Ethics (Penguin Classics)

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He starts with the proposition that "there cannot exist in the universe two or more substances having the same nature or attribute. Spinoza then uses the Ontological Argument as justification for the existence of God and argues that God (which should be read as "nature", rather than traditional deity) must possess all attributes infinitely.

To hold on to the distinction between what a person desires and what is genuinely desirable, then, Spinoza wants to preserve our ordinary talk of good and evil, with the caveat that such talk refers only to the relation between ourselves and an idealized model human (Curley [1979, 356–62], Nadler [2006, 215–9], and Hübner [2014, 136–140]). One of the philosophical problems with Spinoza’s version of ethical egoism has to do with whether, and to what extent, Spinoza’s view can really be a moral theory at all. This view was simpler; it avoided the impossible conception of creation out of nothing; and it was religiously more satisfying by bringing God and man into closer relationship.In the 17 th century, moral philosophy was not yet primarily preoccupied with either accounting for the nature and origins of morality or with establishing general principles governing moral obligation—though, as we have seen, Spinoza does develop some views on these topics en route to the final part of the Ethics. They take 'thought' to refer to the activity that is characteristic of minds, namely thinking, the exercise of mental power.

His frequent use of geometrical illustrations affords no evidence at all in support of a purely logico- mathematical interpretation of his philosophy; for Spinoza regarded geometrical figures, not in a Platonic or static manner, but as things traced out by moving particles or lines, etc. These modes are not external creations of the Attributes, but immanent results — they are not "thrown off" by the Attributes, but are states (or modifications) of them, as air-waves are states of the air. Hence the concepts “by which ordinary people are accustomed to explain Nature…do not indicate the nature of anything, only the constitution of the imagination” (E1app, G II/83). Their miserable existence and death in this Western world are like that of a tropical plant in Europe. In fact, within the German philosophical sphere, Spinoza's influence on German idealism was remarkable.He concludes this part of the work with some claims “concerning the free man’s temperament and manner of living,” where the “free man” is understood to be someone who lives wholly according to the guidance of reason. Spinoza takes the conception of God upon which this explanation relies to be false: many imagine “God as a ruler, lawgiver, king, merciful, just and so forth; whereas these are all merely attributes of human nature, and not at all applicable to the divine nature” ( TTP Ch. In the third part of the Ethics, Spinoza argues that all things, including human beings, strive to persevere their perfection of power in being unaffected.