Ethics — Part 2
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Clean text
- Extent:
- ~18,100 words · 86 passages
Cite this work
- APABaruch Spinoza. (n.d.). Ethics — Part 2. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/baruch-spinoza/ethics-part-2
- MLABaruch Spinoza. "Ethics — Part 2." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/baruch-spinoza/ethics-part-2.
- ChicagoBaruch Spinoza. Ethics — Part 2. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/baruch-spinoza/ethics-part-2.
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.
PREFACE I now pass on to explaining the results, which must necessarily follow from the essence of God, or of the eternal and infinite being; not, indeed, all of them (for we proved in Part i., Prop. xvi., that an infinite number must follow in an infinite number of ways), but only those which are able to lead us, as it were by the hand, to the knowledge of the human mind and its highest blessedness. DEFINITIONS I. By 'body' I mean a mode which expresses in a certain determinate manner the essence of God, in so far as he is considered as an extended thing. (See Pt. i., Prop. xxv. Cor.) II. I consider as belonging to the essence of a thing that, which being given, the thing is necessarily given also, and, which being removed, the thing is necessarily removed also; in other words, that without which the thing, and which itself without the thing, can neither be nor be conceived. III. By 'idea,' I mean the mental conception which is formed by the mind as a thinking thing. >>>>>Explanation--I say 'conception' rather than perception, because the word perception seems to imply that the mind is passive in respect to the object; whereas conception seems to express an activity of the mind. IV. By 'an adequate idea,' I mean an idea which, in so far as it is considered in itself, without relation to the object, has all the properties or intrinsic marks of a true idea. >>>>>Explanation--I say 'intrinsic,' in order to exclude that mark which is extrinsic, namely, the agreement between the idea and its object (ideatum). V. 'Duration' is the indefinite continuance of existing. >>>>>Explanation--I say 'indefinite,' because it cannot be determined through the existence itself of the existing thing, or by its efficient cause, which necessarily gives the existence of the thing, but does