Spinoza to Freud: The unraveling of a psycho-analytical perspective on moral responsibility and law

The status that Spinoza and Freud assign to law has some convergence, for both embrace the positivity, the mere conventionality and utility, of law and eschew any real or eternal moral norms (that is, they thoroughly reject the Natural Law tradition) that law might capture and embody. In addition, both put forth a biological account of human nature, rather than a theological one or even quasi-theological one, and that biological nature is the springboard in each case for defining the overall purpose of law. In addition, for both, human biology is a source of the sociality, the psychic attachments, that make an emotional union of individuals into a group possible. Nevertheless, it is in the specific elaborations of human biology that we can discern the beginning of a parting of the ways, for in their conceptions of human nature and the nature of nature Freud and Spinoza diverge in significant respects.