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Ethics

By Baruch Spinoza

Spinoza's Ethics constructs a unified account of God or Nature, mind and body, emotion, bondage and human freedom through definitions, axioms and demonstrated propositions. Its five Parts explain reality as one infinite substance, treat the mind as the idea of the body, analyse emotions through causal laws, identify passive dependence as bondage, and present adequate understanding and intellectual love as the path to blessedness. This edition uses R. H. M. Elwes's public-domain translation.

Translator or editor
R. H. M. Elwes
Publication
Published posthumously in 1677; Elwes translation published 1883
Genre
Rationalist metaphysics; ethics; philosophy of mind
Era
17th Century, Early Modern Philosophy

About this work

Published posthumously in 1677, Spinoza's Ethics is a systematic work of rationalist metaphysics, psychology and moral philosophy. Part I argues that only one substance exists: God or Nature. Every finite thing is a mode following necessarily from this infinite reality. Part II explains mind and body as the same individual understood through thought and extension. Human error arises through inadequate ideas rather than an independently free will. Parts III and IV analyse desire, joy, sadness and the complex emotions through causal laws. Bondage occurs when passive affects determine people more strongly than adequate understanding. Part V presents freedom as increased rational activity within nature's necessity. Understanding causes reorganises emotion and culminates in the intellectual love of God, in which virtue and blessedness coincide.

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