Abstract

This chapter defends an interpretation, informed by the results of earlier chapters, of Spinoza's puzzling claims about the mind's eternity in Part 5 of the _Ethics_. It is argued that Spinoza writes about the eternal part of the mind in temporal terms, as a thing that is immortal and that can change during life, because he takes people typically to understand eternity as sempiternity. Freedom, on Spinoza's account, is a more complete efficacy of a mind's adequate ideas during the course of a person's life. Because the eternal part of the mind does not change intrinsically in time, the degree of freedom that one can attain is a function of one's ability to overcome the influence of harmful passions.