Kisner Matthew (EDT) - Spinoza : Ethics: Proved in Geometrical Order

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Benedict de Spinoza

Ethics Proved in Geometrical Order

Edited by

Matthew J. Kisner

University of South Carolina

Translated by

Michael Silverthorne

and

Matthew J. Kisner

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Cambridge University Press 2018

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We would like to thank the late Desmond Clarke for his work in shepherding this volume from potentiality to actuality, and for his practiced hand as the series editor. We owe a debt of gratitude to Piet Steenbakkers and the late Fokke Akkerman for graciously agreeing to make their new critical edition available to us prior to its publication. Piet also provided helpful feedback on the translation and the Note on the text and translation. We would like to thank previous translators of the Ethics , Edwin Curley, Samuel Shirley and G.H.R. Parkinson, for all that we have learned from them. Matt would like to thank Desmond Clarke, Aaron Garrett, Ursula Renz, Sean Schifano and Harvey Shoolman for providing comments on the Introduction. Jeroen van de Ven was helpful in checking the chronology. Sam Newlands, Andrea Sangiacomo and Noa Naaman contributed to translating key terms; thanks to Sam for from the vantage of eternity. Finally, Matt would like to thank the University of South Carolina and his family (especially Lucy and Gracie) for their support in completing this project.

Spinoza makes frequent references to the various parts of the Ethics . For the sake of conciseness, we employ the following abbreviations in the translation of the text and throughout this volume.

axiom

appendix

corollary

definition

Definition of the Emotions

explanation

lemma

proposition

postulate

preface

scholium

The part of the Ethics is indicated by an arabic number at the beginning of the citation. So 4p37s1 refers to the first scholium of proposition 37 of Part Four.

In July of 1675 Spinoza travelled from his home in The Hague to Amsterdam to oversee the publication of his Ethics . He must have been bursting with excitement. The Ethics was the culmination of nearly fifteen years of philosophical reflection. It was also an astonishing intellectual achievement, as close as anyone had ever come to attaining the holy grail of early modern philosophy: an integrated and comprehensive system of thought, covering the gamut of philosophical topics, including God, physics, psychology, knowledge and ethics. Furthermore, the Ethics audaciously purports to prove this system on the basis of geometrical demonstration, the sort of rigorous proof famously employed by Euclid, which attains the highest degree of certainty.

Spinozas excitement was also mixed with trepidation, for he knew that the Ethics would be controversial, to say the least. The first reason for controversy was the Ethics s evident debt to Ren Descartes (15961650), the renowned natural philosopher and mathematician, who had become a polarizing figure in Dutch universities. In opposition to much of the Aristotelian philosophy that traditionally dominated universities, Descartes defended a mechanistic science, which was a cornerstone of what is known as the Scientific Revolution. Mechanistic science aims to explain natural systems as one would explain machines, in terms of the arrangement and movement of matter in space. In the Netherlands, where Aristotelianism had a more precarious foothold, various kinds of Cartesian philosophy spread rapidly among the faculty, particularly in Utrecht and Leiden. Cartesianism was met with hostility by conservative theologians such as Gisbertus Voetius (15891676) and Jacobus Revius (15861685), primarily because it threatened a strain of Protestant theology that draws on Aristotelian metaphysics. In an effort to keep the peace in the universities, the provincial councils of the States of Holland and West-Friesland declared that professors of philosophy must take an oath to cease propounding Cartesianism, although it would eventually come to dominate Dutch universities. While Spinoza was highly critical of Descartes, much of the Ethics proceeds from Cartesian starting points. Spinoza was also associated with Descartes because he had published a commentary on Descartess Principles of Philosophy , the only work to have been published under Spinozas name during his lifetime.