I... think I've been underestimating Spinoza.

[insert red-faced look here]

I'm reading a book called The Philosophy of Spinoza, edited by Joseph Ratner. Dunno why Ratner's not listed as author--even though he's essentially translating Spinoza into non-geometrical (a.k.a. understandable!) form, he's also providing an explanation of what the heck Spinoza meant. So I guess "editor" here means "translator, and then some!"

Anyway. Ratner says that just because Spinoza likes determinism, that doesn't mean he's saying that people don't have what us normal muggles usually mean by "free will." Which I really should have seen because I already recognized that Spinoza's "free will" does not mean the everyday freedom to choose--and therefore this ain't your daddy's determinism, either.

What's rather freakily (and humblingly) ironic is that Spinoza already combined free will and determinism--and did it in essentially the same way that I thought I'd come up with. Determinism--which for Spinoza is simple causality, not fatalism--is necessary for us to be able to make choices.

Now here's where it gets extra spooky, and I fall in love with Spinoza all over again:

Free will depends upon determinism because humans are as much a part of nature as everything else. Our free will is part if our nature in much the same way that, say, gravity is a part of the nature of planets.

The important thing to remember, though, is that even for Spinoza the future isn't written. Things proceed from nature (gravity if you're a planet, free will if you're a human), but there is no pre-written ending. Spinoza's determinism has nothing to do with teleology.

Ratner then proceeds to explain something else I've been thinking about--eschatology. The Christian worldview, he says, is what's fatalistic. The ending is already written, and nothing we can do could change that. Which is bad news for free will. (Enter Rozencrantz and Guildenstern...)

It's amazing and humbling and incredibly heartening to see Spinoza (and Ratner) making the very argument that had been simmering inside me for some time. Maybe there are no new ideas, but sometimes that's a wonderful thing.