Short Treatise on God, Man, and His Well-Being
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Clean text
- Extent:
- ~130,000 words · 616 passages
Cite this work
- APABaruch Spinoza. (n.d.). Short Treatise on God, Man, and His Well-Being. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/baruch-spinoza/short-treatise-on-god-man-and-his-well-being
- MLABaruch Spinoza. "Short Treatise on God, Man, and His Well-Being." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/baruch-spinoza/short-treatise-on-god-man-and-his-well-being.
- ChicagoBaruch Spinoza. Short Treatise on God, Man, and His Well-Being. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/baruch-spinoza/short-treatise-on-god-man-and-his-well-being.
What it is about
The early sketch of Spinoza's system, written around 1660 and lost for two centuries: the same philosophy as the 'Ethics' before it took geometrical form.
Context and history
Spinoza never published it, and the text is known only from two Dutch manuscript copies discovered in the nineteenth century; the Latin original is lost. That makes it doubly interesting. First, because the central theses are already here — God as the sole substance, mind and body as two aspects of one thing, freedom as knowledge of necessity — but set out in ordinary prose, with dialogues and digressions, and so far more approachable than in the 'Ethics'. Second, because it lets one see how he got there: there are traces of Descartes that would later disappear. It should be read for what it is, a youthful draft the author chose not to publish, and not as his settled word.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY AT, AND FELLOW OF, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON, LECTURER ON LOGIC AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD AT THE LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE, AND EXAMINER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF LONDON LONDON ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK PREFACE THIS volume is primarily intended to be an introduction to the philosophy of Spinoza. The Short Treatise, though by no means free from difficulties, is well adapted for the pur pose. It contains the essentials of Spinoza's philosophy in a less exacting form than the Ethics with its rigid geometric method. The Short Treatise cannot, of course, take the place of the Ethicsy but it prepares the way for a much easier and more profitable study of it than is otherwise possible. The Introduction and the Commentary provide all the help that the reader is likely to require.