Ethics — Part 5
- Language:
- English
- 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:
- ~10,700 words · 51 passages
Cite this work
- APABaruch Spinoza. (n.d.). Ethics — Part 5. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/baruch-spinoza/ethics-part-5
- MLABaruch Spinoza. Ethics — Part 5. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/baruch-spinoza/ethics-part-5.
- ChicagoBaruch Spinoza. Ethics — Part 5. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/baruch-spinoza/ethics-part-5.
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
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.
is now, therefore, time to pass on to those matters, which appertain to the duration of the mind, without relation to the body. Prop. XXI. The mind can only imagine anything, or remember what is past, while the body endures. Proof.- The mind does not express the actual existence of its body, nor does it imagine the modifications of the body as actual, except while the body endures (II:viii.Coroll.); and, consequently (II:xxvi.), it does not imagine any body as actually existing, except while its own body endures. Thus it cannot imagine anything (for definition of Imagination, see II:xvii.Note), or remember things past, except while the body endures (see definition of Memory, II:xviii.Note). Q.E.D. Prop. XXII. Nevertheless in God there is necessarily an idea, which expresses the essence of this or that human body under the form of eternity. Proof.- God is the cause, not only of the existence of this or that human body, but also of its essence (I:xxv.). This essence, therefore, must necessarily be conceived through the very essence of God (I:Ax.iv.), and be thus conceived by a certain eternal necessity (I:xvi.); and this conception. must necessarily exist in God (II:iii.). Q.E.D. Prop. XXIII. The human mind cannot be absolutely destroyed with the body, but there remains of it something which is eternal. Proof.- There is necessarily in God a concept or idea, which expresses the essence of the human body (last Prop.), which, therefore, is necessarily something appertaining to the essence of the human mind (II:xiii.). But we have not assigned to the human mind any, duration, definable by time, except in so far as it expresses the actual existence of the body, which is explained through duration, and may be defined by time - that is (II:viii.Coroll.), we do not assign to it duration, except while the body endures.…