Spinoza's Ethik, Vol. 1

by Baruch Spinoza

Excerpt from Spinoza's Ethik

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Genres: Philosophy

513 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2024

About the author

Controversial pantheistic doctrine of Dutch philosopher and theologian Baruch Spinoza or Benedict advocated an intellectual love of God; people best know Ethics , his work of 1677.

People came considered this great rationalist of 17th century.

In his posthumous magnum opus, he opposed mind–body dualism of René Descartes and earned recognition of most important thinkers of west. This last indisputable Latin masterpiece, which Spinoza wrote, finally turns and entirely destroys the refined medieval conceptions.

After death of Baruch Spinoza, often Benedictus de Spinoza, people realized not fully his breadth and importance until many years. He laid the ground for the 18th-century Enlightenment and modern Biblical criticism, including conceptions of the self and arguably the universe. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel said of all contemporaries, "You are either a Spinozist or not a philosopher at all."

Reviews

[Vanessa Moll]

This was a turning point in my intellectual life I fear

[Thanh Vu]

It was very dense at first, mainly because Spinoza talked like a mathematician who forgot his readers don’t actually understand what he’s talking about… but nevertheless, it wasn’t the logic and structural reasoning that got me intrigued, it was the second half that explained precisely how I view God in the most dehumanized, naturalistic, and psychological way. He explains that there is one necessary substance in all of reality, which he calls nature / God. It is an infinitely powerful, infinitely knowing thing that couldn’t care less about interfering with humans, meaning: no holy books, no divine interference, no prophets, no heaven or hell, no religion, no rules, no cosmic favoritism, no objective morality, no worship, and no idolatry of any sort. Instead, it is an impersonal being that exists necessarily because of its essence, being fully devoid of personality, physical forms, religion, and will. The first half of this book depicts a geometric system full of axioms and definitions which was definitely difficult to read, but the second half was much easier. Spinoza even went on to describe his stance on common philosophical ideas such as determinism, anthropomorphism, contingency, subjective morality, naturalism, religious contradictions, rational ignorance, and even the deconstruction of human-centered beliefs. Overall, I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in learning about different angles of God, especially agnostic atheists like me!

[Aaron Schuschu]

Something to the effect of he thought it was foolish to assume God didn’t exist because of seemingly negative attributes but at the same time thought it was equally foolish to think that God wasn’t immanent. Or something to that effect.