Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Clean text
- Extent:
- ~16,800 words · 80 passages
Cite this work
- APABaruch Spinoza. (n.d.). Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/baruch-spinoza/on-the-improvement-of-the-understanding
- MLABaruch Spinoza. "Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/baruch-spinoza/on-the-improvement-of-the-understanding.
- ChicagoBaruch Spinoza. Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/baruch-spinoza/on-the-improvement-of-the-understanding.
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.
91 Its object, the acquisition of clear and distinct ideas 94 Its means, good definitions Conditions of definition 107 How to define understanding ----------------------------------------------------------------------[Notice to the Reader.] (This notice to the reader was written by the editors of the Opera Postuma in 1677. Taken from Curley, Note 3, at end) *This Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect etc., which we give you here, kind reader, in its unfinished [that is, defective] state, was written by the author many years ago now. He always intended to finish it. But hindered by other occupations, and finally snatched away by death, he was unable to bring it to the desired conclusion. But since it contains many excellent and useful things, which--we have no doubt--will be of great benefit to anyone sincerely seeking the truth, we did not wish to deprive you of them. And so that you would be aware of, and find less difficult to excuse, the many things that are still obscure, rough, and unpolished, we wished to warn you of them. Farewell.* [1] (1) After experience had taught me that all the usual surroundi