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By Root 3157 0

” the fixer said. “Maybe it’s that God and Nature are one and the same, and so is man, or some such thing, whether he’s poor or rich. If you understand that a man’s mind is part of God, then you understand it as well as I. In that way you’re free, if you’re in the mind of God. If you’re there you know it. At the same time the trouble is that you are bound down by Nature, though that’s not true for God who is Nature anyway. There’s also something called Necessity, which is always there though nobody wants it, that one has to push against. In the shtetl God goes running around with the Law in both hands, but this other God, though he fills up more space, has less to do altogether. Whoever you end up believing in, nothing has changed much in the world if you’re without work. So much for Necessity. I also figure it means that life is life and there’s no sense kicking it into the grave. Either that or I don’t understand it as well as it’s said.”

“If a man is bound to Necessity where does freedom come from?”

“That’s in your thought, your honor, if your thought is in God. That’s if you believe in this kind of God; that’s if you reason it out. It’s as though a man flies over his own head on the wings of reason, or some such thing. You join the universe and forget your worries.”

“Do you believe that one can be free that way?”

“Up to a point,” Yakov sighed. “It sounds fine but my experience is limited. I haven’t lived much outside the small towns.”

The magistrate smiled.

Yakov snickered but caught himself and stopped.

“Is such a thing as you describe it, true freedom, would you say, or cannot one be free without being politically free?”

Here’s where I’d better watch my step, the fixer thought. Politics is politics. No use fanning up hot coals when you have to walk across them.

“I wouldn’t know for sure, your honor. It’s partly one and partly the other.”

“True enough. One might say there is more than one conception of freedom in Spinoza’s mind—in Necessity, philosophically speaking; and practically, in the state, that is to say within the realm of politics and political action. Spinoza conceded a certain freedom of political choice, similar to the freedom of electing to think, if it were possible to make these choices. At least it is possible to think them. He perhaps felt that the purpose of the state—the government—was the security and comparative freedom of rational man. This was to permit man to think as best he could. He also thought man was freer when he participated in the life of society than when he lived in solitude as he himself did. He thought that a free man in society had a positive interest in promoting the happiness and intellectual emancipation of his neighbors.”

“I guess that’s true, your honor, if you say so,” said Yakov, “but as far as I myself am concerned what you said is something to think about, though if you’re poor your time is taken up with other things that I don’t have to mention. You let those who can, worry about the ins and outs of politics.”

“Ah,” Bibikov sighed. He puffed on his cigarette without speaking. For a moment there was no sound in the cell.

Did I say something wrong? Yakov thought wildly. There are times it doesn’t pay to open your mouth.

When the magistrate spoke again he sounded once more like an investigating official, his tone dry, objective.

“Have you ever heard the expression ‘historical necessity?”

“Not that I remember. I don’t think so though maybe I could guess what it means.”

“Are you sure? You’ve not read Hegel?”

“I don’t know his name.”

“Or Karl Marx? He too was a Jew, though not exactly happy to be one.”

“Not him either.”

“Would you say you have a ‘philosophy’ of your own? If so what is it?”

“If I have it’s all skin and bones. I’ve only just come to a little reading, your honor,” he apologized. “If I have any philosophy, if you don’t mind me saying so, it’s that life could be better than it is.”

“Yet how can it be made better if not in politics or through it?”

That’s a sure trap, Yakov thought. “Maybe by more jobs and work,” he faltered. “Not to forget