Reading Spinoza’s Ethics

✱1Amsterdam and the herem, 1632–1656

Birth to the ban · Vlooienburg, the Talmud Torah congregation, the family firm · the herem in Portuguese, with a rendering made for this page

A Portuguese-Jewish family

Spinoza was born on 24 November 1632 in the Vlooienburg quarter of Amsterdam.^H6 He was Bento in Portuguese, Baruch in Hebrew, Benedictus in Latin; each means “blessed”.^H7 His father, Michael d’Espinosa, born in Vidigueira in Portugal, was an independent merchant in subtropical fruit and foodstuffs; his mother, Hanna Deborah, died on 5 November 1638, when he was about five.^H8,9,10

Amsterdam’s three Portuguese congregations, Beth Jacob, Neve Shalom and Beth Israel, united as Kahal Kadosh de Talmud Torah: on 3 April 1639 according to Spinoza Web, in 1639 for Nadler, while the Jewish Encyclopedia (1901–06) says they “were consolidated (1638)”. Its synagogue on the Houtgracht was begun in 1639 and demolished in 1931.^H11,10,12

Spinoza was a strong pupil at the congregation’s school and may have been thought of for the rabbinate, but he did not go on to advanced Talmud study; at 17 he left school for the family business.^H7 When Michael died on 28 March 1654, Bento and his brother Gabriel ran the firm as “Bento y Gabriel de Spinoza”, importing dried fruit; Gabriel kept it going until at least 31 October 1664.^H8,10,13,14 In 1656 Spinoza had the Dutch authorities declare him an orphan, freeing him from his father’s debts but breaking a communal rule.^H13 Nadler doubts this explains the severity of what followed.^I13

The herem of 27 July 1656

On 27 July 1656 (6 Av 5416) the ma’amad, the congregation’s lay board, proclaimed a herem, a ban, against him in the Houtgracht synagogue. He was 23; the ban was never lifted.^H13 The only surviving text is Portuguese, though it may first have been written in Hebrew and read aloud. It is an unsigned entry in the Livro dos Acordos da Nação e Ascamot, fol. 408, now in the Stadsarchief Amsterdam, archive 334 (PA 334/19).^H15,16,17,18

… tendo cada dia mayores noticias das horrendas heregias que practicava e ensinava, e ynormes obras q[ue] obrava … Malditto seja de dia e malditto seja de noute … Advirtindo que ning[u]em lhe pode fallar bocalm[en]te nem p[or] escritto, nem darlhe nenhum favor, nem debaixo de tecto estar com elle, nem junto de quatro covados, nem leer papel algum feito ou escritto p[or] elle.

… receiving each day more notice of the horrendous heresies that he practised and taught, and of the monstrous deeds that he performed … Cursed be he by day and cursed be he by night … Warning that no one may speak with him by mouth or in writing, nor do him any favour, nor be under one roof with him, nor within four cubits of him, nor read any paper made or written by him.

Herem, 27 July 1656, as transcribed by Révah (1959, pp. 57–58), reprinted in H. Santiago’s Portuguese translation of Méchoulan (2013); [ ] marks expansions · English: Rendering for this page

Afterwards

Since 2008 a statue by Nicolas Dings has stood on the Zwanenburgwal, inscribed “Het doel van de staat is de vrijheid” (the purpose of the state is freedom).^H19 On 6 December 2015 an Amsterdam symposium weighed lifting the herem; Chief Rabbi Pinchas Toledano declined, citing among other reasons Spinoza’s lack of repentance, and in 2021 wrote that the ban remains in force.^H20,21,22

Sources for ✱1: 6–22

✱2Rijnsburg, Voorburg, The Hague: the circle and the Republic

1661–1677 · lodgings, friends, a republic in crisis

Three lodgings

Spinoza learned Latin from Franciscus van den Enden, a former Jesuit and physician, later hanged in Paris (Spinoza Web: 7 November 1674) for a republican plot against Louis XIV.^H23,13,10,24 He had left Amsterdam for good by 29 July 1661, when he was lodging at Rijnsburg, near Leiden, with the surgeon Herman Homan.^H25 Nadler has him grinding lenses there, known for telescopes and microscopes by that autumn,^H26 and writing the TIE and the Short Treatise; from early 1663 he taught Descartes’s Principles to a Leiden student, Johannes Casearius.^H7,25 The house became a museum in 1899, owned by the Vereniging Het Spinozahuis (founded 1897).^H25,27

Between 21 April and 3 August 1663 he moved to Voorburg, lodging with the painter Daniel Tydeman on the Kerklaan.^H28 In the mid-1660s he and Johannes Hudde worked on a hand-held telescope.^H29

Then The Hague: a back room on the Stille Veerkade, later a front room in the painter Hendrick van der Spijck’s house on the Paviljoensgracht.^H30,31 Spinoza Web’s own pages disagree on his arrival: between early September 1669 and early February 1671 on one, by mid-October 1670 on another.^H30,32

The Republic

In 1668 Adriaan Koerbagh (born 1632 per Spinoza Web, 1633 per Leeuwenburgh) was sentenced in Amsterdam to ten years in the Rasphuis and, by one dictionary, fines of 4,000 and 2,000 guilders and ten years’ banishment; he died in 1669.^H33,34,35 In the Rampjaar, the “disaster year” 1672, William III became stadtholder of Holland on 4 July, and on 20 August an Orangist mob killed Johan and Cornelis de Witt in The Hague.^H36,37 Leibniz’s note of a talk with him in 1676 says Spinoza then “endeavoured to go out … to stick upon the wall, near the place of the massacre, a paper, on which was written, ‘Ultimi barbarorum’”, until his landlord stopped him.^H38 Margalit traces the story to Leibniz’s own writings.^I39

In February 1673 J. L. Fabritius offered him, for the Elector Palatine, “an ordinary professorship of Philosophy” at Heidelberg, with “the most ample freedom in philosophical teaching”, if he did not use it “to disturb the religion publicly established” (Letter 47; Elwes dates it 16 February, Spinoza Web the 26th). On 30 March he declined: teaching would end his research, and he did not know “the limits, within which the freedom of my philosophical teaching would be confined” (Letter 48).^L40,41 In late July 1673, invited through Stouppe with a passport signed by Condé, he went to French-occupied Utrecht; Condé had left on 25 July, and there is no evidence they met.^H42 Gootjes finds the trip’s purpose unclear.^I43 In November 1676 Leibniz spent several days with him (✱15).^H39,44

Spinoza died in his room on the Paviljoensgracht on 21 February 1677.^H6,31 Barred from a Jewish cemetery by the ban, he was buried in the Nieuwe Kerk, on 25 February by an 1877 account; Job Wertheim’s 1956 monument there is carved “caute”.^H45,46

The circle

Dates from Spinoza Web; roles also from Steenbakkers (1994):^H47,41,48

• Jarig Jelles (1620–1683): Letter 50; wrote, or co-wrote, the preface to the posthumous works (✱4).
• Pieter Balling (d. 1664): began a Dutch Ethica.
• Simon Joosten de Vries (1633/4–1667): reported the Amsterdam reading group (Letter 8, ✱3).
• Lodewijk Meyer (1629/30–1681): physician; edited and prefaced the PPC.
• Johannes Bouwmeester (1630–1680): Letter 28; the Utrecht invitation.
• Jan Rieuwertsz (1617–1687): publisher of the TTP and the posthumous works.
• Henry Oldenburg (c. 1619–1677): Royal Society; letters 1661–1676, with a gap 1665–1675.
• E. W. von Tschirnhaus (1651–1708): letters, 8 October 1674 to 23 June 1676.
• G. H. Schuller (1650/1–1679): Letter 58; reported the printing to Leibniz (✱4).
• Willem van Blijenbergh (1613–1694): on evil (Letters 23, 27; 1665).
• Albert Burgh (1648/50–1708): turned Catholic; urged conversion (Letter 67, 1675).
• Niels Stensen: denounced the Ethics to the Holy Office in 1677 (✱4).
• Hugo Boxel (1607–1680): on ghosts, 1674 (Letters 52, 56).
• Johannes Hudde (1628–1704): Amsterdam burgomaster; Letters 34–36 (1666), “To Christian Huyghens” in Elwes.^L40

Sources for ✱2: 6–7, 10, 13, 23–48

✱3Writing the Ethics, 1661–1675

From geometrical drafts to a finished book held back · the evidence is the letters

Geometrical from the start

Henry Oldenburg’s first known letter is dated 26 August 1661;^H47 in Letter 2 (September 1661) Spinoza sent him propositions “proved in the geometrical method”, enclosed “separately”; the enclosure is lost, and Elwes matched it to “Eth. I., Beginning—Prop. iv.”^L40 The Short Treatise (KV), which Nadler also places at Rijnsburg, survives in Dutch copies: the oldest (Koninklijke Bibliotheek 75 G 15) is late 17th-century, from two lost versions; another is Johannes Monnikhoff’s, 18th-century. Van Vloten printed it in 1862.^H7,49,48,50

By February 1663 a draft was being studied in Amsterdam. Simon de Vries described a club in which “One of us (that is everyone by turn) reads through and, as far as he understands it, expounds and also demonstrates the whole of your work, according to the sequence and order of your propositions” (Letter 8, 24 February 1663). He cites “the third note to the eighth proposition”, which Elwes matches to the printed E1p10s, and “your note on Proposition XIX”, which Elwes could not identify (his footnote says the printed Part I has no such note, although E1p19s exists): the numbering was not yet final. Spinoza’s reply (Letter 9, exact date unknown) praises “your club, which is wisely enough ordered”.^L40,41

“The third part”, 1665

quod ad 3am partem nostrae philosophiae attinet, ejus aliquam brevi vel tibi, si translator esse vis, vel amico de Vries mittam

As regards the third part of my philosophy, I will shortly send it you, if you wish to be its transmitter, or to our friend De Vries

Letter 28, to Bouwmeester, before 13 June 1665 · Latin as quoted by Steenbakkers from Gebhardt · tr. Elwes

He will send “up to the eightieth proposition, or thereabouts”.^L41,48,40 Elwes’s “transmitter” renders translator; Steenbakkers reads it as an invitation to put Part 3 into Dutch, and Elwes guessed, with a query, that the addressee was J. Bresser. Elwes’s “I will shortly send it you” also flattens ejus aliquam, “some of it”.^I48,40 The printed Part III ends at E3p59, followed by the Definitions of the Affects.^T

The interruption

In September 1665, says the 1911 Britannica, Oldenburg twitted him for turning from philosophy to theology.^I51 Letter 30 (about 1 October 1665), known only from quotations (in Oldenburg’s letter of 7 October to Robert Moray, and in Boyle’s Works), gave the new book’s aims; Steinberg lists three: to answer the charge of atheism, to oppose the theologians’ prejudices, and to defend the freedom to philosophize.^L41,52 Nadler: the Ethics was set aside for the TTP when toleration came under threat.^H7 Oldenburg’s letters then stop, from 18 December 1665 to the spring of 1675.^H47

Finished, and held back

On 22 July 1675 Oldenburg understood “that you intend to publish your treatise in five parts”, and asked him to include nothing that might “discourage the practice of religion and virtue” (Letter 62). Spinoza replied (Letter 68, August–October 1675):^L40,41

When I received your letter of the 22nd July, I had set out to Amsterdam for the purpose of publishing the book I had mentioned to you. While I was negotiating, a rumour gained currency that I had in the press a book concerning God, wherein I endeavoured to show that there is no God. … I determined to put off publishing till I saw how things were going …

Letter 68 · tr. Elwes

Steenbakkers takes this to show the work finished and with Rieuwertsz by summer 1675.^I48 On 15 November Oldenburg warned that “the book you propose to publish is in peril” (Letter 71).^L40 Copies circulated: Tschirnhaus told Leibniz of the manuscript after September 1675, and a copy made that year survives in the Vatican (✱4).^H44,53

Sources for ✱3: 7, 28, 40–41, 44, 47–55

✱4After 1677: Opera Posthuma, the bans, the Vatican manuscript

Print, bans, first lives, and a manuscript made public in 2011

Before 1677

In Spinoza’s lifetime only his exposition of Descartes’s Principles (August 1663; Dutch 1664) bore his name.^H25,56 The TTP appeared anonymously in late 1669 or early 1670 under a false imprint, “Hamburgi, apud Henricum Künraht”, from Rieuwertsz.^H57 Church bodies sought its suppression from 1670,^H58 and on 19 July 1674 a placard of the Court of Holland (Hof van Holland) banned it with Hobbes’s Leviathan, Meyer’s Philosophia S. Scripturae Interpres (1666) and the Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum.^H59,60

The posthumous works

Within days of his death his writing box, with unpublished writings and letters, went to Rieuwertsz, who acknowledged it on 25 March 1677.^H48 In July Schuller told Leibniz they would appear “in idiomate Latino et Belgico simul”, in Latin and Dutch together.^H48 The Latin title page reads B. d. S. Opera posthuma, initials only, with no place or publisher but Rieuwertsz’s device.^H2,61 It appeared with the Dutch Nagelate schriften in December 1677 by Steenbakkers’s reckoning, in the first weeks of 1678 by Spinoza Web’s.^H48,56 Besides the Ethica came the Political Treatise, the unfinished TIE, a Hebrew grammar and the letters, with living persons cut to initials.^H7,48

The bans of 1678

On 4 February 1678 Leiden’s church council condemned the posthumous works, and about 11 February its burgomasters ordered them seized;^H59 Steenbakkers cites a Hague church-council decree of 11 February against “de nieuw uytgekomen Boeken van Spinosa, soo int Latyn als in duyts”, possibly a separate measure.^H48 A placard of 25 June 1678 suppressed them, issued by the Supreme Court of Holland, Zeeland and West-Friesland on one Spinoza Web page, by the States on another; Utrecht followed on 4 November.^H59,60 In Rome, Stensen’s denunciation began an Index procedure that ended within two years.^H64

The first lives

Johannes Colerus (1647–1707), Lutheran minister at The Hague, ended his sermon book De waarachtige verryzenis Jesu Christi … tegen B. de Spinosa en zyn aanhangers verdeedigt (Amsterdam, 1705) with a “Korte, dog waaragtige levens-beschryving, van Benedictus de Spinosa”; French and English versions followed in 1706.^H65,66,67 The life in La Vie et l’Esprit de Spinosa (1719) is attributed by Schwarzbach and the BnF to Jean-Maximilien Lucas (1647–1697); other candidates named in reference works could not be checked here.^H68,69

The Vatican manuscript

The only known manuscript of the Ethica, Vat. lat. 12838, is a complete copy not in Spinoza’s hand, made in 1675, by broad consensus by Pieter van Gent.^H64,53,70 Tschirnhaus most plausibly passed it to Stensen, who denounced the work with it to the Holy Office: on 4 September 1677 per Spinoza Web, 23 September per Spruit and Totaro. In 1922 it went to the Vatican Library.^H25,71,64 Leen Spruit found it, with Pina Totaro as co-discoverer by Daniel Garber’s account (news of May 2011);^H53 their edition (Leiden: Brill, 2011) prints it with its divergences from the Opera Posthuma and a new Italian denunciation by Stensen.^H71,64 Cristofolini finds most variants minor, some plainly wrong (corpus for mentem), and the copy poorer than the printer’s, yet a few better: E1d7’s future dicetur, and in E2p49s the lack of a “winged” horse (equum alatum) that he calls a 19th-century editors’ addition.^I64 Żelazna: mostly copying errors, some that matter.^I70 Later critical texts: Gebhardt (Heidelberg, 1925); Akkerman and Steenbakkers (Paris: PUF, 2020).^H5,72

Sources for ✱4: 2, 5, 7, 25, 48, 53, 56–72

✱5Descartes, and Spinoza’s book on Descartes

Descartes, Principles I.51–56 (1644) · Spinoza's Descartes book with the Cogitata metaphysica (1663) · Meyer's preface · Letters 13, 15

Why it matters

Part I's technical language is, Nadler writes, "to all appearances, right out of Descartes".^I7 Spinoza keeps the Cartesian idea that an attribute constitutes a substance's essence, but gives extension, like thought, to the one infinite substance (Shein, SEP §§1.1, 1.3).^I73 Descartes is also an opponent: E3pref names celeberrimum Cartesium, who held that the mind has absolute power over its actions, and E5pref rejects his pineal-gland account.^T

Substance, attribute, mode

Descartes sets out the three terms "in textbook fashion" in Principles I.51–65 (Hatfield, SEP §3.3).^I74 Substance is "a thing which exists in such a way as to stand in need of nothing beyond itself in order to its existence" (I.51); strictly only God qualifies, but created substances need only God's concourse (I.52). Each has one principal attribute that constitutes its essence: extension for body, thought for mind (I.53). By modes he means "the same with what we elsewhere designate attributes or qualities", yet of God "it is not proper to say that there are modes or qualities in him, but simply attributes" (I.56).^H75 Spinoza keeps the words and tightens them: substance must also be conceived through itself (E1d3), and E1p14 leaves God the only one (✱10).^T

Spinoza's book on Descartes (1663)

Renati Des Cartes Principiorum Philosophiae Pars I & II, with the Cogitata metaphysica, appeared in early August 1663;^H25 it was the only book published under Spinoza's name in his lifetime. It sets Descartes's Principles out in geometrical order (Letter 13).^L76 Letter 13 (to Oldenburg, 1663) tells how it began. He had dictated Part II to a young man quem meas opiniones aperte docere nolebam, whom he did not wish to teach his own opinions openly. Friends asked for Part I, done within two weeks, and he let them print it if a preface warned that me non omnia, quae in eo Tractatu continentur, pro meis agnoscere: not all of it was his own view.^L76 (Spinoza Web records him teaching Descartes's Principles to a young Leiden student, Johannes Casearius, from early 1663; the letter names no one.)^H25 The Ethics cites the book once, for a proof of God's eternity (E1p19s).^T

Meyer's preface

Letter 15 (3 August 1663) returns Lodewijk Meyer's draft. Spinoza asks him to say that he proves many things differently from Descartes non ut Cartesium corrigam, sed tantum ut meum ordinem melius retineam, not to correct him but to keep his own order, and to delete an attack on illum homunculum, "that little man".^L76 Roth notes that those passages were evidently removed (1923, p. 164 n.).^I77 The printed preface is known here only as reported. Britan (1905, p. xli) says it tells readers Spinoza did not hold, with Descartes, that the will is distinct from the understanding, still less free;^I78 Roth (pp. 163–164), that it ascribes to Descartes, not Spinoza, the claims that some things surpass human understanding; he calls it "a manifesto of dissociation from Descartes".^I77 The Ethics argues the same: no free will (E2p48), and Voluntas et intellectus unum et idem sunt., "Will and understanding are one and the same." (E2p49c).^T

Sources for ✱5: 7, 25, 73–78

✱6Scholastic words and Euclid’s method

E1d1, E1p29s · essence and existence, causa sui, natura naturans · the geometrical order · Letters 2–3 · Descartes's Second Replies

Old words, new uses

The book opens with essence and existence: id cujus essentia involvit existentiam, the self-caused is that whose essence involves existence (E1d1).^T Self-causation was contested. Melamed reports it "almost an anathema" to scholastic authors (2021, p. 120); Descartes told Caterus he had not called efficient self-causation impossible (p. 117), and answered Arnauld's denial by making God's essence a formal cause much like an efficient one (pp. 118–120). Melamed argues that Spinoza means real efficient causation (pp. 120–125).^I79

At E1p29s Spinoza pauses over natura naturans and natura naturata: explicare volo vel potius monere, he will "explain, or rather call attention to" what they mean. The words were already current.^T The Cambridge Spinoza Lexicon traces them to at least the thirteenth century, probably to Latin translations of Averroes.^I80 Koch names Michael Scot, translating from Arabic about 1220, who read Aristotle's contrast of natural and artificial products as one between God and the world.^I81 Spinoza's sense is his own: the first is God quatenus ut causa libera consideratur, the second all the modes, as things in God (E1p29s; ✱10).^T

The geometrical order

Each Part lays down definitions, axioms or postulates, then numbered propositions whose demonstrations cite earlier items by number (✱9). Spinoza names Euclid once, when merchants find a fourth proportional ex vi demonstrationis propositionis 19 libri 7 Euclidis (E2p40s2). E1app gives mathematics a special role: final causes would have hidden the truth for ever "if mathematics had not furnished another standard of verity", attending only to the essences and properties of figures; and E3pref treats human actions and appetites "as though I were concerned with lines, planes, and solids".^T

The form was there from the first letters. In 1661 Spinoza could think of nothing better than to send Oldenburg his views more Geometrico probata, proved in the geometrical manner (Letter 2); Oldenburg replied Geometricum tuum probandi morem valde probo (Letter 3).^L76 Descartes had been asked, in the Second Objections, to argue as Euclid did; he distinguished a demonstration's order from its manner (Shein 2016)^I82 and appended Rationes … more geometrico dispositae, whose first axiom (AT VII 164–165) speaks of a nature whose immensity est causa sive ratio, propter quam nulla causa indiget ad existendum: why it needs no cause to exist (Carraud 2022).^I83

Aubrey shows how such a chain is read. Hobbes, "40 yeares old before he looked on geometry", found Euclid open at Book I, proposition 47, read it, then its demonstration, which referred him to another proposition, and that back to another, until he was "demonstratively convinced of that trueth".^H84 The explorer in Part C lets you walk the Ethics backwards the same way. The form has costs. Ratner (1927) saw its aim as giving ethics the tested footing of geometry, but held that its terms need more elucidation than curt definitions allow, and that it turns attention from clarifying propositions to proving them.^I85 Nadler gives the method a chapter (2006, ch. 2, pp. 35–51).^I86

Sources for ✱6: 76, 79–86

✱7Hobbes, the Jewish background, the Stoics

Letter 50 (1674) · E4p37s2 · TTP chs. 7–9 · E2p7s · Letter 12 (1663) · E5pref · the Stoic question, disputed

Hobbes

Nadler judges that Spinoza was clearly influenced by his reading of Hobbes, chiefly in politics (SEP).^I7 Asked in 1674 how he differed from Hobbes, Spinoza wrote: "I always preserve natural right intact, and only allot to the chief magistrates in every state a right over their subjects commensurate with the excess of their power over the power of the subjects. This is what always takes place in the state of nature" (Letter 50, probably to Jarig Jelles).^L40 Steinberg glosses this: for Hobbes natural right can be given up, and giving it up founds the sovereign in Leviathan; for Spinoza right is as wide as power, so it cannot be given away, and the civil state is not cut off from the state of nature (SEP §§2.1–2.2).^I52 Read the Ethics' own account of the state of nature and the founding of the civitas, E4p37s2, with this in mind. Part III's conatus has a Hobbesian relative too: Hobbes used the term in his physiology of desire (Leviathan VI; LeBuffe, SEP §1.3).^I87

The Jewish background

In the TTP Spinoza argues with medieval Jewish exegetes by name. He rejects Maimonides' rule that Scripture must be read so as not to contradict reason: "we dismiss Maimonides' theory as harmful, useless, and absurd" (ch. 7). He credits Ibn Ezra ("Aben Ezra") as the first, so far as he knows, to hint that Moses did not write the whole Pentateuch (ch. 8). A note to ch. 9 finds that "Levi Ben Gerson (certainly a very learned man)" corrects Scripture rather than interpreting it.^L88 The Ethics names no Jewish philosopher, but at E2p7s quidam Hebræorum quasi per nebulam vidisse videntur: "those Jews who maintained that God, God's intellect, and the things understood by God are identical" dimly saw that a mode and its idea are one thing. Melamed treats this as a Maimonidean doctrine unrelated to pantheism.^I89 Nadler (SEP §2) sees Part V's happiness in the intellectual love of God taking its cue from Maimonides on human flourishing.^I7

Letter 12 (1663) gives a proof "as I find it in a certain Jew", whom Van Vloten and Land identify as Hasdai Crescas.^L40,76 Melamed (2023 draft) reads this as Spinoza endorsing Crescas's strictly necessitarian proof;^I90 Sadik credits Crescas with shaping Spinoza on God's essence, determinism and extension, while noting controversy among scholars about such influences (SEP; ✱10).^I91

The Stoics

The Ethics names the Stoics once, to reject them: Stoici tamen putarunt eosdem a nostra voluntate absolute pendere nosque iis absolute imperare posse, "the Stoics have thought, that the emotions depended absolutely on our will, and that we could absolutely govern them", until experience forced them to admit that long practice is needed (E5pref).^T Yet Cicero and other Stoics used cognates of conatus for desire (LeBuffe, SEP §1.3).^I87

Sources for ✱7: 7, 40, 52, 76, 87–96

✱8Spinoza’s other works, and a glossary

TIE · Short Treatise · TTP · TP · the letters and their numbering · twelve key terms

The other works

Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (TIE): an essay on method from the Rijnsburg years (Nadler, SEP §1),^H7 printed in 1677 with the editors' note that it was written many years before and never finished.^H97 Curley's A Spinoza Reader (1994) opens with this search for the true good and, its publisher says, chooses its other texts to make the Ethics easier.^I98

Postquam me experientia docuit, omnia, quae in communi vita frequenter occurrunt, vana et futilia esse; cum viderem omnia, a quibus et quae timebam, nihil neque boni neque mali in se habere, nisi quatenus ab iis animus movebatur; constitui tandem inquirere, an aliquid daretur, quod verum bonum, et sui communicabile esset…

After experience had taught me that all the usual surroundings of social life are vain and futile; seeing that none of the objects of my fears contained in themselves anything either good or bad, except in so far as the mind is affected by them, I finally resolved to inquire whether there might be some real good having power to communicate itself…

TIE §1 · Latin: Van Vloten & Land (OCR, normalised) · tr. Elwes

Short Treatise (Korte Verhandeling, KV), on God, man and his well-being, survives only in Dutch, in two manuscript copies (A, B) at The Hague.^H97 Known by 1852 from Boehmer's printed outline, it was first printed in full by van Vloten in 1862.^H97 Melamed argues that its first appendix is the earliest draft of the Ethics, older than the excerpts sent with Letters 2 and 4 (1661).^I54

Theological-Political Treatise (TTP): published anonymously in late 1669 or early 1670 (✱4); Spinoza set the Ethics aside to write it (Nadler, SEP §1).^H7 Political Treatise (TP): unfinished at his death on 21 February 1677, just after he began the first of probably two chapters on democracy.^H52 Steinberg pairs E4p37s2 with TTP ch. 16 and, after Matheron, reads the TP as a sequel to the Ethics on how freedom depends on institutions.^I52

Letters: none survives from before 1661.^H7 The 1677 Opera Posthuma kept each correspondent's exchanges together; Van Vloten and Land (1882–83) renumbered them by date, with a concordance; Gebhardt and modern scholars keep their numbers.^H76,99 Elwes leads with the old numbers and adds the new in parentheses: his "Letter XXIX. (XII.)", to Meyer, is modern Letter 12. This page uses modern numbers.^H40

A glossary

Plain words, Elwes's English, and where Spinoza defines or introduces the term.^T

Sources for ✱8: 7, 40, 52, 54, 76, 97–99

✱9How to read the book

The parts of a Part · citation codes · Spinoza's own advice · reading orders · editions and translations · companions

How a Part is built

Definitions fix terms; axioms and postulates state what is assumed; propositions are the claims, each proved in a demonstration that cites earlier items by number. A corollary follows straight from a proposition; a scholium is a note in freer prose. After E2p13 come seven lemmas on bodies. Parts II–V open with a preface; Parts I and IV close with an appendix (IV's has 32 chapters); Part III ends with 48 Definitions of the Affects and a General Definition. The Parts hold 36, 49, 59, 73 and 42 propositions.^T

Citation codes

This page writes E4p37s2 for Part IV, proposition 37, second scholium. Lord writes "IVP37S2", Steinberg (SEP) "EIVP37S2", Nadler (SEP) forms like "Ip17s1".^I100,52,7 "G" is Gebhardt's edition by volume, page and line: Melamed cites Letter 50 as "G iv/240/6–15".^I101

Spinoza's advice

Hic sine dubio lectores hærebunt multaque comminiscentur quæ moram injiciant et hac de causa ipsos rogo ut lento gradu mecum pergant nec de his judicium ferant donec omnia perlegerint.

Here, I doubt not, readers will come to a stand, and will call to mind many things which will cause them to hesitate; I therefore beg them to accompany me slowly, step by step, and not to pronounce on my statements, till they have read to the end.

E2p11s · tr. Elwes

E1app says what remained to do after the demonstrations: Spinoza had removed prejudices that might block them where he could, and now brings the rest, all rooted in final causes, "before the bar of reason", ad examen rationis.^T

Reading orders

Lord (2010, p. 12) says to read in sequence, a whole Part at a time: skim a few propositions for direction, go back to the demonstrations and scholia, and expect to reread. The scholia, she adds, are among the most enjoyable passages.^I100 Ratner (1927) rearranged passages by topic for lay readers: "A continuous reading of the original Ethics, even on a single topic, is impossible."^I85 Deleuze, as reported by Dronsfield and Verdult, finds three Ethics: the chain of demonstrations; the scholia (Verdult, in a blog summary, adds prefaces and appendices), which read alone would be an anti-Bible (Deleuze 1997, p. 146); and Part V.^I102,103

Which text, which translation

The Latin first appeared in the Opera Posthuma, dated 1677, together with the Dutch Nagelate schriften (December 1677 or early 1678; ✱4).^H2,97 Scholars cite Gebhardt's Spinoza Opera (Heidelberg, 1925);^H7 a new critical text by Akkerman and Steenbakkers faces Moreau's French in Œuvres IV (PUF, 2020).^H72,104 The only surviving manuscript, Vat. lat. 12838, is edited by Spruit and Totaro (Brill, 2011).^H71 Public-domain English: Elwes (1884), quoted here, and White (1883; revised with Amelia Hutchison Stirling, 1894).^H3,105 George Eliot's, finished in 1856, was first printed in 1981 (Salzburg, ed. Thomas Deegan); Clare Carlisle edited it for Princeton in 2020.^H106,107 Modern: Curley (Princeton, 1985; Penguin, 1996)^H4,108 and Shirley, in his Complete Works (Hackett, 2002).^H7

Companions

• Nadler, Spinoza's 'Ethics': An Introduction (2006): follows the book in order; serves non-specialists "admirably" (LeBuffe).^I86,109
• Lord, Spinoza's Ethics (2010): a step-by-step guide to read alongside.^I100
• Lloyd, Routledge Philosophy GuideBook to Spinoza and the Ethics (1996): a guidebook of 163 pages.^H110
• Della Rocca, Spinoza (2008): the principle of sufficient reason as key; LeBuffe warns it underplays blessedness.^I111
• Curley, Behind the Geometrical Method (1988): three lectures, the main text written for readers with little philosophical background.^I112
• Carlisle, Spinoza's Religion (2021): the Ethics as a spiritual practice of "being-in-God" (Douglas).^I113
• Melamed (ed.), Spinoza's 'Ethics': A Critical Guide (2017): fifteen essays by Garrett, Lin, Lord, LeBuffe and others.^I114
• Deleuze, Spinoza: Practical Philosophy (tr. Robert Hurley, 1988): the Ethics as an "ethology", in its publisher's word.^I115

Sources for ✱9: 2–4, 7, 52, 71–72, 85–86, 97, 100–115

✱10Part I · De Deo — Concerning God

E1d1–E1app · 8 definitions, 7 axioms, 36 propositions, Appendix · geometrical drafts from 1661 (Letters 2, 8) · printed 1677

Context

The vocabulary is Descartes's. In Principles I.51–53 substance needs nothing else to exist; strictly only God qualifies, yet "created substances" need only God's concourse, each with one principal attribute, extension or thought.^H75 Spinoza gives really distinct attributes to one substance (E1p10s); Descartes kept real distinction for distinct substances.^I73 E1d1 enters an old quarrel: scholastics largely rejected self-causation, Descartes would not rule it out, and Melamed argues Spinoza makes causa sui real efficient causation (2021, pp. 120–125).^I79 Sadik thinks Spinoza probably studied Crescas's Or Hashem, whose God as "the place of the world" helped him make extension divine; Sadik notes controversy over Jewish influences on Spinoza generally.^I91 Letter 12 (1663) gives a proof "as I find it in a certain Jew", whom Van Vloten and Land identify as Hasdai Crescas.^L40,76 The form was geometrical from the start: Letter 2 (1661) sent Oldenburg proofs Elwes matches to "Eth. I., Beginning—Prop. iv.", and in 1663 an Amsterdam group read a differently numbered draft "according to the sequence and order of your propositions" (Letter 8).^L40

What it sets out to do

Part I has no preface; the Appendix opens with Spinoza's summary:

His Dei naturam ejusque proprietates explicui ut quod necessario existit; quod sit unicus; quod ex sola suæ naturæ necessitate sit et agat; quod sit omnium rerum causa libera et quomodo; quod omnia in Deo sint et ab ipso ita pendeant ut sine ipso nec esse nec concipi possint; …

In the foregoing I have explained the nature and properties of God. I have shown that he necessarily exists, that he is one: that he is, and acts solely by the necessity of his own nature; that he is the free cause of all things, and how he is so; that all things are in God, and so depend on him, that without him they could neither exist nor be conceived; …

E1app · G II/77ff. · tr. Elwes

It adds that all things were predetermined "not through his free will" but from God's nature or infinite power (E1app).^T

Key definitions and axioms

In plain words: self-caused means its essence involves existence (E1d1); finite in its kind, limited by something of the same nature (E1d2); substance, in itself and conceived through itself (E1d3); attribute, what intellect perceives as constituting a substance's essence (E1d4); mode, an affection of substance, in and conceived through another (E1d5); God, ens absolute infinitum, a substance of infinitely many attributes (E1d6); free, acting from one's own nature alone (E1d7); eternity, existence that follows from a definition, not endless time (E1d8). Axioms: everything is in itself or in another (E1a1); knowing an effect involves knowing its cause (E1a4); things with nothing in common cannot explain each other (E1a5); a true idea agrees with its object (E1a6); what can be conceived as not existing does not involve existence (E1a7).^T

Per substantiam intelligo id quod in se est et per se concipitur hoc est id cujus conceptus non indiget conceptu alterius rei a quo formari debeat.

By substance, I mean that which is in itself, and is conceived through itself: in other words, that of which a conception can be formed independently of any other conception.

E1d3 · tr. Elwes

Per attributum intelligo id quod intellectus de substantia percipit tanquam ejusdem essentiam constituens.

By attribute, I mean that which the intellect perceives as constituting the essence of substance.

E1d4 · tr. Elwes

Whose intellectus, finite or infinite? Does tanquam mean "as if" or "as in fact"? Elwes's "as constituting" leaves both open.^T

The logical backbone

The graph is computed from the Latin: each arrow runs from what is cited to the demonstrations in E1p1–p16, p29 and p33 (and those they rest on) that cite it (per axioma 7 and the like); where Elwes drops or alters citations (E1p4d–p8d, p11d, p13d) it follows the Latin. E1d7, E1d8, E1a2 and E1a3 are not cited before E1p17, and E1a2 never by number.^T

The spine: no two substances share an attribute (E1p5), so none produces another (E1p6); existence belongs to substance (E1p7); God exists (E1p11); Præter Deum nulla dari neque concipi potest substantia. (E1p14); Quicquid est, in Deo est (E1p15); from God's nature follow infinita infinitis modis, citing only E1d6 (E1p16); God is the immanent, not transient, cause (E1p18); each finite thing is determined by another, to infinity (E1p28); nullum datur contingens (E1p29); nothing could have come about otherwise (E1p33).^T

A demonstration, step by step

Si negas, concipe si fieri potest, Deum non existere. Ergo (per axioma 7) ejus essentia non involvit existentiam. Atqui hoc (per propositionem 7) est absurdum : ergo Deus necessario existit. Q.E.D.

If this be denied, conceive, if possible, that God does not exist: then his essence does not involve existence. But this (Prop. vii.) is absurd. Therefore God necessarily exists.

E1p11d · tr. Elwes, who omits per axioma 7

The short proof thus rests on E1d1, d3, d4, d5 and E1a1, a4, a5, a6, a7. Two more proofs follow (E1p11d2, d3).^T

Major scholia and the Appendix

E1p15s: quantity as imagined is "finite, divisible, and compounded of parts", as substance "infinite, one, and indivisible"; water as water is divided, as extended substance not. Extension would not be unworthy of God "even if it be supposed divisible" (G II/60).^T79 E1p17s: divine and human intellect would agree in name only, like "the Dog, the heavenly constellation, and a dog, an animal that barks".^T E1p29s: natura naturans is Deus quatenus ut causa libera consideratur; natura naturata is all the modes as "things which are in God". E1p33s1: things are called contingent only "in relation to the imperfection of our knowledge".^T

E1app traces the remaining prejudices to one belief: that all things, like us, act for an end. Final causes are "mere human figments"; their defenders argue by reducendo scilicet non ad impossibile sed ad ignorantiam:^T

Nam si exempli gratia ex culmine aliquo lapis in alicujus caput ceciderit eumque interfecerit, hoc modo demonstrabunt lapidem ad hominem interficiendum cecidisse. … et sic porro causarum causas rogare non cessabunt donec ad Dei voluntatem hoc est ignorantiæ asylum confugeris.

For example, if a stone falls from a roof on to someone's head, and kills him, they will demonstrate by their new method, that the stone fell in order to kill the man; … So they will pursue their questions from cause to cause, till at last you take refuge in the will of God—in other words, the sanctuary of ignorance.

E1app · G II/77ff. · tr. Elwes (asylum: "sanctuary")

Scholars disagree

On necessity, Garrett (1991) holds every finite mode necessary through the whole series, Curley and Walski (1999) that E1p28 leaves each, and the series, contingent; Newlands (SEP §2) finds texts for both.^I117

Misconceptions

• "Deus sive Natura is Part I's formula."It occurs only in E4pref (Deum seu Naturam) and E4p4d (Dei sive Naturæ potentia, G II/213).^T54 Part I has Deus sive substantia (E1p11). The original Dutch edition dropped "or Nature".^H7
• "Spinoza says the world is God."E1p15 puts things in God, and substance is indivisible (E1p13c).^T Melamed (2018, p. 3) denies that he is a pantheist of the whole-and-part kind; Gilead (2021) calls him "clearly a pantheist"; Nadler (SEP §2.1) denies the label because Spinoza rejects worshipful awe.^I89,118,7
• "God acts for purposes."Deum non operari ex libertate voluntatis (E1p32c1); E1app rejects final causes.^T

Connections to the other Parts

E2pref starts from E1p16; E2L3d applies E1p28 to bodies. The Appendix returns in E2p48s and E4pref. E1p25c and E1p34 ground the conatus of E3p6d; E4p4d makes us part of Nature (E1p16, p34). E1d8 feeds E5p29d–p30d; E5p35d returns to E1d1, d6, p11.^T

Sources for ✱10: 7, 40, 54, 73, 75–76, 79, 89, 91, 116–118

✱11Part II · De Natura et Origine Mentis — The Mind

E2pref–E2p49s · 7 definitions, 5 axioms, 49 propositions, a physics digression after p13 · by 1665 Letter 28 already offers friends a "third part"

Context

Part II never names Descartes.^T Against Descartes's split between an intellect that represents and a will that judges, Spinoza's account of willing "is developed in opposition", and finite minds are not thinking substances (Hübner, SEP §§2.1.2, 2.4).^I119 The physics after E2p13 is largely Cartesian but drops Descartes's grounding of conservation in God's immutable will (Manning, SEP §3).^I120 Steinberg notes in passing that Spinoza shares Hobbes's rejection of two-way free will (E2p48, E2p35s).^I121 E2p7s says its central thesis was "dimly recognized by those Jews who maintained that God, God's intellect, and the things understood by God are identical" (quidam Hebræorum), without naming them;^T Melamed treats it as a Maimonidean doctrine unrelated to pantheism (2018, p. 2; n. 7 cites the Guide).^I89

What it sets out to do

Transeo jam ad ea explicanda quæ ex Dei sive Entis æterni et infiniti essentia necessario debuerunt sequi. Non quidem omnia; infinita enim infinitis modis ex ipsa debere sequi propositione 16 partis I demonstravimus sed ea solummodo quæ nos ad mentis humanæ ejusque summæ beatitudinis cognitionem quasi manu ducere possunt.

I now pass on to explaining the results, which must necessarily follow from the essence of God, or of the eternal and infinite being; not, indeed, all of them (for we proved in Part i., Prop. xvi., that an infinite number must follow in an infinite number of ways), but only those which are able to lead us, as it were by the hand, to the knowledge of the human mind and its highest blessedness.

E2pref · G II/84ff. · tr. Elwes

Key definitions and axioms

In plain words: a body is a mode expressing God's essence as extended (E2d1); a thing's essence is what is posited and removed with it (E2d2); an adequate idea has in itself all the intrinsic marks of a true one, agreement with its object aside (E2d4). Axioms: Homo cogitat. (E2a2); we feel a certain body affected in many ways (E2a4); we perceive no singular things but bodies and modes of thinking (E2a5).^T

Per ideam intelligo mentis conceptum quem mens format propterea quod res est cogitans. Dico potius conceptum quam perceptionem quia perceptionis nomen indicare videtur mentem ab objecto pati. At conceptus actionem mentis exprimere videtur.

By idea, I mean the mental conception which is formed by the mind as a thinking thing. Explanation.—I say conception rather than perception, because the word perception seems to imply that the mind is passive in respect to the object; whereas conception seems to express an activity of the mind.

E2d3 and explanation · tr. Elwes

The logical backbone

The graph traces, from the Latin citations, what E2p7, p13, p40, p44 and p49 rest on; it reaches into Part I at once (E2p1d cites E1p25c, d5, d6; E2p7d only E1a4).^T

The spine: Thought and Extension are attributes of God (E2p1–p2); God has an idea of his essence and all that follows from it (E2p3); ordo et connexio idearum idem est ac ordo et connexio rerum. "The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things." (E2p7), because:

Sic etiam modus extensionis et idea illius modi una eademque est res sed duobus modis expressa … Exempli gratia circulus in natura existens et idea circuli existentis quæ etiam in Deo est, una eademque est res quæ per diversa attributa explicatur

So, also, a mode of extension and the idea of that mode are one and the same thing, though expressed in two ways. … For instance, a circle existing in nature, and the idea of a circle existing, which is also in God, are one and the same thing displayed through different attributes.

E2p7s · G II/90ff. · tr. Elwes

In E2p7c Elwes adds "in the world of extension" and "in the world of thought"; the Latin has only formaliter and objective. The first thing that constitutes a human mind is the idea of a singular thing actually existing (E2p11), so the mind is partem esse infiniti intellectus Dei (E2p11c). By E2p13 its object is the body actually existing, "and nothing else".^T

A demonstration, step by step

Elwes prints "(II. xi.)" for E2p12 and "(I. Ax. v.)" for E2a5. Traced down, the proof rests on all five axioms of Part II, E2d2 and twelve items of Part I. Elwes omits E2p13c, hominem mente et corpore constare (man consists of mind and body), though his E2p17s cites it.^T

Major scholia

E2p13s: what holds of us holds of all individuals, "all of which, though in different degrees, are animated" (Hübner, SEP §2.1, reads panpsychism here).^I119 Then the physics: bodies differ by motion and rest, not substance (E2L1), each moved by another to infinity (E2L3d cites E1p28); bodies communicating motion certa quadam ratione form one individual (E2Def''), which survives change while keeping its motus et quietis rationem (E2L4–L7); all nature is one Individual (E2L7s). The human body's fluid parts leave traces in soft ones (E2post5), which explains imagining absent things (E2p17cd).^T

E2p17s: Paul's idea of Peter shows Paul's body more than Peter, so Paul may imagine Peter present though he no longer exists; yet imaginations "looked at in themselves, do not contain error". E2p35s: of the sun "we imagine that it is distant from us about two hundred feet" (ducentos circiter pedes), and still do once we know better; the error is ignorance of its true distance and of the image's cause.^T

E2p40s2, three kinds of knowledge. First, opinio vel imaginatio: from the senses mutilate, confuse et sine ordine (experientia vaga) and from signs. Second, ratio: from common notions and adequate ideas of properties (E2p38–p40). Third, scientia intuitiva: it procedit ab adæquata idea essentiæ formalis quorundam Dei attributorum ad adæquatam cognitionem essentiæ rerum. Elwes's "intuition" and "absolute essence" blur scientia and formalis.^T

E2p43s: "Even as light displays both itself and darkness, so is truth a standard both of itself and of falsity".^T E2p44c2: "It is in the nature of reason to perceive things under a certain form of eternity (sub quadam aeternitatis specie)".^T

Will. There is no free will (E2p48); a volition is the affirmation an idea involves (E2p49), so Voluntas et intellectus unum et idem sunt. (E2p49c). To the objection of Buridan's ass (Buridani asina) E2p49s replies:^T

dico me omnino concedere quod homo in tali æquilibrio positus … fame et siti peribit. Si me rogant an talis homo non potius asinus quam homo sit æstimandus? dico me nescire

I am quite ready to admit, that a man placed in the equilibrium described … would die of hunger and thirst. If I am asked, whether such an one should not rather be considered an ass than a man; I answer, that I do not know

E2p49s · G II/131ff. · tr. Elwes

The doctrine's uses (E2p49s): happiness in knowing God, bearing "fortune's smiles or frowns with an equal mind", hating no one, governing citizens "not so as to become slaves" (Elwes's "Part III" there renders in quarta parte).^T

Scholars disagree

Misconceptions

• "'Parallelism' is Spinoza's word."No "parallel-" word occurs in the Latin or in Elwes (E2p7 speaks of the same order).^T Leibniz used it for his own doctrine (1702);^H123 Jaquet calls the doctrine "imported retrospectively" into Spinoza.^I124
• "Mind and body interact."They are one thing in two ways (E2p7s); the mind no more interacts with its body than any mode of thought with a mode of extension (Nadler, SEP §2.2).^I7

Connections to the other Parts

E3p1d grounds activity and passivity in E2p11c and E2p40s1–s2; E3p2d cites E2p6 and p11, and E3p2s points to E2p49. E5p1d rests on E2p7, E5p23d on E2p13 and E2p8c, E5p25d and E5p36s on E2p40s2, E5p29d on E2p44c2.^T

Sources for ✱11: 7, 73, 89, 119–124

✱12Part III · De Origine et Natura Affectuum — The Affects

E3pref–E3GenDefAff · 59 propositions, 48 Definitions of the Affects, a General Definition · a "third part" partly drafted by 1665 (Ep. 28)

Context

Part III's named predecessor is Descartes, whose Passions of the Soul (1649) counts six primitive passions: wonder, love, hatred, desire, joy and sadness (Passions II.69).^H74 Its article 50 is headed "That there is no soul so weak, but well mannaged, may acquire an absolute Mastery over her Passions" (English of 1650).^H125 E3pref grants Descartes's acuteness but rejects his belief that the mind has absolute power over its actions; the full rebuttal waits for E5pref.^T Hobbes had called the body's "small beginnings of Motion" ENDEAVOUR and made good the object of appetite, "There being nothing simply and absolutely so" (Leviathan, 1651, ch. 6).^H126 LeBuffe notes that conatus was a term of Cartesian physics, with Stoic cognates (SEP §§1.2–1.3).^I87

The Stoic link is contested. Spinoza rejects their claim that the affects depend absolutely on our will (E5pref).^T DeBrabander makes Stoicism Spinoza's main reference point;^I93 Verbeek doubts it, since Stoic ethics needs a teleology Spinoza rejects.^I95

Letter 58 (1674, to G. H. Schuller per Spinoza Web) imagines a moving stone that could think: it "would believe itself to be completely free", like the infant, the angry child and the drunk of E3p2s.^L40,41 In Ep. 28 (1665) Spinoza would "send up to the eightieth proposition, or thereabouts" of the third part; printed Part III ends at 59, and Elwes judged Parts III and IV "probably originally united".^LI40,41

What it sets out to do

Spinoza will treat hatred, anger and envy as following "from this same necessity and efficacy of nature", by the method used for God and the mind.^T1,3

Imo hominem in natura veluti imperium in imperio concipere videntur. … humanas actiones atque appetitus considerabo perinde ac si quæstio de lineis, planis aut de corporibus esset.

They appear to conceive man to be situated in nature as a kingdom within a kingdom … I shall consider human actions and desires in exactly the same manner, as though I were concerned with lines, planes, and solids.

E3pref · G II/137ff. · tr. Elwes

Elwes's "solids" renders corporibus, "bodies", as in Curley at E3pref;^T4 his "emotion" is affectus.^T

Key definitions and axioms

In plain words: a cause is adequate when its effect can be clearly understood through it alone, otherwise partial (E3d1). We act when something follows from our nature alone; we are passive when we are only a partial cause (E3d2). An affect is a change, up or down, in the body's power of acting, together with its idea: an action if we are its adequate cause, else a passion (E3d3).^T

Per affectum intelligo corporis affectiones quibus ipsius corporis agendi potentia augetur vel minuitur, juvatur vel coercetur et simul harum affectionum ideas. Si itaque alicujus harum affectionum adæquata possimus esse causa, tum per affectum actionem intelligo, alias passionem.

By emotion I mean the modifications of the body, whereby the active power of the said body is increased or diminished, aided or constrained, and also the ideas of such modifications. N.B. If we can be the adequate cause of any of these modifications, I then call the emotion an activity, otherwise I call it a passion, or state wherein the mind is passive.

E3d3 · tr. Elwes

There are no axioms; two postulates serve: the body can be affected so that its power rises, falls or stays level (E3post1), and it keeps traces, hence images, of things (E3post2).^T

The logical backbone

Part III stands on Parts I and II: E3p6d on E1p25c and E1p34, E3p7d on E1p36 and E1p29, while E3p11 (what raises or lowers the body's power raises or lowers the mind's) follows from E2p7 (or E2p14). From E3p12 on, Part II's imagination (E2p17) and the postulates generate the passions.^T

A demonstration, step by step

E3p6: Unaquæque res quantum in se est, in suo esse perseverare conatur. "Everything, in so far as it is in itself, endeavours to persist in its own being."

The proposition covers every thing (unaquæque res), not only living ones, and derives striving from being a determinate expression of God's power; E3p7 makes it the thing's actual essence, E3p9 makes the mind conscious of it.^T

Major scholia

E3p2s. Etenim quid corpus possit, nemo hucusque determinavit: nobody has yet determined what the body can do (Elwes, loosely: "no one has hitherto laid down the limits to the powers of the body"). The examples are Spinoza's: the infant who thinks it wants milk freely, the angry child, the drunk, the chatterer (garrula); all who think they act by free decree "do but dream with their eyes open".^T

E3p9s. Conatus referred to the mind alone is will, to mind and body appetite; desire is appetite with consciousness of it. Then the reversal:^T

nihil nos conari, velle, appetere neque cupere quia id bonum esse judicamus sed contra nos propterea aliquid bonum esse judicare quia id conamur, volumus, appetimus atque cupimus.

in no case do we strive for, wish for, long for, or desire anything, because we deem it to be good, but on the other hand we deem a thing to be good, because we strive for it, wish for it, long for it, or desire it.

E3p9s · G II/147ff. · tr. Elwes

E3p11s, E3p13s, E3p27. Lætitia is the passion by which the mind passes to greater perfection, tristitia to lesser; with cupiditas they are the only primaries: præter hos tres nullum alium agnosco affectum primarium. Elwes says "pleasure" and "pain", keeping "joy" for gaudium (E3DefAff16); this page says joy and sadness. Love is joy with the idea of an external cause, hatred sadness with it (E3p13s). Imagining a being like us affected, we feel alike (E3p27): pity if sadness, emulation if desire (E3p27s).^T

E3p56–p59. Affects vary with their objects (E3p56); some joys and desires are actions, no sadness is (E3p58–p59). E3p59s names the active strength fortitudo: animositas, desire to preserve oneself by reason alone, and generositas, desire by reason alone to aid others and join them in friendship (Elwes: "courage", "highmindedness"). The same scholium pictures us driven by outside causes "like waves of the sea driven by contrary winds".^T

Definitions of the Affects. Most of the 48 join a primary to a qualifier: hope is an inconstant joy over a doubtful outcome (12), fear the matching sadness (13), anger a desire to harm one we hate (36). By the genus each names or presupposes, 14 are joys and 14 sadnesses; 18 stand in the block of desires (DefAff32–48), though Spinoza says cowardice and consternation are really fear (41exp–42exp), and he keeps longing there although it is really a kind of sadness (32exp). Wonder (4) is defined but not counted, and contempt (5), also an imagining, is added for the same reason.^T

ego admirationem inter affectus non numero … Tres igitur (ut in scholio propositionis 11 hujus monui) tantum affectus primitivos seu primarios agnosco nempe lætitiæ, tristitiæ et cupiditatis

I do not include wonder among the emotions … I, therefore, recognize only three primitive or primary emotions (as I said in the note to III. xi.), namely, pleasure, pain, and desire.

E3DefAff4exp · tr. Elwes

DefAff48exp: there is "nothing besides these three". The General Definition defines the affect as passion: a confused idea by which the mind affirms of its body more or less force of existing than before, and is determined to think of one thing rather than another, the last clause added for desire (E3GenDefAff).^T At DefAff44 Elwes has "the immoderate desire of power" for immodica gloriæ cupiditas, desire of glory.^T

Scholars disagree

Misconceptions

• Conatus is a survival instinct.Every thing strives, and the striving is its actual essence (E3p6–p7); the mind strives to imagine what increases the body's power (E3p12). Lin stresses that striving, ascribed to bodies too, is not a psychological predicate (2004, p. 24 n. 10).^I127
• A "passion" is a violent or painful feeling.It is any affect of which we are only a partial cause (E3d2–d3); joy is introduced as a passion (E3p11s).^T
• "Desire is the very essence of man", full stop.DefAff1 adds "in so far as it is conceived, as determined to a particular activity by some given modification of itself".^T

Connections to the other Parts

• Part I: E1p25c and E1p34 carry E3p6d, E1p36 E3p7d; compare E3pref with E1app.^T
• Part II: E2p7 proves E3p11; E2p11 and E2p13 enter E3p3d; E2p17 drives E3p12–p13; E2p18 enters at E3p14d.^T
• Part IV: E3p7 runs through E4p18–p26; DefAff1 in E4p18d; the General Definition in E4p7d; E3p59s in E4p69d; E3p27 in E4p68s.^T
• Part V: the General Definition and E3p3 carry E5p3d; DefAff6 and DefAff25 enter E5p32; E3p59 returns in E5p42d.^T

Sources for ✱12: 1, 3–4, 40–41, 74, 87, 93, 95, 125–128

✱13Part IV · De Servitute Humana — Human Bondage

E4pref–E4app32 · De Servitute Humana seu de Affectuum Viribus · 73 propositions, one axiom, an Appendix of 32 chapters

Context

E4p17s quotes the poet's video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor (Elwes's note: Ovid, Metamorphoses vii.20) and Ecclesiastes, qui auget scientiam, auget dolorem.^T3 Hobbes's good, "nothing simply and absolutely so" (Leviathan ch. 6), compares with E4pref.^H126 Nadler sees Hobbes's influence on Spinoza's state of nature (E4p37s2; SEP §3.2);^I7 Spinoza marked the difference in Letter 50 (1674): "I always preserve natural right intact".^L40 Nadler finds the ethics partly Stoic and cites Cicero and Seneca (SEP §2.5); the Stoic link is contested (✱12).^I7 By July 1675 the plan was "your treatise in five parts" (Oldenburg, Ep. 62).^L40

What it sets out to do

Humanam impotentiam in moderandis et coercendis affectibus servitutem voco; … sæpe coactus sit quanquam meliora sibi videat, deteriora tamen sequi.

Human infirmity in moderating and checking the emotions I name bondage … he is often compelled, while seeing that which is better for him, to follow that which is worse.

E4pref · G II/205ff. · tr. Elwes

The preface continues E1app: nature acts for no end, and a "final cause" is human appetite. Perfection and imperfection are "merely modes of thinking" (modi solummodo cogitandi); so are good and bad: music is good for the melancholy, bad for the mourner, neither for the deaf.^T

æternum namque illud et infinitum Ens quod Deum seu Naturam appellamus, eadem qua existit necessitate agit.

For the eternal and infinite Being, which we call God or Nature, acts by the same necessity as that whereby it exists.

E4pref · G II/205ff. · tr. Elwes

Spinoza writes Deum seu Naturam here and Deus seu Natura just after; E4p4d has Dei sive Naturæ potentia and Dei seu Naturæ. The Latin has no other instances.^T1 Nadler notes the phrase is absent from the 1677 Dutch edition.^H7 The words good and bad are kept because we want an idea of man as naturæ humanæ exemplar (Elwes: "a type of human nature"; this page: "model"): good is what we certainly know brings us nearer it.^T

Key definitions and axioms

Good is what we certainly know to be useful to us, bad what we certainly know hinders us from some good (E4d1–d2). Contingent and possible describe things seen through their essence alone, or through causes not known to be determined (E4d3–d4); E4d5–d7 define contrary affects, feeling toward past and future things, and an end, which is an appetite. Then the hinge:^T

Per virtutem et potentiam idem intelligo hoc est (per propositionem 7 partis III) virtus quatenus ad hominem refertur, est ipsa hominis essentia seu natura quatenus potestatem habet quædam efficiendi quæ per solas ipsius naturæ leges possunt intelligi.

By virtue (virtus) and power I mean the same thing; that is (III. vii), virtue, in so far as it is referred to man, is a man's nature or essence, in so far as it has the power of effecting what can only be understood by the laws of that nature.

E4d8 · tr. Elwes

The one axiom: for every singular thing there is a stronger one that can destroy it (E4a1). So our force of persisting is infinitely surpassed by outside causes (E4p3), we are part of Nature and cannot be the adequate cause of all our changes (E4p4), and "man is necessarily always a prey to his passions" (E4p4c).^T

The logical backbone

Two foundations: bondage rests on Part I (E1p24c, E1p34 in E4p4d) and Part III (the General Definition in E4p7d); the ethics from E4p18 on E4d8 and E3p7, virtue as power, power as conatus.^T

A demonstration, step by step

E4p7: Affectus nec coerceri nec tolli potest nisi per affectum contrarium et fortiorem affectu coercendo. "An emotion can only be controlled or destroyed by another emotion contrary thereto, and with more power for controlling emotion."

Knowing better does not by itself free us: true knowledge checks an affect only "in so far as it is considered as an emotion" (E4p14).^T

Major scholia, preface and appendix

E4p18s previews the dictates of reason: each should love himself and seek what is truly useful to him; and:^T

Homini igitur nihil homine utilius; nihil inquam homines præstantius ad suum esse conservandum optare possunt quam quod omnes in omnibus ita conveniant ut omnium mentes et corpora unam quasi mentem unumque corpus componant …

Therefore, to man there is nothing more useful than man—nothing, I repeat, more excellent for preserving their being can be wished for by men, than that all should so in all points agree, that the minds and bodies of all should form, as it were, one single mind and one single body …

E4p18s · G II/222ff. · tr. Elwes

E4p20–p28. The more one seeks and can preserve one's being, the more virtue (E4p20); this striving is virtue's first and only foundation (E4p22c); acting from virtue is acting by reason (E4p24), which strives only to understand (E4p26); so Summum mentis bonum est Dei cognitio (E4p28).^T

E4p35–p37. Only by reason do men always agree in nature, so nothing is more useful to a man than a man led by reason (E4p35, E4p35c1); the virtuous want for others the good they want for themselves (E4p37). E4p37s1 says the law against killing animals rests magis vana superstitione et muliebri misericordia quam sana ratione, "rather on vain superstition and womanish pity than on sound reason". "Still I do not deny that beasts feel"; he denies only that this bars us from using them as suits us, their nature and affects being unlike ours.^T E4p37s2 keeps a promise of E1app: in the state of nature there is no sin; in a civil state "Sin, then, is nothing else but disobedience", and just and unjust are extrinsic notions.^T

E4p45c2s. E4p45 (hatred is never good) has a short scholium limiting "hatred" to hatred of men (E4p45s) and, after the second corollary, a defence of laughter as mere joy: Nihil profecto nisi torva et tristis superstitio delectari prohibet, "Assuredly nothing forbids man to enjoy himself, save grim and gloomy superstition". Elwes prints E4p45s as an unlabelled "N.B.", so his only "Note" is E4p45c2s.^T

E4p50–p54. In one led by reason pity is bad and useless (E4p50). Self-contentment from reason is the highest (E4p52); humility and repentance are no virtues (E4p53–p54), yet for those rarely led by reason they do more good than harm: Terret vulgus nisi metuat, "The crowd plays the tyrant, when it is not in fear", which is why the prophets commended them (E4p54s).^T

The free man, E4p67–p73, is led by reason alone (E4p66s):^T

Homo liber de nulla re minus quam de morte cogitat et ejus sapientia non mortis sed vitæ meditatio est.

A free man thinks of death least of all things; and his wisdom is a meditation not of death but of life.

E4p67 · G II/261 · tr. Elwes

Born free, men would form no concept of good and evil (E4p68). E4p68s calls this false, by E4p4, yet signified by Moses: God forbade the free first man (Adam) the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; once he believed the beasts like himself, imitated their affects (E3p27) and lost his freedom, which the patriarchs regained "led by the spirit of Christ; that is, by the idea of God". The free man never acts deceptively, even to escape death (E4p72 and s), and is freer in a state than in solitude (E4p73).^T Elwes's "Proof" of E4p72 is really the scholium; the demonstration, citing E4p24 and E4p31c, is missing.^T

Appendix. 32 capita regroup the teaching; cap. 4 makes blessedness the contentment born of intuitive knowledge of God. The last:^T

Attamen ea quæ nobis eveniunt contra id quod nostræ utilitatis ratio postulat æquo animo feremus si conscii simus nos functos nostro officio fuisse … nosque partem totius naturæ esse cujus ordinem sequimur.

Nevertheless, we shall bear with an equal mind all that happens to us in contravention to the claims of our own advantage, so long as we are conscious, that we have done our duty … remembering that we are a part of universal nature, and that we follow her order.

E4app32 · tr. Elwes

Scholars disagree

Misconceptions

• Spinoza wants reason to extinguish the affects.Only a stronger affect checks an affect (E4p7); joy is directly good (E4p41), cheerfulness never excessive (E4p42).^T
• Seeking one's own advantage means selfishness.The rational want nothing for themselves they do not want for others (E4p18s, E4p37). Nadler calls Spinoza an ethical egoist whose free person acts from rational benevolence (SEP §2.5).^I7
• Spinoza praises humility, repentance and pity.They are not virtues (E4p50, E4p53–p54), only useful to those rarely led by reason (E4p54s).^T

Connections to the other Parts

• Part I: E4pref restates E1app; E4p4d uses E1p24c, E1p34, E1p16; E4p37s2 keeps E1app's promise on sin and merit.^T
• Part II: E2p33 and E2p35 in E4p1d; E2p6 and E2p12 in E4p7d; E2p40s2 in E4p26d.^T
• Part III: E3p7 in E4p18–p26; the General Definition in E4p7d; E3p59s in E4p69d and E4p73s; E3p27 in E4p68s.^T
• Part V: E4p5, E4p6 and E4p9 feed E5p7d–p8d; E4p46 (repay hatred with love) returns in E5p10s; E4d8 in E5p25d.^T

Sources for ✱13: 1, 3, 7, 40, 126, 129–131

✱14Part V · De Potentia Intellectus seu de Libertate Humana — Freedom

E5pref–E5p42s · preface, 2 axioms, 42 propositions · printed 1677 in the Opera Posthuma^H2 · quotations: Latin text and Elwes (1884)^T1,3

Context

The preface alone in the Ethics names the Stoics, and alone in Part V names Descartes: the “proper place” E3pref promised for judging him.^T From Descartes’s Passions of the Soul (1649)^H74 Spinoza reports that the soul moves the pineal gland “by a simple act of volition” and that habit can join its motions to other thoughts, so “there is no soul so weak” that it cannot master its passions (E5pref, citing Passions I.50^H125).^T He replies that this is more occult than any occult quality, that volition and motion share no measure, and that no such gland hangs free in mid-brain (E5pref).^T The Stoics too thought the affects “depended absolutely on our will”, until experience taught them that long training is needed (E5pref).^T

Spinoza’s only book published in his name in his lifetime expounded Descartes’s Principles (1663);^H7 Letter 13 says he would not openly teach his own opinions to the young man to whom he had dictated part of it.^L76 Nadler (2002), as Lin reports, argues that after a 1630s Amsterdam controversy over the soul, denying personal immortality aggravated Spinoza’s 1656 ḥerem.^I132

What it sets out to do

Transeo tandem ad alteram Ethices partem quæ est de modo sive via quæ ad libertatem ducit. In hac ergo de potentia rationis agam ostendens quid ipsa ratio in affectus possit et deinde quid mentis libertas seu beatitudo sit …

At length I pass to the remaining portion of my Ethics, which is concerned with the way leading to freedom. I shall therefore treat therein of the power of the reason, showing how far the reason can control the emotions, and what is the nature of Mental Freedom or Blessedness …

E5pref · G II/277ff. · tr. Elwes (“emotions” = affectus)

Logic and medicine are left aside: since the mind’s power “is defined by the understanding only”, remedies and blessedness alike will be found “solely by the knowledge of the mind” (E5pref).^T

Key definitions and axioms

No definitions; two axioms. E5a1: contrary actions in one subject must change “until they cease to be contrary”. E5a2: an effect’s power is defined by its cause’s.^T The working premises are older:

• The mind is the idea of the body “actu existens” (E2p13). Ideas of things that do not exist exist only within God’s infinite idea; ideas involve duration only when their objects “durare dicuntur” (E2p8c).^T
• Scientia intuitiva, the third kind of knowledge, proceeds from an adequate idea of the formal essence of certain attributes of God to adequate knowledge of the essence of things (E2p40s2; Elwes: “intuition”, “absolute essence”). Reason sees things “under a certain form of eternity” (E2p44c2).^T
• A passion is “a confused idea” (E3GenDefAff); actions arise from adequate ideas alone (E3p3).^T

The logical backbone

The remedies lean on Part II’s ordering of ideas (E5p1d cites E2p7, E2p18) and Part IV’s measure of affective force (E5p7d, E5p8d cite E4p5, E4p6, E4p9). The eternity chain runs from E1p25, E1p16 and E2p3 (E5p22d) to E2p13 and E2p8c (E5p23d). E5p42d joins both, citing E5p3c and E5p32c.^T

A demonstration, step by step

E5p23: “The human mind cannot be absolutely destroyed with the body, but there remains of it something which is eternal.”

Elwes prints the same citations. E5p3d is shorter: a passion is a confused idea (E3GenDefAff); a clear idea of it differs from it “non nisi ratione” (E2p21 and scholium); so by E3p3 it is no longer a passion.^T

The remedies

Images are ordered in the body as thoughts are in the mind (E5p1); detach an affect from the thought of its outer cause, and love or hate of that cause is destroyed (E5p2); “An emotion, which is a passion, ceases to be a passion, as soon as we form a clear and distinct idea thereof” (E5p3); desires born of adequate ideas count as virtue (E5p4s). Seeing necessity eases grief at a lost good (E5p6s). Until knowledge is complete, rehearse rules of life, such as that hatred be “overcome with love or high-mindedness” (odium amore seu generositate vincendum), by often thinking over common wrongs (E5p10s).^T Love then turns to God, who has no passions and whom no one can hate (E5p14–p19).^T E5p20s sums up:

… mentis in affectus potentiam consistere I° in ipsa affectuum cognitione … II° in eo quod affectus a cogitatione causæ externæ quam confuse imaginamur, separat … III° in tempore quo affectiones quæ ad res quas intelligimus referuntur, illas superant quæ ad res referuntur quas confuse seu mutilate concipimus … IV° in multitudine causarum a quibus affectiones quæ ad rerum communes proprietates vel ad Deum referuntur, foventur … V° denique in ordine quo mens suos affectus ordinare et invicem concatenare potest

… the mind's power over the emotions consists:— I. In the actual knowledge of the emotions … II. In the fact that it separates the emotions from the thought of an external cause, which we conceive confusedly … III. In the fact, that, in respect to time, the emotions referred to things, which we distinctly understand, surpass those referred to what we conceive in a confused and fragmentary manner … IV. In the number of causes whereby those modifications are fostered, which have regard to the common properties of things or to God … V. Lastly, in the order wherein the mind can arrange and associate, one with another, its own emotions

E5p20s · G II/292ff. · tr. Elwes

Then the turn: “And now I have finished with all that concerns this present life”; next come matters “which appertain to the duration of the mind, without relation to the body” (E5p20s).^T

Eternity and the intellectual love of God

Imagination and memory last only while the body endures (E5p21), but God has an idea of “the essence of this or that human body under the form of eternity” (E5p22); so something of the mind is eternal (E5p23).^T

At nihilominus sentimus experimurque nos æternos esse. … Mentis enim oculi quibus res videt observatque, sunt ipsæ demonstrationes.

But, notwithstanding, we feel and know that we are eternal. … For the eyes of the mind, whereby it sees and observes things, are none other than proofs.

E5p23s · G II/295ff. · tr. Elwes

The highest virtue is to understand by the third kind of knowledge (E5p25), which yields the highest acquiescentia (E5p27) and joy with the idea of God as cause, amor Dei intellectualis: “this is what I call the intellectual love of God” (E5p32c; Elwes’s “pleasure” there is lætitia, joy). It is eternal (E5p33), “part of the infinite love wherewith God loves himself” (E5p36), and is our salvation, blessedness and freedom (E5p36s).^T The more we understand, the less we fear death (E5p38); the more a body can do, the greater the eternal part of its mind (E5p39); the intellect remains, the imagination perishes (E5p40c). Piety and religion would come first even if we did not know the mind is eternal (E5p41); dropping them for want of an afterlife is like eating poison because food cannot keep us alive for ever (E5p41s).^T

Beatitudo non est virtutis præmium sed ipsa virtus … Sed omnia præclara tam difficilia quam rara sunt.

Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself … But all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.

E5p42; E5p42s, the last words of the Ethics · tr. Elwes

Scholars disagree

Misconceptions

• Part V promises survival with our memories.Memory ends with the body (E5p21), and we do not remember existing before it (E5p23s); the many “confuse eternity with duration” (E5p34s).^T Nadler: not immortal “in any personal sense”;^I7 but see Lin above.
• Like the Stoics, Spinoza would extinguish the emotions.E5pref rejects the Stoics; E5p3 says a passion ceases to be a passion once clearly understood, and clear knowledge, “if it does not absolutely destroy them”, shrinks passions to a small part of the mind (E5p20s).^T Miller maps where Spinoza was and was not Stoic.^I96
• “Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering…”A rewording found in popular sources (origin unverified, ✱25): a passio is being acted on, not pain.^T Colin Marshall (2012) reports a consensus that E5p3 is wrong or overstated, and defends it.^I136

Connections to the other Parts

• Part II: E2p40s2 in E5p25d, E5p28d, E5p36s; E2p44c2 in E5p29d; E2p8c and E2p13 in E5p23d; E2p21 in E5p3d.^T
• Part III: E3GenDefAff and E3p3 in E5p3d and E5p40c; E3DefAff6 (love) in E5p32c.^T
• Part IV: E4p46 behind E5p10s; E4p39s’s promise kept in E5p38s; E4app4 had defined blessedness as acquiescentia from intuitive knowledge of God.^T

Sources for ✱14: 1–3, 7, 74, 76, 96, 102, 119, 125, 130, 132–136

✱15The first critics: Bayle and Leibniz

1676–1737

Bayle (1697–1702)

Pierre Bayle’s Dictionaire historique et critique (first edition dated 1697; revised second edition, Rotterdam: Reinier Leers, 1702) has an article “Spinoza” (checked here in the 1702 text). Its remark N, in the 1740 text Yıldız translates, numbers six objections, among them a God identical with extension and a God who commits and suffers crimes.^H137,138,139 Bayle takes modes to be states of the one substance^I139 (compare E1p15, E1p25c).^T So, he writes, in Spinoza’s system whoever says the Germans killed ten thousand Turks speaks falsely unless meaning:^H138,140

Dieu modifié en Allemans a tué Dieu modifié en dix mille Turcs

God modified into Germans killed God modified into ten thousand Turks (rendering for this page)

Bayle 1702, vol. 3, “Spinoza”, rem. N

Leibniz (1676–1714)

Told of the manuscript by Tschirnhaus after September 1675, Leibniz visited Spinoza on 18–21 November 1676 and showed him a proof that a most perfect being exists; Spinoza, his note says, first contradicted it, then found it sound. He also noted propositions of Parts I–II (A II,1, 427–28). The Théodicée (1710) shrinks the visit to « Je vis Monsieur de la Court aussi bien que Spinosa » (“I saw M. de la Court as well as Spinoza”, rendering for this page), Vidinsky’s “official version”.^H44,142,143 Pollock: his marginal notes were “not for an interpretation of Spinoza, but for an improvement on him”.^I141

On necessity, §173: « il paraît avoir enseigné expressément une nécessité aveugle, ayant refusé l'entendement et la volonté à l'auteur des choses » (rendering for this page: “he seems to have taught outright a blind necessity, denying understanding and will to the author of things”).^H144 Probably in the preface: all comes from the first cause « par une nécessité aveugle et toute géométrique » (“by a blind and wholly geometrical necessity”, rendering for this page).^H145 Compare E1p32c1, E1p33.^T On the one substance, to Bourguet (December 1714): « Il auroit raison, s'il n'y avoit point de monades » (“he would be right if there were no monads”, rendering for this page).^H146

The word “parallelism” is not in the Ethics;^T Leibniz used it in 1702 for his own doctrine: « un parallelisme parfait » between soul and matter (Considérations).^H123 Jaquet credits him with its paternity and sees the doctrine read back into Spinoza; Rateau credits Gueroult with first noticing this, and finds Leibniz’s sense narrower than later “psychophysical parallelism”.^I147,124 Mendelssohn thought pre-established harmony probably came from Spinoza; Pollock denied it, while finding Leibniz’s published references “in a tone of systematic depreciation”.^I148,141

Wolff (1736–37)

Theologia naturalis (Frankfurt, 1736–37), vol. II, §§671–716, takes on extension, bodies, one necessary substance (§§697–706) and infinite thought as many finite thinkers (§§707–08). He follows the text, not a caricature; the SEP links the effort to the Pietist charge that Wolff was a Spinozist.^I149

Sources for ✱15: 44, 116, 123–124, 137–149

✱16The Pantheism Controversy and German Idealism

1780–1831 · from Lessing’s confession to Hegel

Jacobi, Lessing, Mendelssohn (1780–1789)

F. H. Jacobi’s Über die Lehre des Spinoza in Briefen an den Herrn Moses Mendelssohn (Breslau: Gottlieb Löwe, 1785; enlarged 1789) opens with Goethe’s “Das Göttliche” and reports talks with Lessing at Wolfenbüttel in 1780.^H150 Jacobi arrived „den fünften Julius“ (5 July).^H151 On Goethe’s “Prometheus”, Lessing said: „Die orthodoxen Begriffe von der Gottheit sind nicht mehr für mich; ich kann sie nicht genießen. Ἓν καὶ Πᾶν! Ich weiß nichts anders.“ (rendering for this page: “The orthodox concepts of the Deity are no longer for me; I cannot enjoy them. One and All! I know nothing else.”) And: „Es giebt keine andre Philosophie, als die Philosophie des Spinoza“, in Pollock’s English “There is no other philosophy than the philosophy of Spinoza”.^H151,141 Jacobi agreed: a consistent determinist must become a fatalist. Reason applying the principle of ground ends in atheistic fatalism; he escapes „durch einen Salto mortale“ into faith.^I151,150 Spinozism is for him the most consistent pantheism, a “refined” one impossible.^I152

Mendelssohn’s Philosophische Gespräche (SEP: 1755 or 1761) found many of Spinoza’s views fit for true religion; Spinoza, he held, proved only that the self-subsistent is one. Morgenstunden (1785) makes Lessing the voice of a “refined pantheism”, whose quarrel with theism is merely verbal.^I148

Herder, Goethe, Novalis, Schleiermacher, Schelling

Herder’s Gott (Gotha, 1787) helped shape Schleiermacher’s Spinoza essays (1793–94); the SEP finds there a monism akin to Herder’s, one fundamental force in place of one substance (single source).^H155I156 Goethe told Jacobi he held „fest und fester an die Gottesverehrung des Atheisten“ (“ever more firmly to the atheist’s worship of God”, rendering for this page).^H157 Novalis: „Spinoza ist ein Gott-trunkener Mensch“ (“a God-intoxicated man”, rendering for this page; 1802).^H158 Schleiermacher (1799): „Opfert mit mir ehrerbietig eine Locke den Manen des heiligen verstoßenen Spinosa!“ (“Offer with me reverently a lock to the shade of the holy, outcast Spinoza!”, rendering for this page).^H159 Schelling doubted that a merely logical passage from God gives the absolute reason to become a finite world; the Freiheitsschrift (1809) shuns a fatalism that makes freedom for good and evil unintelligible.^I160

Hegel

Lectures on the history of philosophy: „Du hast entweder den Spinozismus oder keine Philosophie“ (Werke XV, 1844, p. 362), in Haldane and Simson’s English (1896) “You are either a Spinozist or not a philosopher at all”.^H161,162 Yet the attribute is “that which the understanding thinks of God”, the mode “the finite as such”, and the system has “only a rigid and unyielding substance, and not yet spirit”.^I162 The Encyclopaedia (§50 Anm., 1830) calls it Akosmismus: in Wallace’s English (1873), “not Atheism but Acosmism, defining the world to be an appearance lacking in true reality”. Its §151 material (substance “a dark shapeless abyss”) is probably Henning’s Zusatz of 1840.^H163,164I165 The Phenomenology preface (¶17) asks that the true be grasped not only as substance but as subject.^H166

Sources for ✱16: 7, 141, 148, 150–167

✱17The nineteenth century: Nietzsche, George Eliot, Victorian Britain

1854–1887

Nietzsche (1881–1887)

A postcard to Franz Overbeck, Sils-Maria, 30 July 1881 (KSB 6, Nr. 135):^H168

Ich bin ganz erstaunt, ganz entzückt! Ich habe einen Vorgänger und was für einen!

I am utterly amazed, utterly delighted! I have a precursor, and what a precursor! (rendering for this page)

Nietzsche to Overbeck, 30 July 1881

Spinoza „leugnet die Willensfreiheit —; die Zwecke —; die sittliche Weltordnung —; das Unegoistische —; das Böse —“ (rendering for this page: denies free will, purposes, the moral world-order, the unegoistic, evil; compare E2p48, E1app).^H168T Wollenberg argues that he knew Spinoza almost wholly from Kuno Fischer’s Geschichte der neuern Philosophie, read in 1881 and May 1887 (pp. 620–23); Fischer shaped his views of teleology, self-preservation and amor intellectualis dei against amor fati (Sommer). Wurzer and Gawoll held that he read Spinoza directly; Wollenberg disagrees.^I169,170

Then the attack (renderings for this page throughout). Jenseits von Gut und Böse (Leipzig: C. G. Naumann, 1886), §5, mocks the „Hocuspocus von mathematischer Form“ (“hocus-pocus of mathematical form”); §13 denies that self-preservation is life’s cardinal drive, for „Leben selbst ist Wille zur Macht“ (“life itself is will to power”), and credits that doctrine to „der Inconsequenz Spinoza's“ (“Spinoza’s inconsistency”; compare E3p6);^T §198 derides his „Zerstörung der Affekte durch Analysis und Vivisektion“ (“destruction of the affects by analysis and vivisection”).^H171 Die fröhliche Wissenschaft §349 (1887): „der schwindsüchtige Spinoza“ (“the consumptive Spinoza”) put self-preservation first because such thinkers were „Menschen in Nothlagen“ (“people in distress”).^H172

George Eliot (1854–1856)

Marian Evans began translating the Ethics in Berlin on 8 November 1854 and finished in 1856.^H173,174,107 Bohn was to publish it; a disagreement between Lewes and the publisher stopped it.^H175,107 It was first printed in 1981 (ed. Thomas Deegan, Salzburg), then edited by Clare Carlisle for Princeton (2020 in catalogues; 2019 in Nadler’s review).^H106,107,174

Victorian Britain

J. A. Froude’s “Spinoza”, Westminster Review 64 (July 1855): 1–37, won Eliot’s praise (some bibliographies say 1854).^H176,177 Matthew Arnold’s “Spinoza” (Essays in Criticism, 1865; “Spinoza and the Bible” by 1869): “His denial of final causes is essentially alien to the spirit of the Old Testament”, and “Spinoza’s ideal is the intellectual life; the Christian’s ideal is the religious life.”^I178 Pollock thought both made “brilliant contributions to the knowledge of Spinoza in this country”.^I141

Frederick Pollock’s Spinoza: His Life and Philosophy (London: C. Kegan Paul, 1880) records the bicentenary of 1877 and subscriptions “from all civilized countries in order to erect a statue of Spinoza at the Hague”.^H141 Ernest Renan spoke there on 21 February 1877 (one catalogue: 12 February); Pollock praised Renan’s “delicate insight and sympathy”. It closes: « C'est d'ici peut-être que Dieu a été vu de plus près. » (“From here, perhaps, God has been seen most closely”, rendering for this page).^H179,141 Frédéric Hexamer’s statue was unveiled on 14 September 1880, with an address by Van Vloten; it stands on the Paviljoensgracht.^H141,180

Two English versions followed: R. H. M. Elwes’s, in the Chief Works (London: George Bell, 1884 by Bell’s own imprint; some catalogues date the first volume 1883), and W. Hale White’s Ethic (London: Trübner, 1883; revised with Amelia Hutchison Stirling, 1894).^H181,105

Sources for ✱17: 105–107, 141, 168–181

✱18Anglophone readers: Wolfson to Melamed

1934 to the present · readers writing in English

Context

Harry A. Wolfson’s The Philosophy of Spinoza: Unfolding the Latent Processes of His Reasoning (2 vols, Harvard UP, 1934) rebuilt the reasoning from medieval, largely Jewish and scholastic, sources. He set “Benedictus”, author of the propositions, against “Baruch”, the medieval thinker of the scholia, and took the geometrical form for an outer label;^I182 his method he called “hypothetico-deductive”.^I183 Edwin Curley’s Spinoza’s Metaphysics (Harvard UP, 1969) took Bayle’s objections to a God who bears all modes (Part D, above) as grounds to reread the system.^I116 Jonathan Bennett (1984) argued with Spinoza as a colleague or an opponent (p. 1).^I184

Wolfson (1934)

The paradigm subjectivist: attributes are what a finite intellect perceives as if (tanquam, E1d4) they made up God’s essence, so they are invented (p. 146), though infinitely many are affirmed (p. 226).^I73 Melamed admires the learning but finds the generalizations broad, with a “chilling effect” on study of Spinoza’s Jewish sources.^I182

Curley (1969, 1988)

Behind the Geometrical Method (Princeton UP, 1988) grew from 1984 lectures at the Hebrew University; its publisher ranks it with naturalist and materialist readings.^I112 He translated the Collected Works (vol. I, 1985).^H4 Substance is identical with the totality of its attributes (1988, pp. 13, 30).^I73

Bennett (1984)

A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics (Hackett; Cambridge UP, 1984). An objectivist (p. 147), he reads the infinity of attributes as totality, so there might be just two (pp. 75–79).^I73 His “field metaphysic”, drawing on E1p15s, makes extended substance space, and bodies thickenings of its regions that move as a thaw crosses a countryside (pp. 89–90, 95–96).^I185

Garrett (1991–2018)

“Spinoza’s Necessitarianism” (Brill, 1991) and later essays, collected in Nature and Necessity in Spinoza’s Philosophy (OUP, 2018). A finite mode’s power is a share of the attributes’ own (p. 130); things strive more as they are more in se, making finite things quasi-substances; Spinoza’s naturalism is “incremental” (p. 405), allowing teleology grounded in conatus but no divine purposes (pp. 321–25).^I186,117

Della Rocca (1996, 2008)

Representation and the Mind–Body Problem in Spinoza (OUP, 1996); Spinoza (Routledge, 2008). The principle of sufficient reason (PSR) drives everything: E1p11d2 requires a cause for existence and non-existence alike. From it come naturalism, monism, necessitarianism and the denial of divine purpose (chs 1–2).^I111,73

Melamed (2009–2023)

“Spinoza’s Metaphysics of Substance” (2009); Spinoza’s Metaphysics: Substance and Thought (OUP, 2013).^I116,187 Against Bennett, E1d6’s infinity means infinitely many attributes (2018).^I188 “Parallelism” is two doctrines: ideas match things (E2p7), and all attributes share one order, so each idea has infinitely many facets. Lin replies that the first entails the second.^I187 Like Crescas, he argues, Spinoza is a strict necessitarian; E2a1’s potest is temporal, as he reads E2p11d.^I90 On God or Nature his texts differ: panentheism, God exceeding the sum of things (with Carlisle, 2020), or an identity of essence and existence “on the brink of pantheism” (“Deification”, pp. 77–78).^I189,190

Sources for ✱18: 4, 7, 73, 90, 111–112, 116–117, 134, 182–191

✱19French and Italian readers

1968 to the present · Gueroult’s structural method and its heirs, Deleuze, the political readings

Context

Martial Gueroult published Spinoza I: Dieu (1968) and Spinoza II: L’Âme (1974).^I73,192 Deleuze’s 1969 review called this “order of reasons” the basis of a truly scientific study.^I193 Today Pierre-François Moreau directs the PUF Œuvres, including the Ethica (2020).^H72

Gueroult (1968)

For Gueroult, E1p1–p8 concern many substances of one attribute each (pp. 109, 126, 139); E1p9–p11 fold them into God as his attributes (pp. 226, 447). Their plurality conditions God’s unity, a bigarré (variegated) ens realissimum (pp. 234, 447).^I193 Against Wolfson’s invented attributes (✱18) he made them real, distinct constituents (p. 50), and with Haserot attacked Wolfson sharply;^I73,182 Shein calls the whole choice a false dichotomy.^I73 The key phrase occurs once in the Ethics:^T193

Substantia unius attributi non nisi unica existit (per propositionem 5) et ad ipsius naturam pertinet existere (per propositionem 7).

There can only be one substance with an identical attribute, and existence follows from its nature (Prop. vii.); …

E1p8d · tr. Elwes, who drops the first citation (E1p5); his “identical attribute” already reads unius as Macherey does (below)

Matheron (1969)

Individu et communauté chez Spinoza (Minuit, 1969): a political society is an individual with its own ratio of motion and rest, for Steinberg the most influential realist reading of the state.^I52 Bove: he kept Gueroult’s method but centred the communication of motion (E2Def'') and of affects, putting politics at the heart.^I194

Deleuze (1968–1993)

Spinoza et le problème de l’expression (Minuit, 1968);^I195 Spinoza: philosophie pratique (tr. Robert Hurley, 1988).^I115 Duns Scotus’s formal distinction lets attributes be really distinct yet one in substance, « ontologiquement un, formellement divers » (1968, pp. 27, 31, 55–56).^I193 Univocity is the Spinozist inheritance he valued most.^I195 Affectio is a body’s state when affected, affectus the passage in its power of acting (lecture, 20 Jan 1981).^I135

Macherey (1979–1998)

Hegel ou Spinoza (dated 1979 by the publisher of its English translation) and a five-volume Introduction à l’Éthique de Spinoza (PUF), whose volume on Part V appeared first, in 1994.^I196,197 Where Hegel (Part D, above) found substance rigid, unable to become subject, its geometry external to its content, Macherey finds the method close to Hegel’s own and, since conatus leaves no intentional subject, substance not subject.^I198

Moreau and Jaquet

Moreau’s Spinoza: l’expérience et l’éternité (1994) makes experience essential to the Ethics, eternity included.^I199 Chantal Jaquet’s Sub specie aeternitatis (Kimé, 1997) asks how finite humans share God’s eternity;^I200 in L’unité du corps et de l’esprit (2004) body and mind are studied as one in action, through the affects;^I201 she rejects “parallelism” as a name for Spinoza’s view (✱23).^I202

Balibar and Negri

Étienne Balibar’s Spinoza et la politique (PUF, 1985) makes the state an “individual of individuals”.^I52 He popularized Simondon’s transindividuality, individuals constituted by their relations; his Part IV turns on E4p37: is sociality natural, or instituted against nature?^I203 Antonio Negri wrote L’anomalia selvaggia (Feltrinelli, 1981) in prison awaiting trial.^H204 The anomaly is Spinoza’s denial of transcendence; immanent potentia stands against commanding potestas, and a politics of the common must rest on the Ethics.^I205 He faulted Matheron’s “paradialectical” schemes.^I206

Sources for ✱19: 52, 72–73, 102, 111, 115, 135, 182, 184, 192–207

✱20Feminist readings and Jewish thought

1915 to the present · Lloyd, Gatens, James · Cohen, Strauss, Yovel, Ben-Gurion

Context

Spinoza named Jewish forerunners himself: in E2p7s quidam Hebræorum, “some of the Hebrews”, who hold God, his intellect and the things it understands to be one, glimpsed quasi per nebulam, as through a mist (renderings for this page; Elwes: “dimly recognized by those Jews”), that a mode and its idea are one thing (✱11).^T Melamed calls this a Maimonidean doctrine with nothing to do with pantheism (2018, p. 2).^I89 Letter 12 (1663) takes a proof of God from “a certain Jew”, identified by Van Vloten and Land as Hasdai Crescas;^L40,76 Sadik credits Crescas with shaping Spinoza on God’s essence, determinism and extension,^I91 and Melamed, citing Warren Zev Harvey (1998), makes both strict necessitarians.^I90

Lloyd and Gatens

For Genevieve Lloyd (Part of Nature, Cornell UP, 1994),^I208 Cartesian dualism yields a sexed body beside a sexless mind, the picture behind the sex/gender model; since a mind is the idea of its body (E2p13), minds carry bodily difference, innate or socially made.^I209 Boyle notes that Lloyd’s reading allows a more charitable explanation of Spinoza’s exclusion of women from government (TP 11).^I210

Moira Gatens, Imaginary Bodies (Routledge, 1996) and, with Lloyd, Collective Imaginings (1999).^I211,212 For Gatens (introduction and “The Politics of the Imagination”, in her Feminist Interpretations of Benedict Spinoza, 2009, as Nyden reports), monism escapes the splits of mind and body, reason and emotion; imagination explains how sexual and racial difference become political; and since a body includes its relations, incapacities can have structural causes.^I209

James

Spinoza on Philosophy, Religion, and Politics (OUP, 2012) reads the TTP as a polemic, chiefly against conservative Dutch Calvinism;^I213 in Spinoza on Learning to Live Together (OUP, 2020) to philosophize is to learn to live joyfully, and so with others.^I214

Cohen and Strauss

Hermann Cohen’s “Spinoza über Staat und Religion, Judentum und Christentum” (1915), from a 1913 seminar on the TTP, traced Spinoza’s pantheism to Jewish sources; Melamed replies that Cohen misreads E2p7s and Letter 73.^I89 Leo Strauss answered Cohen in 1924,^I216 then wrote Die Religionskritik Spinozas (1930).^I52 His “How to Study Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise” (1947–48) puts interpretation before explanation (pp. 69–70), takes the contradictions on revelation as deliberate (pp. 97–107), and reads the motto Caute as a sign of exoteric writing (pp. 105–108).^I217

Yovel (1989)

Spinoza and Other Heretics (2 vols, Princeton UP, 1989) roots immanence, the view that this world is all there is, in the Marrano experience of split identity and dual language; Amsterdam’s ex-Marranos were cosmopolitan, not narrow fanatics.^I220 Salvation is eternity within time, not personal immortality.^I221

Sources for ✱20: 40, 52, 76, 89–91, 208–221

⁂The readers compared

Six questions the Ethics leaves open, and how each reader in ✱15–✱20 answers them. A dash means the sources used for this page do not record that reader’s view; it does not mean the reader had none.

✱21The affects as practice

E5p1–E5p20s · reception 1994–2023 · Latin text and Elwes (1884)^T1,3

Context

Part V promises remedies for the affects found “solely by the knowledge of the mind”, and rejects the Stoic and Cartesian hope of absolute command over them (E5pref; see ✱14).^T

The text

Affectus qui passio est, desinit esse passio simulatque ejus claram et distinctam formamus ideam.

An emotion, which is a passion, ceases to be a passion, as soon as we form a clear and distinct idea thereof.

E5p3 · G II/282 · tr. Elwes (“emotion” = affectus)

The passion is not said to vanish: the better it is known, “the mind is less passive” (E5p3c). Until knowledge is complete, E5p10s prescribes drill: commit “fixed practical precepts” to memory, such as odium amore seu generositate vincendum (hatred to be overcome by love or high-mindedness), and rehearse common wrongs in advance; such precepts are “not difficult”. E5p20s lists the five powers of the mind over the affects (quoted in ✱14).^T

What scholars say

As NDPR reviewers report them: LeBuffe (2010) finds in Spinoza prescriptions for resisting passions and techniques of self-diagnosis;^I223 Kisner (2011) reads reason as issuing general practical directives;^I224 Susan James (2020) gives imagination and narrative a role in building good habits of mind and feeling.^I215

What circulates

“Spinoza as proto-CBT” has a popular source: in a 2019 blog post the CBT practitioner Donald Robertson argues that the Ethics anticipates CBT in many respects (cognitive restructuring, the ABC model, reciprocal inhibition some 300 years before Wolpe), offering analogies rather than a lineage.^I225 The research for this page found no study tracing clinical CBT to Spinoza, and no explicit rebuttal of the label; the scholars above debate whether E5p3’s remedy works at all. LitCharts, a study guide, reports this wording in Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning; it rewrites E5p3 (✱25).^H226

Sources for ✱21: 1, 3, 94, 136, 215, 223–226

✱22Politics: the two Treatises

TTP, anonymous, 1670 · TP, unfinished at Spinoza’s death, 21 Feb 1677 · E4p37s1–s2, E4p73^H7,52

Context

On how his politics differed from Hobbes’s, Spinoza wrote: “I always preserve natural right intact” (Letter 50, 1674).^L40

In the Ethics

E4p37s1 calls the rational desire “to associate others with himself in friendship” honestas. In E4p37s2, sin in the state of nature “is inconceivable”; then Hæc autem societas legibus et potestate sese conservandi firmata civitas appellatur, “Such a society established with laws and the power of preserving itself is called a State”. The man led by reason “is more free in a State” than “in solitude” (E4p73).^T

The Treatises

TTP 16: “Of the Foundations of a State”; TTP 19: “the Right over Matters Spiritual lies wholly with the Sovereign”; TTP 20: “That in a Free State every man may Think what he Likes, and Say what he Thinks”.^L88

Finis ergo Reipublicae revera libertas est.

In fact, the true aim of government is liberty.

TTP ch. 20 · Latin: Van Vloten & Land (OCR) · tr. Elwes^L97,88

TP 5.2: the end of the civil state is “nothing else but peace and security of life”.^L85

sedulo curavi, humanas actiones non ridere, non lugere, neque detestari, sed intelligere

I have laboured carefully, not to mock, lament, or execrate, but to understand human actions

TP 1.4 · Latin: Van Vloten & Land (OCR) · tr. Elwes (via constitution.org, which names no translator)^L97,227

It echoes E3pref on those who hominum affectus et actiones detestari vel ridere malunt quam intelligere, “would rather abuse or deride human emotions than understand them” (Elwes drops actiones).^T

Pax enim non belli privatio, sed virtus est, quae ex animi fortitudine oritur

For peace is not mere absence of war, but is a virtue that springs from force of character

TP 5.4 · Latin: Paulus (OCR) · tr. Elwes^L228,85

What scholars say

Steinberg grounds the politics in the naturalism of E3pref and, after Matheron, reads the TP as a sequel to the Ethics: individual freedom depends on institutions. For Hobbes, natural right can be given up to found the sovereign; for Spinoza it is coextensive with power and cannot be, nor is the civil state sharply split from the state of nature. In the TTP the contract binds only through utility (ch. 16), and free speech is defended on prudential grounds, short of sedition (ch. 20). TP 11 calls democracy the most absolute state yet shuts out foreigners, dependents and women, which Steinberg calls deplorable; Spinoza died soon after starting it.^I52

What circulates

Quoted alone, two lines lose that frame: TTP 20’s liberty stops at sedition, and TP 5.4 goes on: “for obedience is the constant will to execute what, by the general decree of the commonwealth, ought to be done” (obsequium).^L85 An expanded “peace” line is not Spinoza’s (✱25).

Sources for ✱22: 7, 40, 52, 85, 88, 97, 227–228

✱23Science and naturalism

E1app, E2p7, E3p2s, E4pref, E5p17–p19 · Einstein 1920–21 and 1929 · Damasio 2003^T1,3

Context

Two strands of the Ethics matter here. God or Nature “acts by the same necessity as that whereby it exists” (E4pref); the belief “that God made all things for man” is a prejudice (E1app); God is without passions, and whoever loves God cannot strive to be loved back (E5p17, E5p19).^T And the body is open to study: quid corpus possit, nemo hucusque determinavit, “no one has hitherto laid down the limits to the powers of the body” (E3p2s).^T

Einstein

On 28 April 1929 the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported a German cable of 25 words from Einstein to a New York rabbi who had asked “Do you believe in God?”:^H229

Ich glaube an Spinozas Gott der sich in gesetzlicher Harmonie des Seienden offenbart, nicht an Gott der Sich mit Schicksalen und Handlungen der Menschen abgibt.

I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals himself in the lawful harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings.

JTA report · literal translation made for this page

JTA names the rabbi “Hebert G. Goldstein” (sic) of the Institutional Synagogue; Holton (2002), quoted on despinoza.nl, has Herbert S. Goldstein, the usual form.^H229,230 The day is unsettled: Wikipedia dates the cable 24 April and cites a New York Times report of 25 April; the fact-checking site Snopes dates the telegram 25 April.^H231,232 Years earlier Einstein wrote a poem, “Zu Spinoza's Ethik” (“Wie lieb ich diesen edlen Mann”); the Einstein Archive dates the handwriting to 1920–21 (document 17814), and Klever transcribed it (Studia Spinozana 5, 1989), as despinoza.nl reports.^H233

Damasio, Looking for Spinoza (2003)

What circulates. Antonio Damasio holds that the Ethics anticipated many of his own conclusions, especially about body images,^I234 and presents mind and body as “parallel and mutually correlated processes”.^I202

What scholars say. Chantal Jaquet (2004; English 2018) sets out to undermine the picture Damasio’s view belongs to: “parallelism”, a term she credits to Leibniz, should give way to Spinoza’s own term, “equality” (as Schmitter reports).^I202 Compare E2p7, ordo et connexio idearum idem est ac ordo et connexio rerum, “The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things”, and E2p7c, where God’s power of thinking is æqualis, “equal to his realized power of action”.^T Panksepp and Watt praise Damasio’s use of conatus; their objections are neuroscientific, and they leave the accuracy of his Spinoza to Spinoza scholars.^I235

Sources for ✱23: 1, 3, 202, 229–235

✱24Ecology and psychology

E4p4, E4p37s1, E5p3 · Naess 1977 · Freud 1931 · Lacan 1964 · Vygotsky 1931–33^T1,3

Context

Both uses start from Spinoza’s naturalism: it is impossible “that man should not be a part of Nature” (E4p4).^T

Ecology

What circulates. Arne Naess wrote “Spinoza and Ecology” (Philosophia, 1977); the article was not read for this page.^I236 As Dağ (2024) reports a 1977 Naess text (his pages do not match Philosophia), Naess draws parallels with deep ecology: Deus sive Natura, interconnectedness, self-realisation, natural right, the intellectual love of God.^I237

What scholars say. Lloyd (1980), also known here only through Dağ, holds that morality is species-specific, so Spinoza’s ethics tends to anthropocentrism with no duty of stewardship; Naess replied in 1980, proposing a “community of life”.^I237,238 Reviewers report that de Jonge (2004) doubts deep ecology’s “self-realization” fits Spinoza’s metaphysics; Butler finds “nothing particularly Spinozist” in its platform.^I239,240 Dağ notes that Naess overlooks this:^I237

legem illam de non mactandis brutis magis vana superstitione et muliebri misericordia quam sana ratione fundatam esse

the law against the slaughtering of animals is founded rather on vain superstition and womanish pity than on sound reason

E4p37s1 · G II/236ff. · tr. Elwes

We have “the same rights in respect to them as they have in respect to us”; Spinoza does not deny “that beasts feel”, only that this forbids using them as suits us (E4p37s1).^T

Psychology

Freud. Replying to Lothar Bickel on 28 June 1931, Freud admitted a debt to Spinoza: he never cited him because he drew on the atmosphere Spinoza created, not on his works. The letter is known here only via de Paula (2021), quoting a 1990 São Paulo anthology; where it was first printed is unverified.^H241

Lacan. In the first session of Seminar XI (15 Jan 1964), Lacan likened the IPA’s ban on his teaching to a major excommunication, exactly what Spinoza had suffered: the kherem of 27 July 1656, then the Shammata, with no return (his account; unofficial transcription).^H242

Vygotsky. “The Teaching about Emotions” argues that Spinoza’s theory of the passions unites causal explanation with the higher meaning of emotions, which the explanatory and descriptive psychologies of his day split apart.^I243 The manuscript, dated 1931–33 by its editors, was unfinished at his death in 1934 and first printed in Russian in 1984; Oittinen argues its Spinoza analysis was never completed. An English version is in the Collected Works, vol. 6 (Plenum, 1999).^I244,245

What circulates. Wikipedia, citing Roger Scruton (2002, p. 86), presents E5p3, a passion understood ceasing to be a passion, as anticipating a key idea of psychoanalysis.^I246 What scholars say. Pereboom, following Hampshire, compares Spinoza with Freud, but doubts that understanding a passion removes it (✱21).^I94

Sources for ✱24: 1, 3, 94, 236–246

✱25Quotes: genuine and misattributed

Latin text and Elwes (1884)^T1,3

Context

The first list gives Latin and Elwes; in the second, italic lines circulate and notes give the evidence.

Genuine

• E5p42s, the last sentence: Sed omnia præclara tam difficilia quam rara sunt. “But all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.”
• E5p42: Beatitudo non est virtutis præmium sed ipsa virtus, “Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself”.
• E4p67: Homo liber de nulla re minus quam de morte cogitat, “A free man thinks of death least of all things”.
• E3DefAff1: Cupiditas est ipsa hominis essentia quatenus… “Desire is the actual essence of man, in so far as it is conceived, as determined to a particular activity by some given modification of itself.” Popular versions drop the clause after “essence of man”.
• E3p2s: quid corpus possit, nemo hucusque determinavit, “no one has hitherto laid down the limits to the powers of the body”; the popular “no one has yet determined what the body can do” is closer to the Latin.
• E4app17: unicuique indigenti auxilium ferre vires et utilitatem viri privati longe superat, “to give aid to every poor man is far beyond the power and the advantage of any private person”; the poor are society’s charge, Spinoza adds.
• E3DefAff13exp: non dari spem sine metu neque metum sine spe, “there is no hope unmingled with fear, and no fear unmingled with hope”.
• “God or Nature”: Deum seu Naturam, Deus seu Natura (E4pref); Dei sive Naturæ, Dei seu Naturæ (E4p4d); Elwes: “which we call God or Nature”. No nominative Deus sive Natura in this Latin text, and Nadler reports that the 1677 Dutch version leaves out the “or Nature” of E4pref.^H7
• TP 1.4: non ridere, non lugere, neque detestari, sed intelligere, “not to mock, lament, or execrate, but to understand”. TP 5.4: Pax enim non belli privatio, sed virtus est, “peace is not mere absence of war, but is a virtue”. TTP ch. 20: Finis ergo Reipublicae revera libertas est, “the true aim of government is liberty”.^{L97,228,227,85,88}

Misattributed or altered

• “Omnis determinatio est negatio.”Letter 50 (1674), on figure, has “et determinatio negatio est” (Elwes: “determination is negation”).^L40 Melamed: Jacobi wrote “Determinatio negatio est” in 1785; the universal omnis form first appears in Hegel’s 1816 review of Jacobi.^I101
• “Peace is not an absence of war; it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice”.Only the first clause is TP 5.4, which goes on to obedience (✱22). According to Wikiquote, the long form is a liberal rendering from Thomas Gregor, A Natural History of Peace (1996).^I247
• “If I knew the world would end tomorrow, I would still plant an apple tree”.Credited to Spinoza on a quotation blog;^H248 usually to Luther, though no source for it has been found (an evangelisch.de blog;^I249 BUND Lemgo, citing Welt am Sonntag, 2003^H250). The earliest documented church use is Pastor Karl Lotz’s circular letter of 5 Oct 1944 (per BUND Lemgo);^H250 Schloemann’s Luthers Apfelbäumchen? (1994) studies it.^I251
• “Nature abhors a vacuum.”Not in the Latin. E1p15s only denies a vacuum: vacuum in natura non detur, “there does not exist a vacuum in nature”.^T
• “God would say: Stop praying and beating your breast…”Not in Spinoza’s works; the Ethics’ God is “without passions” (E5p17).^T Origin unknown; the earliest dated printing found here, not its origin, is a Colombian newspaper column (26 Aug 2011) that calls it Spinoza’s, citing nothing.^H252
• “Be not astonished at new ideas…”A paraphrase of the close of the Short Treatise, not the Ethics. Wolf’s 1910 translation: “Be not astonished at these novelties”.^L253
• “Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it”.A rewording of E5p3 (✱21) that changes its meaning: a passio is being acted on, not pain.^T LitCharts reports it in Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning (p. 74, edition unstated); Frankl’s text was not seen.^H226

Sources for ✱25: 1, 3, 7, 40, 85, 88, 97, 101, 226–228, 247–253