Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect
- 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:
- ~16,800 words · 80 passages
Cite this work
- APABaruch Spinoza. (n.d.). On the Improvement of the Understanding [Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect]. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/baruch-spinoza/on-the-improvement-of-the-understanding
- MLABaruch Spinoza. On the Improvement of the Understanding [Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect]. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/baruch-spinoza/on-the-improvement-of-the-understanding.
- ChicagoBaruch Spinoza. On the Improvement of the Understanding [Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect]. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/baruch-spinoza/on-the-improvement-of-the-understanding.
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 English translation of Spinoza's unfinished treatise on how the understanding must be set right in order to know well.
Context and history
It opens with a page unlike anything else in Spinoza: a first-person confession of having seen that riches, honour and pleasure give nothing that lasts, and of having resolved to look for a good that does. What follows is enough to show the method: to distinguish the ways in which we know — by hearsay, by vague experience, by reasoning, and the fourth, the perception of a thing through its essence — and to show that only the last is worth anything. The treatise was left unfinished; Spinoza abandoned it to write the 'Ethics', which applies the method instead of explaining it. That is why it is the best way in: one sees what he was after, before the geometry covered everything over.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
that it may thus proceed, our method must furnish us, first, with a means of distinguishing a true idea from all other perceptions, and enabling the mind to avoid the latter; secondly, with rules for perceiving unknown things according to the standard of the true idea; thirdly, with an order which enables us to avoid useless labor. (49:4) When we became acquainted with this method, we saw that, fourthly, it would be perfect when we had attained to the idea of the absolutely perfect Being. (5) This is an observation which should be made at the outset, in order that we may arrive at the knowledge of such a being more quickly. [50] (1) Let us then make a beginning with the first part of the method, which is, as we have said, to distinguish and separate the true idea from other perceptions, and to keep the mind from confusing with true ideas those which are false, fictitious, and doubtful. (2) I intend to dwell on this point at length, partly to keep a distinction so necessary before the reader's mind, and also because there are some who doubt of true ideas, through not having attended to the distinction between a true perception and all others. (3) Such persons are like men who, while they are awake, doubt not that they are awake, but afterwards in a dream, as often happens, thinking that they are surely awake, and then finding that they were in error, become doubtful even of being awake. (4) This state of mind arises through neglect of the distinction between sleeping and waking. [51] (1) Meanwhile, I give warning that I shall not here give essence of every perception, and explain it through its proximate cause. (2) Such work lies in the province of philosophy. (3) I shall confine myself to what concerns method--that is, to the character of fictitious, false and doubtful perceptions, and the means of freeing ourselves therefrom. (4) Let us then first inquire into the nature of a fictitious idea.…