A Spinoza Reader: The Ethics and Other Works / Edition 1

by Benedict de Spinoza

Overview

This anthology of the work of Baruch de Spinoza (1632-1677) presents the text of Spinoza's masterwork, the Ethics, in what is now the standard translation by Edwin Curley. Also included are selections from other works by Spinoza, chosen by Curley to make the Ethics easier to understand, and a substantial introduction that gives an overview of Spinoza's life and the main themes of his philosophy. Perfect for course use, the Spinoza Reader is a practical tool with which to approach one of the world's greatest but most difficult thinkers, a passionate seeker of the truth who has been viewed by some as an atheist and by others as a religious mystic.


The anthology begins with the opening section of the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect, which has always moved readers by its description of the young Spinoza's spiritual quest, his dissatisfaction with the things people ordinarily strive for—wealth, honor, and sensual pleasure—and his hope that the pursuit of knowledge would lead him to discover the true good. The emphasis throughout these selections is on metaphysical, epistemological, and religious issues: the existence and nature of God, his relation to the world, the nature of the human mind and its relation to the body, and the theory of demonstration, axioms, and definitions. For each of these topics, the editor supplements the rigorous discussions in the Ethics with informal treatments from Spinoza's other works.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691000671
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	02/27/1994
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	1,036,287
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Edwin Curley, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Illinois at Chicago, is the author of Behind the Geometrical Method: A Reading of Spinoza's "Ethics" (Princeton) and editor and translator of Princeton's edition of the works of Spinoza.

Table of Contents

267

	Introduction
I	Spinoza's Life and Philosophy
II	Bibliographical Note
III	Abbreviations and Other Conventions
	Preliminaries
I	A Portrait of the Philosopher as a Young Man	3
II	A Critique of Traditional Religion	6
III	Fragments of a Theory of Scientific Method	48
IV	From a Non-Geometric Draft of the Ethics	55
V	An Early Attempt at Geometrizing Philosophy	66
VI	Two Criticisms of Descartes	71
VII	The Study Group has Questions about Definitions	77
VIII	The Worm in the Blood	82
	The Ethics
I	Of God	85
II	Of the Nature and Origin of the Mind	115
III	Of the Origin and Nature of the Affects	152
IV	Of Human Bondage, or the Powers of the Affects	197
V	Of the Power of the Intellect, or on Human Freedom	244
	Objections and Replies
I	Tschirnhaus on Freedom	266
II	Freedom and Necessity
III	Tschirnhaus on Problems about the Attributes and Infinite Modes	269
IV	On Knowledge of Other Attributes and Examples of Infinite Modes	270
V	Tschirnhaus on Knowledge of Other Attributes	272
VI	Each Thing Is Expressed by Many Minds	272
VII	Tschirnhaus Presses His Objection	273
VIII	Spinoza Replies Again	273
IX	Tschirnhaus on Deducing the Existence of Bodies	274
X	On the Uselessness of Descartes' Principles of Natural Things	274
XI	Tschirnhaus Presses the Objection	274
XII	Spinoza's Last Reply	275
	Index	277