Thalassa Editions

Ethics

Baruch Spinoza

Rationalism · Advanced

Written in geometrical order and published after his death, it became the great heterodox system of the age.

Baruch Spinoza · first circulated 1677

Main ideas

One infinite substance, described as God or Nature.
Freedom as understanding the causes that move us.

Important themes

NecessityEmotionBlessedness

Reading context

Written in the geometrical order of definitions, axioms and propositions, and published only after Spinoza's death in 1677. Its God, identical with nature and acting by necessity, was read as atheism for a century.

How to approach it

Do not start at proposition one. Read the appendix to Part 1, then Part 3 on the emotions, and go back to the definitions once you know what they are for. The scholia are where he speaks plainly.