Ethics by Benedict De Spinoza

Ethics by Benedict De Spinoza

The book is perhaps the most ambitious attempt to apply the method of Euclid in philosophy. Spinoza puts forward a small number of definitions and axioms from which he attempts to derive hundreds of propositions and corollaries, such as When the Mind imagines its own lack of power, it is saddened by it, A free man thinks of nothing less than of death, and The human Mind cannot be absolutely destroyed with the Body, but something of it remains which is eternal.

According to Spinoza, God is Nature and Nature is God. This is his Pantheism. In his previous book, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, Spinoza discussed the inconsistencies that result when God is assumed to have human characteristics. In the third chapter of that book, he stated that the word God means the same as the word Nature. He wrote: Whether we say . that all things happen according to the laws of nature, or are ordered by the decree and direction of God, we say the same thing. He later qualified this statement in his letter to Oldenburg by abjuring Materialism. Nature, to Spinoza, is a metaphysical Substance, not physical matter. In this posthumously published book Ethics, he equated God with nature by writing God or Nature four times.For Spinoza, God or Nature--being one and the same thing-- is the whole, infinite, eternal, necessarily existing, active system of the universe within which absolutely everything exists. This is the fundamental principle of the Ethics.

BENEDICT DE (BARUCH) SPINOZA was born in Amsterdam, Holland, on November 24, 1632, into a family of Spanish and Portuguese Jewish descent. Given his cultural and religious background, Spinoza was educated in Judaism within the close Amsterdam community. In his mid-twenties, he began to turn away from his religion; after attempting to return Spinoza to the fold, the Amsterdam community expelled him in 1656. To escape these pressures, Spinoza moved to the nearby village of Ouwerkerk in 1660, where he could be close to friends, many of whom belonged to a religious community in the area.

Rather than being schooled at the universities, Spinoza was trained as a skilled craftsman--a grinder of optical lenses. This vocation provided him with a modest living, which permitted ample time for study and for writing on a variety of subjects. One of the early products of these independent intellectual efforts was Spinoza's short work on the philosophy of Rene Descartes (Parts I and II of Descartes' Principles of Philosophy, Demonstrated in the Geometrical Manner [1663]).

Three years after leaving Amsterdam, Spinoza moved to the town of Voorburg, not far from The Hague. Here he wrote and anonymously published his Theological-Political Treatise in 1670. It was in this work that he departed from the prevailing religious teachings of his day to argue that the Bible was a source for moral guidance rather than the fountain of philosophical or scientific truth. Spinoza's devotion to freedom of thought was later carried forth in an unfinished work titled Political Treatise (1677). Spinoza's skill as a craftsman and as a philosopher gained him so much international attention that in 1673 he was offered the chair in philosophy at the University of Heidelberg. But Spinoza's desire for solitude and the intellectual freedom that the quiet life afforded, prompted him to decline the post. In 1677, Spinoza moved to The Hague, where a short time later he died on February 21.

By far the greater proportion of Spinoza's work was published after his death: B. D. S. Opera Posthuma (1677, which includes the works Ethics Demonstrated in a Geometrical Manner, Political Treatise, Treatise on the Improvement of the Understanding, and Hebrew Grammar).

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780460114813
ISBN 10	0460114816
Title	Ethics
Author	Benedict De Spinoza
Series	Everyman's Classics S
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Orion Publishing Co
Year published	1989-02-16
Number of pages	288
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.