Ethics and on the Improvement of the Understanding

This book was in excelent condition and was shipped very quickly. The seller was great! :)

Spinoza himself was a major disappointment. Even given the period he comes from, it was impossible to look at his philosophy as "enlightened" -- and certainly not enlightening. However, I am glad that I worked my way through the material. The Elwes translation was not always easy to understand. However, the annotations made it as clear as I can imagine it being. The fault lies in Spinoza's highly circular style, not Elwes' presentation.

A truly beautiful philosophical system: Spinoza's pantheistic and monistic conception of the Universe is absolutely awesome. The Ethics can be a bit difficult to understand given the "geometrical order" it is written, but when it finally makes sense it is evident that it truly is very profound and influential deductive rationalist logic. What is staggering of Spinoza's philosophy is that given the truth of his definitions and axioms, his metaphysical system is air-tight.

Spinoza's "Ethics" urges the reader to live a life in accordance with the laws of reason, whose consummation is blessedness through the knowledge of God. His naturalist postulate of God as synonomous with the whole of the natural world was perhaps the most inspired and original reformulation of the concept of God. One can even go so far as to say that his theism, as it were, was the most realistic, as it rejected all forms of anthropomorphism, all figurative and personal epithets in reference to God, such as the conception of God held by traditional theology, as the creator of the universe "ex nihilo". As such, the "Ethics" is patently anti-creationist. Not surprisingly, his position led him into being denounced (with good reason) as a freethinker, a heretic and atheist. His argument can briefly be summarised as follows. He takes as his most basic premise that in order to know a thing, one must first of all acquire a complete knowledge of the cause of the thing. Substance, he defined as that whose conception does not depend on the conception of another thing from which it must be formed. In other words, that which can be known through itself can not have an external cause. Thus, Spinoza defined substance as the cause of itself, (causa sui) and that it is therefore explained through itself and not by reference to another cause. It should be noted that this may seem self-contradictory (as in how can something uncaused be the source of its own causation prior to the act of causation itself?) though Spinoza clearly means this in a logical, and not causal, sense. Substance does not depend on another for its existence nor for its attributes and modifications. Consequently, Spinoza implied that the essence of substance implies existence, and substance must be conceived as existing. In consequence, he reached the proposition that substance must be infinite. For to be finite means to be limited, and limited by some other substance of the same nature, that is having the same attribute. By attribute, he defines the intellectual perception of the essence of a substance. Therefore, there could not be two substances, since both having the same essence would be indistinguishable from each other. Therefore, if there can not be two or more substances possessing the same attribute substance must be infinite. It was this substance, held to be infinite, which Spinoza identified with God, whom he understood as an absolutely infinite being or substance consisting of infinite attributes, each of which expresses external and infinite essence. Two of these attributes are known to us, that is thought and extension. Finite minds are modes of God under the attribute of thought, and finite bodies are modes of God under the attribute of extension. Thus, nature is not ontologically distinct from God. Both, are in fact, the same. Admittedly, Spinoza has had as many admirers as critics, such as Schopenhauer, who dismissed his philosophy as a merely cunning play on words in its i

Highly recommended for its informative Introduction, less-archaic translations, and Endnotes. Page 260 Endnote 1: "Spinoza's definitions are of the kind now commonly called 'stipulative'; that is, they tell the reader how Spinoza proposes to use certain words. Spinoza is not concerned (as a Dictionary is concerned) to describe the standard uses of words. His Purpose, as he observes in the Ethics (E3:Def.XX.Expl.) is to explain, not the meaning of words, but the nature of things. One may compare what is done by scientists, when they introduce new technical terms, or give old words a new sense, with a view to explaining what it is that interests them."