SCOPE AND LIMITS OF THE DEFENCE OF FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION IN BARUCH SPINOZA'S POLITICAL THEORY

Although in Baruch Spinoza's political theory occupies a prominent place freedom of thought and expression in his approach to the democratic system of government, however, the scope that Spinoza really gives to freedom of expression is limited by its conception of the state as an instrument of rationalization of collective safety, which it is a founding principle in his political theory, because freedom of expression is conceived as a mechanism for the survival of the state and not as a guarantee of individual freedom against the state itself. Spinoza, therefore, is far from the modern conception of freedom of expression that founded John Milton in Areopagitica and endorsed John Stuart Mill in On Liberty two centuries later.