Epistolae (Benedictus de Spinoza)
- Language:
- Latin
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~20,800 words · 99 passages
Cite this work
- APABaruch Spinoza. (n.d.). Epistolae (Benedictus de Spinoza). Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/baruch-spinoza/epistolae-benedictus-de-spinoza
- MLABaruch Spinoza. Epistolae (Benedictus de Spinoza). Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/baruch-spinoza/epistolae-benedictus-de-spinoza.
- ChicagoBaruch Spinoza. Epistolae (Benedictus de Spinoza). Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/baruch-spinoza/epistolae-benedictus-de-spinoza.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
The Latin original of Spinoza's correspondence, published by his friends in the 'Opera posthuma' of 1677.
Context and history
The editors chose the letters that had doctrinal value and cut what was personal, so this is not Spinoza's life but his thought tested by real correspondents: Oldenburg, secretary of the Royal Society, questioning and taking fright at once; Blyenbergh, the Calvinist merchant with whom evil is argued out in the letters that remain its best exposition; Boxel, with whom the subject is ghosts; Tschirnhaus, who asks the sharpest questions about the 'Ethics'. In the letters one sees what the treatises hide: Spinoza doubting, correcting himself, refusing to publish. Whoever wants to know what certain theses of the 'Ethics' really mean must often come looking here.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
3) substantiae absolute infinitae sive Dei respicias; alias, si statuatur unamquamque substantiam tantum habere unum attributum, et ego haberem duas ideas duorum attributorum, recte concludere possem, quod, ubi duo diversa attributa, ibi duae diversae sint substantiae. Huius etiam clariorem explicationem rogo. Desino, vir clarissime, et ad has tuam responsionem prima quavis occasione exspecto.