Ethics — Part 1
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Clean text
- Extent:
- ~14,500 words · 69 passages
Cite this work
- APABaruch Spinoza. (n.d.). Ethics — Part 1. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/baruch-spinoza/ethics-part-1
- MLABaruch Spinoza. "Ethics — Part 1." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/baruch-spinoza/ethics-part-1.
- ChicagoBaruch Spinoza. Ethics — Part 1. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/baruch-spinoza/ethics-part-1.
What it is about
A complete system — God, the mind, the affects, freedom — demonstrated as if it were geometry: definitions, axioms and propositions culminating in the idea that freedom is understanding necessity.
Context and history
Spinoza finished the Ethics around 1675 and gave up publishing it in his lifetime: the scandal of his 'Deus sive Natura' — God and Nature as one and the same — would have buried him. It appeared in 1677, months after his death, in the Opera Posthuma, and was banned almost at once. Its author had lived in The Hague grinding lenses, excommunicated from Amsterdam's Jewish community at twenty-three with an anathema of unrevoked severity. For a century 'Spinozist' was an insult; afterwards, for German idealism and many more, the mountain against which every philosophy must measure itself.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
I. By that which is 'self-caused' I mean that of which the essence involves existence, or that of which the nature is only conceivable as existent. II. A thing is called 'finite after its kind' when it can be limited by another thing of the same nature; for instance, a body is called finite because we always conceive another greater body. So, also, a thought is limited by another thought, but a body is not limited by thought, nor a thought by body. III. 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. IV. By 'attribute' I mean that which the intellect perceives as constituting the essence of substance. V. By 'mode' I mean the modifications ("affectiones") of substance, or that which exists in, and is conceived through, something other than itself. VI. By 'God' I mean a being absolutely infinite--that is, a substance consisting in infinite attributes, of which each expresses eternal and infinite essentiality. >>>>>Explanation--I say absolutely infinite, not infinite after its kind: for, of a thing infinite only after its kind, infinite attributes may be denied; but that which is absolutely infinite, contains in its essence whatever expresses reality, and involves no negation. VII. That thing is called 'free,' which exists solely by the necessity of its own nature, and of which the action is determined by itself alone. On the other hand, that thing is necessary, or rather constrained, which is determined by something external to itself to a fixed and definite method of existence or action. VIII. By 'eternity' I mean existence itself, in so far as it is conceived necessarily to follow solely from the definition of that which is eternal. >>>>>Explanation--Existe