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Philosophical treatise written by Spinoza

Ethics, Demonstrated in Geometrical Order (Ethica, ordine geometrico demonstrata), usually known as the Ethics, is a philosophical treatise written in Latin by Baruch Spinoza (Benedictus de Spinoza). It was written between 1661 and 1675 and was first published posthumously in 1677. The book is perhaps the most ambitious attempt to apply Euclid's method in philosophy. Spinoza puts forward a small number of definitions and axioms from which he attempts to derive hundreds of propositions and corollaries, such as "When the Mind imagines its own lack of power, it is saddened by it", "A free man thinks of nothing less than of death", and "The human Mind cannot be absolutely destroyed with the Body, but something of it remains which is eternal."

The first part of the book addresses the relationship between God and the universe. Spinoza was engaging with a tradition that held that God exists outside of the universe, that God created the universe for a reason, and that God could have created a different universe according to his will. Spinoza denies each point. According to Spinoza, God is the natural world. Spinoza concludes that God is the substance comprising the universe; that God exists in itself, not outside of the universe; and that the universe exists as it does from necessity, not because of a divine theological reason or will. Spinoza argues through propositions. He holds the perspective that the conclusion he presents is merely the necessary logical result of combining the provided Definitions and Axioms. He starts with the proposition that "there cannot exist in the universe two or more substances having the same nature or attribute." He follows this by arguing that objects and events must not merely be caused if they occur, but that they must be prevented if they do not. By a logical contradiction, if something is non contradictory, there is no reason that it should not exist. Spinoza builds from these starting ideas. If substance exists it must be infinite, because if not infinite another finite substance would have to exist to take up the remaining parts of its finite attributes, something which is impossible according to an earlier proposition. Spinoza then uses the Ontological Argument as justification for the existence of God and argues that God must possess all attributes infinitely. Since no two things can share attributes, "besides God no substance can be granted or conceived." As with many of Spinoza's claims, what this means is a matter of dispute. Spinoza claims that the things that make up the universe, including human beings, are God's "modes". This means that everything is, in some sense, dependent upon God. The nature of this dependence is disputed. Some scholars say that the modes are properties of God in the traditional sense. Others say that modes are effects of God. Either way, the modes are also logically dependent on God's essence, in this sense: everything that happens follows from the nature of God, just as it follows from the nature of a triangle that the sum of its angles are equal to two right angles or 180 degrees. Since God had to exist with the nature that he has, nothing that has happened could have been avoided; and, if God has fixed a particular fate for a particular mode, there is no escaping it. As Spinoza puts it, "A thing which has been determined by God to produce an effect cannot render itself undetermined."

The second part focuses on the human mind and body. Spinoza attacks several Cartesian positions: (1) that the mind and body are distinct substances that can affect one another; (2) that we know our minds better than we know our bodies; (3) that our senses may be trusted; (4) that despite being created by God we can make mistakes, namely, when we affirm, of our own free will, an idea that is not clear and distinct. Spinoza denies each of Descartes's points. Regarding (1), Spinoza argues that the mind and the body are a single thing that is being thought of in two different ways. The whole of nature can be fully described in terms of thoughts or in terms of bodies. However, we cannot mix these two ways of describing things, as Descartes does, and say that the mind affects the body or vice versa. Moreover, the mind's self knowledge is not fundamental: it cannot know its own thoughts better than it knows the ways in which its body is acted upon by other bodies. Further, there is no difference between contemplating an idea and thinking that it is true, and there is no freedom of the will at all. Sensory perception, which Spinoza calls "knowledge of the first kind", is entirely inaccurate, since it reflects how our own bodies work more than how things really are. We can also have a kind of accurate knowledge called "knowledge of the second kind", or "reason". This encompasses knowledge of the features common to all things, and includes principles of physics and geometry. We can also have "knowledge of the third kind", or "intuitive knowledge". This is a sort of knowledge that, somehow, relates particular things to the nature of God.

In the third part of the Ethics, Spinoza argues that all things, including human beings, strive to persevere their perfection of power in being unaffected. Spinoza states that virtue is equal to power (i. e., self control). Spinoza explains how this desire ("conatus") underlies the movement and complexity of our emotions and passions (i. e., joy and sadness that are building blocks for all other emotions). Our mind is in certain cases active, and in certain cases passive. In so far as it has adequate ideas it is necessarily active, and in so far as it has inadequate ideas, it is necessarily passive.

For Spinoza, reality means activity, and the reality of anything expresses itself in a tendency to self preservation — to exist is to persist. In the lowest kinds of things, in so called inanimate matter, this tendency shows itself as a "will to live". Regarded physiologically the effort is called appetite; when we are conscious of it, it is called desire. The moral categories, good and evil, are intimately connected with desire, though not in the way commonly supposed. Man does not desire a thing because he thinks it is good, or shun it because he considers it bad; rather he considers anything good if he desires it, and regards it as bad if he has an aversion for it. Now whatever is felt to heighten vital activity gives pleasure; whatever is felt to lower such activity causes pain. Pleasure coupled with a consciousness of its external cause is called love, and pain coupled with a consciousness of its external cause is called hate — "love" and "hate" being used in the wide sense of "like" and "dislike". All human feelings are derived from pleasure, pain and desire. Their great variety is due to the differences in the kinds of external objects which give rise to them, and to the differences in the inner conditions of the individual experiencing them. For the present purpose the most important distinction is that between "active" feelings and "passive" feelings (or "passions"). Man, according to Spinoza, is active or free in so far as any experience is the outcome solely of his own nature; he is passive, or a bondsman, in so far as any experience is due to other causes besides his own nature. The active feelings are all of them forms of self realisation, of heightened activity, of strength of mind, and are therefore always pleasurable. It is the passive feelings (or "passions") which are responsible for all the ills of life, for they are induced largely by things outside us and frequently cause that lowered vitality which means pain. Spinoza next links up his ethics with his theory of knowledge, and correlates the moral progress of man with his intellectual progress. At the lowest stage of knowledge, that of "opinion", man is under the dominant influence of things outside himself, and so is in the bondage of the passions. At the next stage, the stage of "reason", the characteristic feature of the human mind, its intelligence, asserts itself, and helps to emancipate him from his bondage to the senses and external allurements. The insight gained into the nature of the passions helps to free man from their domination. A better understanding of his own place in the cosmic system and of the place of all the objects of his likes and dislikes, and his insight into the necessity which rules all things, tend to cure him of his resentments, regrets and disappointments. He grows reconciled to things, and wins peace of mind. In this way reason teaches acquiescence in the universal order, and elevates the mind above the turmoil of passion. At the highest stage of knowledge, that of "intuitive knowledge", the mind apprehends all things as expressions of the eternal cosmos. It sees all things in God, and God in all things. It feels itself as part of the eternal order, identifying its thoughts with cosmic thought and its interests with cosmic interests. Thereby it becomes eternal as one of the eternal ideas in which the Attribute Thought expresses itself, and attains to that "blessedness" which "is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself", that is, the perfect joy which characterises perfect self activity. This is not an easy or a common achievement. "But", says Spinoza, "everything excellent is as difficult as it is rare."

Shortly after his death in 1677, Spinoza's works were placed on the Catholic Church's Index of Banned Books. Condemnations soon appeared, such as Aubert de Versé's L'impie convaincu (1685). According to its subtitle, in this work "the foundations of [Spinoza's] atheism are refuted". In June 1678 —just over a year after Spinoza's death—the States of Holland banned his entire works, since they “contain very many profane, blasphemous and atheistic propositions.” The prohibition included the owning, reading, distribution, copying, and restating of Spinoza's books, and even the reworking of his fundamental ideas. For the next hundred years, if European philosophers read this so called heretic, they did so almost entirely in secret. How much forbidden Spinozism they were sneaking into their diets remains a subject of continual intrigue. Locke, Hume, Leibniz and Kant all stand accused by later scholars of indulging in periods of closeted Spinozism. At the close of the 18th century, a controversy centering on the Ethics scandalized the German philosophy scene. The first known translation of the Ethics into English was completed in 1856 by the novelist George Eliot, though not published until much later. The book next appeared in English in 1883, by the hand of the novelist Hale White. Spinoza rose clearly into view for anglophone metaphysicians in the late nineteenth century, during the British craze for Hegel. In his admiration for Spinoza, Hegel was joined in this period by his countrymen Schelling, Goethe, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. In the twentieth century, the ghost of Spinoza continued to show itself, for example in the writings of Russell, Wittgenstein, Davidson, and Deleuze. Among writers of fiction and poetry, the influential thinkers inspired by Spinoza include Coleridge, George Eliot, Melville, Borges, and Malamud. The first published Dutch translations were by the poet Herman Gorter (1895) and by Willem Meyer (1896).

Spinoza's contemporary, Simon de Vries, raised the objection that Spinoza fails to prove that substances may possess multiple attributes, but that if substances have only a single attribute, "where there are two different attributes, there are also different substances". This is a serious weakness in Spinoza's logic, which has yet to be conclusively resolved. Some have attempted to resolve this conflict, such as Linda Trompetter, who writes that "attributes are singly essential properties, which together constitute the one essence of a substance", but this interpretation is not universal, and Spinoza did not clarify the issue in his response to de Vries. On the other hand, Stanley Martens states that "an attribute of a substance is that substance; it is that substance insofar as it has a certain nature" in an analysis of Spinoza's ideas of attributes.

Schopenhauer claimed that Spinoza misused words. "Thus he calls 'God' that which is everywhere called 'the world'; 'justice' that which is everywhere called 'power'; and 'will' that which is everywhere called 'judgement'." Also, "that concept of substance with the definition of which Spinoza accordingly begins appears on close and honest investigation to be a higher yet unjustified abstraction of the concept matter."

1856 by George Eliot, unpublished until 1981 (Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, University of Salzburg, Austria); edited by Thomas Deegan. New edition with an introduction and notes by Clare Carlisle (Princeton University Press, 2020). 1870 by Robert Willis, in Benedict de Spinoza: His Life, Correspondence, and Ethics (Trübner & Co., London). 1884 by R. H. L. Elwes, in the second volume of The Chief Works of Spinoza (George Bell & Sons, London). Many reprints and editions until today. 1910 by Andrew Boyle, with an Introduction by George Santayana (Dens & Sons, London); some reprints since then. Revised by G. H. R. Parkinson and newly edited as a part of the Oxford Philosophical Texts (London, 1989). 1982 by Samuel Shirley (Hacket Publications), with Spinoza's selected Letters. Added to his translation of the Complete Works, with introduction and notes by Michael L. Morgan (also Hacket Publications, 2002). 1985 by Edwin Curley, in the first volume of The Collected Works of Spinoza (Princeton University Press). Separatly reissued by Penguin Classics (2005), and with a selection of the Letters and other texts in A Spinoza Reader (Princeton University Press, 1994). 2018 by Michael Silverthorne and Matthew J. Kisner in the Cambridge Texts in History of Philosophy series.