thinker, having decisively moved in the direction of Spinoza. He now accepted, as he had not before, the fundamental egalitarian claim that the legitimacy of the state's power derives from the consent of the governed, a phrase that would prominently find its way into the Declaration.
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