Spinoza Benedictus de - Routledge philosophy guidebook to Spinoza and the ethics

Routledge Philosophy GuideBook to

Spinoza

and the Ethics

I have read Spinoza and the Ethics with great pleasure and am deeply impressed. It discusses an exceptionally wide range of past and present readings of the Ethics, so that the reader gains a sense of the many angles from which this text has been approached It offers an interpretation of the whole of the Ethics, and culminates in a fascinating and nuanced discussion of its final section about the intellectual love of God. Most importantly, it develops a distinctive and insightful account which aims both to do justice to Spinozas own philosophical aspirations, and to relate these to our own.

Susan James, Girton College, Cambridge

Written for students coming to Spinoza for the first time, Spinoza and the Ethics is the ideal guide to this rich and illuminating work. This book provides an overview of the critical interpretations, relating the Ethics to its intellectual context; considers its historical reception; and highlights why the work continues to be relevant today. In addition, the most intriguing final sections of the Ethics, usually ignored in introductory commentaries, are given special attention and illuminated as the climax of the work.

Spinoza and the Ethics is the most up-to-date and accessible introduction for students to Spinozas most important text.

Genevieve Lloyd is Professor of Philosophy at the University of New South Wales, Australia. She is the author of The Man of Reason: Male and Female in Western Philosophy and Being and Time: Selves and Narrators in Philosophy and Literature (both published by Routledge), and Part of Nature: Self-knowledge in Spinozas Ethics (1994).

Edited by Tim Crane and Jonathan Wolff

University College London

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Routledge Philosophy GuideBook to

Spinoza

and the Ethics

Genevieve Lloyd

For Jerome

Contents

Acknowledgments

This book was completed with the assistance of an Australian Research Council Small Grant.

I am grateful also to Sandra Lynch for research assistance; to Moira Gatens and Amlie Oksenberg Rorty for helpful discussion of points of interpretation; to Susan James and Thomas Cook for constructive critical comments on the manuscript; to the School of Philosophy and the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of New South Wales for practical assistance; to the Department of General Philosophy at the University of Sydney for a visiting professorship during the first semester of 1994; and to students of the University of New South Wales and the University of Sydney for their lively engagement with Spinozas Ethics, and their intelligent critical response to sections of this book which I tried out in their courses.

Abbreviations

Abbreviated references to the Ethics follow the conventions introduced by Curley in the introduction to A Spinoza Reader (Curley 1994: xxxv). Thus:

E=Ethics

A= Axiom

P=Proposition

D (following a Roman numeral)= Definition

D (following P+an arabic numeral)= the Demonstration of the proposition

C= Corollary

S=Scholium

Exp= Explanation

L=Lemma

Post= Postulate

Pref= Preface

App= Appendix

DefAff= the definition of the affects at the end of Part III

Roman numerals before these abbreviations refer to parts of the Ethics.

Chapter 1

Spinoza in his time and ours

The outsider

Cursed be he by day and cursed be he by night; cursed be he when he lies down, and cursed be he when he rises up; cursed be he when he goes out, and cursed be he when he comes in. The Lord will not pardon him; the anger and wrath of the Lord will rage against this man, and bring upon him all the curses which are written in the Book of the Law, and the Lord will destroy his name from under the Heavens

(Wolf 1927:146)

Thus did the wardens of the Amsterdam synagogue excommunicate the 24-year-old Baruch Spinoza, on 27 July 1656. The record of excommunication mentions horrible heresies which he practised and taught and monstrous actions which he performed. The content of the heresies can be reconstructed from contemporary reports of his beliefs and from his writings. Spinoza held unorthodox views on the nature of God and of the human soul, on immortality and on the status of prophecy. Spinozas early biographers make it clear that his views were widely despised. The nature of the monstrous deeds mentioned in the record of excommunication is more difficult to determine.

There are two old biographies of Spinoza. One was written by a Lutheran clergyman, Johan CohlerLatinized as Colerusand first published in 1705. The other, by Jean Maximilian Lucasa freethinking French refugee living in Hollandis thought to have been written soon after Spinozas death in 1677, though not published until 1719. Colerus describes Spinozas physical appearance: He was of a middle size, he had good features in his Face, the Skin somewhat black, black curld Hair, long Eye-brows, and of the same Colour, so that one might easily know by his Looks that he was descended from Portuguese Jews (Pollock 1899:394). Spinozas doctrines are presented by Colerus as impious, absurd and pernicious; but he grudgingly acknowledges the integrity and amiability of the character from which they issued.

The older biography makes the allegation of monstrous actions even less plausible. Lucas, who knew Spinoza personally, presents him as a lover of solitude, enjoying nonetheless the company of the real men of learning who sought him out in The Hague, where he eventually settled. Lucas offers a picture of a man given over to a passionate love of learning, but delighting too in the joys of sociabilitya lover of company who was not dependent on the admiration of others. His Spinoza is a man with a well-seasoned wit, whose misfortune resulted not from monstrous deeds but from his being too good and too enlightened. Lucas stresses Spinozas freedom from concern with fame or appearances. When he was dying Spinoza requested that his name should not be put on the