From Bondage to Freedom: Spinoza and Adler in Dialogue

May 11

Encounter at the Monument

In Amsterdam, near the Zwanenburgwal close to the “Stopera” – that architectural union of City Hall and Opera House – stands a bronze sculpture: Baruch Spinoza, wrapped in a coat inhabited by birds, next to a geometric shape. The inscription on the pedestal reads: “Het doel van de staat is de vrijheid” – “The goal of the state is freedom.”

Tourists hurry past, some stop briefly, take photos. Only a few linger longer. Yet, they stand before a thinker whose ideas still seem radical today.

The Outcast

Spinoza, born in 1632 as the son of Portuguese Jews, was expelled from Amsterdam's Jewish community at the age of 23. His offense: he thought differently about God, the Bible, and humanity.

As I walk through the Jewish quarter, past the Portuguese Synagogue, I try to understand what this rupture meant. Spinoza lost everything: community, identity, economic foundation. He did not respond with bitterness, but instead developed a philosophy of freedom through insight.

From an Individual Psychology perspective, Spinoza's reaction to this profound exclusion shows a remarkable form of constructive compensation. Instead of falling into resentment or neurotic patterns – what Adler would describe as misguided compensation for a shattered sense of self-worth – he transformed his experience into a philosophical system that reached far beyond his personal situation. This creative transcendence corresponds to what Adler describes as healthy processing of feelings of inferiority – the development of abilities that serve not only the individual but the community.

Freedom through Knowledge

In his major work “Ethics,” Spinoza conceives of God not as a transcendent person, but as the substance of the world itself. “Deus sive Natura” – God or Nature. A revolutionary thought that undermines the foundation of religious authority.

The parallels to Alfred Adler's thinking are remarkable. Both understand humans as a unity, not divided into opposing faculties. For Spinoza, as for Adler, true freedom lies not in arbitrariness, but in understanding one's own conditions.

Adler would interpret Spinoza's concept of freedom as overcoming a “private logic.” When we recognize the inadequate ideas – in Adler's terminology, the “tendentious apperception” – that filter our experience, we can reach a more reality-appropriate understanding of ourselves and the world. This process of recognition frees us from the bondage of our unconscious motives and fears.

It should be noted that we can only scratch the surface of Spinoza's complex metaphysics here. His strictly geometrically constructed system of substance, attributes, and modes – in which God appears as the only substance with infinite attributes, of which we can grasp only two (thought and extension) – forms the foundation of his ethics and would require its own treatise (and would overwhelm me). For our dialogue with Adler, however, it is sufficient to consider the existential and psychological consequences of this system.

I'm reminded of my Venetian friend, a careful reader of Spinoza, who regularly admonishes me to read more Spinoza. “His time,” he always says, “is yet to come. In a world of fragmented truths, his integrating vision will become more necessary than ever.”

The Contradictory Unity: The Paradox in Spinoza and Adler

What is often misunderstood: The unity that Spinoza designs is not a harmonious, conflict-free merger. It is, as the psychologist Wilhelm Salber calls it, an “enormous” and “strangely contradictory” unity – a “counter- and inter-play of forces and counter-forces, which are simultaneously determined by a rationally incomprehensible principle, a whole” (Salber, 2025 “How Man Understands Himself”).

This paradoxical structure is also found in Adler's understanding of the psyche. In his famous formulation, we are “simultaneously artist and artwork” – shapers of our lives yet also shaped by circumstances we have not chosen. The human soul appears in his work as simultaneously determined and creative, socially connected and individually striving, unified and yet pervaded by opposites. The feeling of inferiority and the striving for superiority form an inseparable, contradictory unity.

This paradox manifests in numerous human experiences: A person can simultaneously experience themselves as a victim of their past and as a shaper of their future. A human feels both isolated and inseparably connected with others. A child rebels against parents while simultaneously seeking their recognition. These contradictions are not flaws in the system, but expressions of a deeper truth about human existence that both Spinoza and Adler recognized.

What connects both thinkers is their refusal to resolve or simplify these contradictions. Instead of artificial harmonization, they offer a way to endure this tension and use it as a productive force. In our present age, where digital algorithmization reinforces thinking in binary opposites and political polarization creates simple camps and clear enemy images, their paradoxical concept of unity could be an antidote – an intellectual practice of both-and, which does not reduce the complexity of life but seeks to grasp it in its contradictory wholeness.

Politics and Art – The Stopera as Symbol

It seems no coincidence to me that Spinoza's monument stands near the Stopera – that architectural union of City Hall and Opera House that combines politics and art under one roof. Spinoza himself united in his person the clear vision of the political thinker with the creative power of the lens maker and philosopher. The proximity of these two institutions symbolizes what is alive in his philosophy: that freedom requires both a rational political order and the creative expression of human possibilities.

Adler, too, always combined in his practice the scientific view of the physician with the creative power of the educator and counsellor. Both thinkers recognized that the connection between insight and creation, between intellect and art, between science and practice, first enables the full development of human potential.

Community Without Subjugation

Spinoza's political thinking is more relevant today than ever. For him, the state is not an end in itself, but an instrument for securing individual freedom. Democracy is the most reasonable form of government because it maximizes collective reason.

Adler extends this thought with his concept of social interest – not as a moral demand, but as the basis of psychological health. “Gemeinschaftsgefühl” (social interest) is for Adler an innate disposition that must be developed throughout an individual's life. It is the measure of psychological health and encompasses the capacity for empathy, the feeling of belonging, and the willingness to contribute to the welfare of the community.

Both thinkers recognized: Humans realize themselves not against, but only with others. Spinoza's metaphysical unity of “Deus sive Natura” finds its psychological counterpart in Adler's understanding of the fundamental connectedness of all people.

Amsterdam itself – with its canals that simultaneously separate and connect, its bridges that reach out to us, with its openness to diversity while maintaining a clear identity – embodies in a certain way both Spinoza's and Adler's vision: A community that not only tolerates individual freedom but makes it possible through collective reason.

Thinking, Feeling, Acting – A Unity

Spinoza and Adler share a revolutionary insight: We do not free ourselves from our emotions by suppressing or fighting them. Freedom arises rather from understanding their causes and connections. Spinoza expresses this concisely: “A passion ceases to be a passion as soon as we form a clear idea of it.”

Particularly radical appears Spinoza's rejection of moral categories like 'good' and 'evil'. For him, these are not objective properties of things, but human projections, arising 'under the yoke of desire'. Nature itself knows no such divisions – it is beyond moral judgments. What we call 'good' is merely what increases our power to act; what we call 'evil' diminishes it.

This revaluation of traditional moral concepts finds its psychological counterpart in Adler's rejection of moralizing judgments about human behaviour in favour of an understanding approach that asks about the 'why' of a behaviour instead of condemning it.

This approach finds its psychological formulation in Adler's understanding of overcoming feelings of inferiority. These feelings are not overcome through repression or compulsive striving for superiority, but through understanding them in the context of life history and through their integration into a realistic self-image.

Adler's concept of encouragement offers a practical way to implement this philosophical insight. Instead of lecturing people, encouragement enables them to recognize and use their own possibilities.

Spinoza's geometric method can be understood in this light as systematic encouragement to reflect on and change one's own patterns of thinking and feeling. His Ethics invites us to understand the world and our place in it anew.

The Daily Practice of Philosophical Freedom

People in life crises can gain surprisingly current insights from these seemingly old thinkers that enable concrete changes. A leader, caught in constant worry about their authority, can develop a new leadership style by understanding their unconscious motives – what Spinoza would call “inadequate ideas.” Instead of compulsive control, trust in the team and in oneself then emerges. A young man who always feels inferior in social situations can recognize his reactions as part of a larger pattern – not as isolated deficits, but as understandable protective mechanisms. This insight does not immediately change the feelings, but it provides the opportunity to act despite fear and to gather new experiences.

In such processes of change, it becomes apparent that it is not theoretical knowledge that liberates, but the lived experience that understanding creates freedom – precisely that “intellectual love” of which Spinoza speaks, realized as daily practiced self-reflection and courageous action in the sense of Adler's “social interest.”

The Creative Force: Between Determination and Freedom

An apparent contradiction between Spinoza and Adler lies in their understanding of determination and freedom. While Spinoza advocates a strict determinism, Adler emphasizes the “creative power” of the individual.

Yet, this opposition dissolves upon closer inspection: Adler recognizes the conditionality of our being through dispositions, environment, and early experiences, but sees in the creative processing of these givens the space for self-formation. Spinoza, in turn, finds freedom not in the absence of determination, but in the insight into necessity.

In my work with clients, I experience this field of tension daily. A client who suffered from severe outbursts of anger made a decisive step when she recognized that her anger was not freely chosen, but part of a learned pattern from her childhood. This insight paradoxically enabled her to have new freedom in dealing with her anger – precisely in the sense of Spinoza's “freedom through insight into necessity.”

What We Need Today

In a world of quick judgments and simple answers, Spinoza and Adler show another way:

Understanding instead of condemning
Freedom through insight instead of through lawlessness
Community without subjugation
Thinking that leads to action

Both thinkers offer us ways out of “tendentious apperception” – that selective perception that distorts our judgments and keeps us trapped in old patterns. They show that true freedom lies not in isolation, but in conscious connectedness.

Spinoza's monument in Amsterdam – with its coat of native sparrows and foreign parrots, a symbol for multicultural society – reminds us of a thinker who never understood freedom as the mere absence of coercion, but as the positive force of self-determination through insight. In a time of confusion and increasing psychological burdens, his clear vision, complemented by Adler's profound understanding of human motivation, might be more necessary than ever.

Siegfried Lautenbacher